Transitioning from FrontPage to SharePoint Designer - Self Help Documents - Office of Technology Services

In 2007, Microsoft announced the retirement of FrontPage—its nine-year-old Web authoring application—and announced two new, standards-based successors: Expression Web and SharePoint Designer. Microsoft also announced retirement of the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE), the server-side programs that supported most of the FrontPage Web Components and several other popular functions. Like many of our USM peers, we have adopted SharePoint Designer as our new, supported web authoring application. As campus users move on, OTS is happy to offer this page as "Transition Central"—information, advice and resources organized into the following sections:

Summary Information

Effective Spring 2008, OTS began recommending and supporting the use of SharePoint Designer (SPD) and Expression Web for editing web sites on the Tiger, Pages, and WWW1 servers. While FrontPage may remain available in many campus locations for years to come (see FAQ below), network security concerns will necessitate the removal of the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) much sooner:

After OTS has removed the extensions, FrontPage users who maintain web sites on Tiger may have to follow different procedures for opening their sites, creating forms, and inserting certain types of content. The FPSE Alternatives page linked above lists most of the doomed FrontPage functions and—where possible—describes alternative approaches to the same or similar ends. OTS is dedicated to developing self-help resources and training opportunities to help FrontPage users make the transition successfully.

While OTS is dedicated to helping students create and maintain web sites on Tiger, it bears noting here that there are other, less technically challenging ways to publish information on the Web. For students who aspire to develop a unique site and control every aspect of its design and function, as well as for students fulfilling the requirements of very specific site development assignments, using SharePoint Designer (or some other site development application) on Tiger should provide adequate flexibility.

Students who simply wish or need to publish content —text, images, audio, and video—rather than develop a site from scratch, may find services based on Web 2.0 technologies (e.g., Facebook, WordPress, Flickr, Google Sites, etc.) a bit more user friendly. As a case in point, those who have (or acquire) a free Google Gmail account can create form-based web sites within Google Sites. This is just one example of what will certainly be many available solutions as the Web continues to evolve.

Resources

Opening Your Tiger Web Site for Direct Editing in SharePoint Designer Using Your Network Path or a Mapped Drive
FrontPage users have long been able to open their web sites directly from Tiger by selecting File> Open Site and entering their home page address (http://tiger.towson.edu/~username). Without the FrontPage Server Extensions, the procedure is a bit different. This resource describes step-by-step how to "map" your web folder on Tiger and then open your site in SharePoint Designer. We strongly recommend viewing the video demonstrations represented on the right side of this page.

Opening Your Student Web Site in SharePoint Designer 2007
This twelve minute video shows the steps necessary to connect to your web files either by mapping a drive to Tiger (both on and off-campus) or connecting directly through SharePoint Designer. It will also show you how to begin the creation of your website.

Making Your FrontPage 2003 Web Forms Work with the Tiger (2009) Form Handler
Users who have created web forms on Tiger using FrontPage tools and the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) may adapt their existing forms to use the new (2009) form handler on Tiger. This document describes how to make an existing "FrontPage" form work without the FPSE. We strongly recommend viewing the video demonstrations represented on the right side of this page.

Creating a Student (Tiger) Web Form Using the New (2009) Form Handler
The FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) allowed users to create web forms both from scratch and using the Form Page Wizard. Although the FPSE are leaving Tiger at year's (2008) end, OTS has developed a custom form handler to fill the gap. This document describes how to create a web form which can send submissions to your email address as well as add them to a text file in your account. We strongly recommend viewing the video demonstrations represented on the right side of this page.

MORE TITLES Available from OTS Training
In addition to the transitional titles listed here, you will find many more documents in the OTS Training Resource Library.

Training Opportunities

SharePoint Designer: Transitioning from FrontPage 2003
In 2008, Microsoft will discontinue support for FrontPage. The succeeding Web development application on campus will be Microsoft SharePoint Designer (SPD), which is quite similar to FrontPage. Participants in this workshop will learn how SPD differs from FrontPage and use SPD to complete a basic editing workflow in their existing "FrontPage" sites. This is an intermediate level workshop for those who are proficient with basic web site editing in FrontPage. Those seeking an introduction to web site development and maintenance with SPD will find SharePoint Designer: Creating a Web Site more beneficial.

SharePoint Designer: Creating a Web Site
With Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 (SPD) and a little practice, TU faculty, staff and students can create and maintain web sites with relative ease. In the course of this workshop, participants will learn how to open and edit their "personal" web sites on the Tiger (students) and Pages (faculty/staff) web servers and create pages with formatted text, images and hyperlinks. This is a basic level workshop for those relatively new to web publishing. If you have mastered the basics and are more interested in learning how SPD and FrontPage differ, you will find SharePoint Designer: Transitioning from FrontPage 2003 more beneficial.

Frequently Answered Questions

If you have never used FrontPage, then it is unlikely that your web site includes content or features that rely on the FrontPage Server Extensions. Consequently, the removal of the extensions from Tiger, Pages and WWW1 should have no effect on your pages or on the way you work with them.

If you are faculty, however, and routinely make web site assignments in your classes, your students may be using FrontPage even if you don't. In this case, it is important that your instructions be accurate and that you not require the incorporation of content that specifically relies on FrontPage Server Extensions.

FrontPage itself could remain a viable web development application for years to come, so you could continue to use it. The immediate concern is with the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE), a collection of programs that reside on web servers and support many of the advanced, yet user-friendly functions that have made FrontPage popular. Because Microsoft has discontinued support for the extensions that run on Tiger, they will quickly become outdated and threaten the security of our network. The FPSE have to go.

Not withstanding that, FrontPage is now something of a "dead end." Microsoft will not develop it further, and OTS will stop scheduling workshops and creating self-help resources for FrontPage users. If you see yourself developing or editing web pages well into the future, you will want to move on to a new product as soon as your schedule, course load, or work load permits.

The product for which TU will offer the most comprehensive support will be SharePoint Designer. You might also choose the very popular Adobe Dreamweaver, but OTS has no plan to support it at this time.

The FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) support Microsoft Themes, Shared Borders, web forms, and most of the features you would have inserted from the Web Components dialog. When the FPSE go away, the portions of your web pages that relied on them will cease to display or function as before.

For example, if you inserted a hit counter from the Web Components dialog, it will appear as a "broken image"—no numbers. If you created a web form, it will present an error messages when users click Submit. If you incorporated Shared Borders to display the same links and/or content on every page in your site, the Shared Borders may not display accurately. This last situation is particularly bothersome in that it will require you to re-create your site's navigational structure.

While easy-to-implement alternative approaches do not exists for all of these functions, our FIPSE Alternatives page (see link above) offers suggestions for many. And, as we learn of additional workarounds, we'll be sure to post them.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, unless your site includes content or functionality linked to the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE), it may not require "fixing."

The first step is to review your web site and determine which pages you want to keep. It is not unusual for students to create pages for a particular class or assignment and then forget about them after the class ends. There is no sense in fixing any page you no longer wish to maintain. Archive and delete outdated content; the remaining pages will be easier to manage.

The second step is to review your web pages to identify inserted FPSE functions and content. Here, several strategies might prove effective. Consider, printing or saving our FPSE Alternatives page (linked above) to use as a checklist. As you review your pages, if you encounter any content other than ordinary text and images—for example, hit counters, forms, and shaded areas labeled with special function names—make a note of the file's name and location.

The third step is to decide which of those areas and functions identified in the previous step you wish to retain. Those you couldn't care less about, you can select and delete.

The fourth step is to re-create the content and functions you wish to retain using the approaches described on our FPSE Alternatives page or with other non-FPSE solutions you discover. (We would love to hear about your unique and creative solutions! Please email us at training@towson.edu.) If you have tried the alternative approaches to no avail, contact Student Computing Services or OTS Training for assistance.

Expression Web and SharePoint Designer are practically identical to each other; the chief difference is that SharePoint Designer includes some additional tools and functions not applicable to sites on the University's WWW1, Tiger and Pages web servers. However, SharePoint Designer reference books tend to focus on these very tools and functions. Consequently, books titled for Expression Web will likely be more useful to TU students, faculty and staff than those titled for SharePoint Designer.

Adobe Dreamweaver is an excellent site development application. But unlike SharePoint Designer, its interface is notably different from that of the Microsoft Office applications. SharePoint Designer has the advantage of "looking" a lot more like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Further, because Dreamweaver is not part of the standard collection of software titles licensed by USM schools, OTS does not offer associated self-help resources, workshops and technical support as a rule.

Not at this time. Of course, we are developing our own self-help resources—such as those listed above—but if you are shopping for Microsoft or third-party reference books or discs we suggest careful evaluation. Don't buy a SharePoint Designer book that focuses on developing sites on a SharePoint server; that's not what you will be doing here at TU. Resources titled for Microsoft Expression Web may be more useful.

If you discover a particularly useful learning or reference tool, by all means let us know. We will be delighted to share your discovery and credit you on the find.

If you routinely make site development assignments in the courses you teach, these changes will likely necessitate adjustments to your instruction and handouts. Such adjustments may be minimal. For example, if your assignments do not require students to incorporate Web Components, forms, or other advanced features, the only necessary adjustment may be inserting the new steps for opening a site (see http://www.towson.edu/adminfinance/ots/support/scs/tigerwebpub/opentigerinSPD.asp).

Because Microsoft will continue to support the extensions that run on the Pages and WWW1 web servers through 2010, faculty and staff need not change how they edit their sites for the time being. However, OTS will have to remove the FrontPage Extensions from all campus servers, eventually; so we will be encouraging all FrontPage users to start transitioning to new products and practices in the coming semesters. In fact, as OTS upgrades campus computers to Office 2007, we are installing SharePoint Designer as well.

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OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

Training & Documentation

Transitioning from FrontPage to SharePoint Designer (SPD)

Summary Information

Resources

Training Opportunities

Frequently Answered Questions