Network security concerns will necessitate the removal of the FrontPage Server Extensions
(FPSE) in early January 2009 for the student web server and before Spring 2011 for the faculty/staff web servers. While much of the advanced FrontPage functionality supported by the FPSE will be lost, alternative approaches to the same or
similar functions are available in
many cases. The purpose of this page is to direct FrontPage/SharePoint Designer users to
some of these alternatives.
| Contents |
Abbreviation Key |
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- FP = FrontPage
- FPSE = FrontPage Server Extensions
- SPD = SharePoint Designer
- EW = Expression Web
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 Accessing/Transferring Files and Folders |
| FPSE Supported Function or Feature |
Information on Alternate Approaches |
Opening Sites Directly via HTTP
FPSE allowed you to open your site for editing by selecting File> Open Site from the menu and entering your site address (URL).
Thus, you could open and edit your site files directly on the web server. |
OTS recommends opening sites via
your network path: \\tiger\username\WWW for example. Users working at home or on other computers not directly connected to the campus network—including the TowsonUguest Wi-Fi network—will need to install and use a Cisco VPN client to establish the necessary secure connection.
 See
Opening Your Tiger Web Site...
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Publishing Sites or Pages via HTTP
If you edited a locally-stored copy of your site and subsequently
transferred changed files to the web server, you may have used FP Remote Web Site tools and connected to your remote site via HTTP. |
Without FPSE, you will not be able to connect to your remote site via HTTP. By selecting the File System option however, you may connect to your remote site using the appropriate network path. As mentioned above, use of the Cisco VPN Client may be necessary.
See
Opening Your Tiger Web Site... for
information on using your network path.
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Transferring Files via WsFTP (or some other
FTP tool)
If you used FP to edit a local copy of your
web site and, then, transferred the revised
files using an FTP client such as WsFTP, you
weren't using the FPSE. However, FTP does
not represent the most secure file transfer
method. |
Use of FTP could compromise your privacy
(not to mention, network security). OTS
discourages the use of FTP for web site
publishing. Instead, consider installing and
using the free SSH Client.
Download the SSH Secure Client from the
OTS Software Downloads page.
See
SSH Secure Shell Online User's Guide for
file transfer instructions. |
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Inserting Dynamic Page Content |
| FPSE Supported Function or Feature |
Information on Alternate Approaches |
Insert> Web Component
Selecting Web Component from FP's Insert menu opened a dialog box to many dynamic, yet easy to incorporate page elements. These included:
- Marquee
- Web Search Box *
Search current web page or site
- Hit Counter
- Photo Gallery
Automate the creation of a page of thumbnails linked to the image files in a particular folder
- Included Content
Display content from a separate page (useful for consistent banners, footers, or navigation panels
- MSN Mapping Components
Insert or link to a particular map
- MSN Components
Add MSN Web Search and stock quotes
- MSNBC Components
Add news headlines and weather from MSNBC
- Confirmation Fields
Reflect data submitted via a web form in your site
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While there are no readily-available alternatives to some of the FP Web Components, many can be replaced by inserting scripts into a page's source code. Others can be replaced with free web-based services.
Below, we suggest how you might locate scripts and services, and we provide links to examples wherever possible.
While many of the examples in this
section come from a single script library (DynamicDrive),
neither the university nor OTS endorse this
site over any other; it's just particularly
well suited to our purposes here. A web
search for "free web scripts" will yield
many viable hits. Be sure to follow
carefully the directions for integrating the
script.
Here are a few representative examples of
script libraries:
Web Components more accurately classified as interactive are marked with an asterisk in the list on the left; we discuss these in the next section, Adding Interactive Components. |
Adding Marquee (scrolling) Text
The Marquee Web Component allowed FP users to add a scrolling horizontal line of text (e.g., stock ticker) to any page. |
There are free scripts available on the Web designed to display scrolling text on your page. Search the Web using keywords such as: script, scrolling text, and marquee text.
Example
|
Adding a Web Search Box
This FP Web Component permitted the user to create a simple form with which site visitors could search his site for keywords.
|
University pages on the WWW1 server may be searched via the Google Search box that appears in the upper right corner of all pages based on the official template (example). However, the Google Search appliance is presently not available for sites on Pages and Tiger. For sites on those servers, users might consider one of the following solutions:
Google Site Search is fee-based, hosted service
Free solutions are few and limited. Examples—as yet untested on Tiger—include
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Hit Counter
This FP Web Component made it easy for the
user to add a counter to a page to indicate
how many times that page had been opened.
|
Although SPD offers no integrated hit
counter function, there are Web-based hit
counter services you might want to explore.
A web search for "free hit counter" is sure
to yield a few.
Example
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Photo Gallery
This FP Web Component allowed users to
created a photo gallery page from a folder
full of image files.
|
There are many excellent free photo
services on the Web offering far more
functionality than FrontPage ever did. Here
are a few to start your exploration:
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Page Include
This FP Web Component allowed users to
include (display) a separate web page in an
area of the current page. For example, a
user could create a page named "footer.html"
and include it at the bottom of every page
in the site. Thus, changes to the "footer"
file would appear on all pages without
tedious page-by-page editing.
|
This may be done in SPD by using Inline
Frames. Select Insert> HTML> Inline Frames
from the menu bar. Then, right-click on the
frame to open its properties dialog and
configure it for your purposes. |
MSN Mapping Components , MSN Components
& MSNBC Components
These FP Web Components allowed users to
display dynamic content (feeds) from MSN
(Microsoft Network), including news
headlines, stock quotes, weather forecasts,
maps, driving directions, etc.
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With regard to maps, most of the popular
mapping sites (e.g., Google Maps, MapQuest,
Yahoo! Maps, Live Search Maps, etc.) feature
embedding support. For example, when you
find a map using Google maps:
- Click on "Link" above the upper right corner
of the map.
- Copy the "embed" code from the
dialog.
- Return to SPD and open code view.
- Paste the embed code into your
page's source code.
With regard to other dynamic content,
explore sites that offer RSS feeds and
subscriptions (e.g., Yahoo! News,
Amazon.com, Google News, etc.) and look for
instructions on how to add their information
to your website. For example, to add a
weather forecast to your page:
- open www.weather.com.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and
click "Weather on Your Website".
- Follow the instructions to create an
embeddable object.
- Embed the resulting code into the
source code of your page.
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FrontPage Themes |
Although SharePoint Designer neither
supports FrontPage Themes nor offers themes
of its own, it does support CSS Layouts and
Page Templates. OTS Training will be
offering workshops and resources on CSS and
templates in the coming semesters.
Like the script libraries mentioned above,
CSS Libraries may be found on the Web; and,
these resources often include free CSS
Layouts that you can download and use for
your own pages. Search the Web for "free css
layouts".
Example
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Shared Borders
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FrontPage Shared Borders allowed users to
establish a page border (top, left, right,
or bottom) including site navigation
controls, and then have it display on all or
a subset of the site pages.
This may be done in SPD by using Inline
Frames. Select Insert> HTML> Inline Frames
from the menu bar.
Also, templates for frames pages are still
available in SPD.
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Interactive Buttons |
While it was accessible via the Web
Components dialog, the Interactive Button
wizard was not dependant on FPSE. It is present in SPD and EW and fully functional without server-side components.
You can also create interactive buttons using CSS.
Example
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Adding Interactive Components |
| FPSE Supported Function or Feature |
Information on Alternate Approaches |
Creating Web Forms
FP and FPSE included "out-of-the-box" support for web form creation. Users could create functional web forms that sent submissions to e-mail addresses and/or text files without having to create scripts to handle the form submissions.
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OTS has developed a form handler to support
web forms on Tiger. The following resources
describe adapting existing FrontPage forms
and creating new forms in SPD, respectively:
See
Making Your FrontPage 2003 Web Forms Work
with the Tiger (2009) Form Handler
See
Creating a Student (Tiger) Web Form Using
the New (2009) Form Handler
Be sure to note the video demos available
in the rightmost column of these pages.
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Confirmation Fields
FP and the FPSE offered users the ability
to insert Confirmation Fields into a custom
form confirmation page, thus displaying form data as part of the confirmation message. For example, if your form included a firstname field, you could reflect the value from that field on your confirmation page and, thus, thank the user by name.
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Regrettably, we have yet to identify a user-friendly alternative
to this feature.
The OTS form handler referenced above
does reflect the submitted values for
all fields in its default confirmation
page ( see),
but we have no mechanism for reflecting
these values on user created pages.
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Adding Excel Spreadsheets and Charts
FPSE allowed users to embed Excel spreadsheets, charts and pivot tables into web pages.
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Presently, we are not aware of a readily-available alternative. Bear in mind, Excel will permit you to save a spreadsheet in the HTML format and that other potentially suitable non-interactive workarounds do exist:
- In Excel 2003, select File> Save as Web page
- In Excel 2007, select Office Button> Save As> Other Formats> HTML
- Display the desired table or chart as large as possible on your screen, then press the Print Screen key to capture your screen to the clipboard. Open a web page in SPD and select Edit> Paste to insert the capture as an image. Use the cropping tools in SPD to crop-away unwanted portions of the image.
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Other Functions |
| FPSE Supported Function or Feature |
Information on Alternate Approaches |
Insert a Comment
Visible Only to Editors
The Insert> Comment feature in FP permitted editors to add text comments that were only
visible in the FP editor, not in the a browser. This allowed editors to add notes for themselves or other editors. This feature was not dependent on FPSE and is available in SPD and EW.
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Although the Insert> Comment function is not readily apparent in SPD and EW, it is still available. You can add it to an existing or new toolbar in the following way:
- Select View> Toolbars> Customize from the menu bar.
- On the Command tab, select the Insert category.
- Scroll through the commands in the adjacent window to locate Comment... .
- Click and drag Comment... to the desired location on an open toolbar and release the mouse button.
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