ARCHIVED: Using Microsoft FrontPage, which bots and other features will work on mypage.iu.edu?

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Note: FrontPage 2003 is the final version of FrontPage. Microsoft discontinued FrontPage late in 2006 and currently offers two new products for web authoring, SharePoint Designer and Expression Web. For more, see ARCHIVED: Why isn't FrontPage included in Office 2007 and later, and what can I use instead?

A bot (short for robot) is a custom script that automates advanced features on web pages. Some of these bots require that the server have FrontPage Extensions installed, and some do not. Only some bots will work when you publish a FrontPage web page on mypage.iu.edu, because mypage.iu.edu does not run FrontPage Server Extensions. The bots that work are based on either Java or ActiveX, and require the FrontPage editor to actually hard-code changes into the page upon publishing.

Note: On June 23, 2008, UITS will retire Steel. As part of this process, UITS will move the Mypage service to a new platform. For more, see ARCHIVED: About the Mypage migration.

The following features will work on pages published to mypage.iu.edu, but will require you to republish the FrontPage web page for changes to take place. For instance, if you do not publish the FrontPage web page every day, the Scheduled Include Bot and Scheduled Image Bot will not work.

  • Include Bot: Includes other pages in yours
  • Scheduled Include Bot: Includes other pages during a specified time period
  • Scheduled Image Bot: Inserts an image during a specified time period
  • Substitution Bot: Substitutes variables for values set in FrontPage
  • Table of Contents Bot: Automatically generates a list of web pages in your FrontPage web page
  • Timestamp Bot: Shows when the page was last updated. This works only if you edit your page using FrontPage.
  • Themes: Changes the look of a page or your entire FrontPage web page. Do not change themes too often, because every time you do, all the images used for the theme are uploaded while the images for the previous theme are not removed. Incidentally, the Active Graphics option does not require FrontPage Server Extensions.
  • Navigation Bar: Automatically adds links to other pages on your FrontPage web page
  • Video: Includes .avi files inline
  • Stylesheets: Alters the overall look of your page (HTML Cascading Style Sheets)
  • Shared Borders: Divides the page into areas (uses HTML tables)
  • Marquee: Scrolls text across the screen (uses the <marquee> tag)
  • Animation: Moves elements of the page around when the page opens (JavaScript)
  • Page Transitions: Makes your pages appear and disappear in interesting ways (JavaScript)
  • Hover Buttons: Changes appearance when the mouse pointer rests over them (Java applet)
  • Banner Ad Manager: Rotates two or more images (Java applet)

The following features will not work, because they require FrontPage Server Extensions:

  • Hit counter
  • Forms: Forms of any sort, including message board, guestbook, and search forms
  • Database Connector Wizard

Note: The IU South Bend Mypage service is different from the Mypage service noted here; see IUSB's Web Publishing: Mypage.

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Last modified on 2018-01-18 12:06:51.