Tips for HTML Editors

This topic discusses things that the developer of this Guide would want to know if he were in your shoes -- that is, if he had no previous experience with the Guide and were given the job of customizing it. 

This is not a primer on html or a tutorial on FrontPage. It assumes that you already know how to write html directly or use an html editor to do it. Some of the tips are applicable only to FrontPage.

If you are using FrontPage and need help, your search engine will help you find a number of web sites and discussion groups where you can go for help. For example there is a good discussion group where you can get quick answers to questions at www.outfront.net. There are several books on FrontPage that are better and more complete than the instruction manual that comes with the program.

If you are using some other html editor, similar books or sites may be available.

Quirks You Should Know About

Getting Started: When working with FrontPage and presumably other html editors, it is essential that the web and/or individual topics within the web be imported into the html editor, not simply copied into it.

Backup: Html editors sometimes do unexpected things. Back up your work frequently.

Tables: With the exception of the Quizzes, all text in this guide is in tables with a width of 608 pixels and a cell padding of 3. The purpose is to ensure that the text fits, and to control how it looks, on older computer screens with 640 x 480 pixel screen resolution. And also to ensure that the lines of text are not so long that they are awkward to read on newer screens with a resolution of 1024 x 768.

Invisible Bookmarks: For most pages, the title is at the very top of the page and is also the bookmark that other pages are linked to. On this page, for example, the first three words of the title are bookmarked, and you can see that in FrontPage by the dashed underlining. This bookmark controls what appears at the top of the screen when linking to this page.

Some pages, however, are organized so that there is a graphic or other text above the title. If the bookmark were in the title, the top of the page would be cut off when linking to that page. On such pages, the bookmark is in the top left of the page, but we don't want it to show so it is in white text to make it invisible. This applies, for example, to most of the pages in the Understanding and Helping with Personal Problems module and the Spy Stories module. If you want to change a bookmark on such a page, highlight it and then change the color to black to make it visible.

Font: Non-serif fonts such as Arial and Helvetica are generally considered easier to read on screen than a serif font such as Times New Roman. Because this Guide requires a lot of reading, the font is specified as a non-serif font, and it is coded as "arial, helvetica." This covers the names used for the principal non-serif font in each of the major operating systems.nIn FrontPage, however, the default font is Times New Roman, and this crops up frequently as one edits the guide.

Editing the Quizzes: The quizzes are in "frames," which means they can give you a headache. Frames is an html technique that makes it possible to change one part of the screen while keeping other parts constant. For the quizzes, for example, this makes it possible to keep the questions on the screen in one frame while viewing the correct answer in another frame.

You will probably want to customize the quizzes, as they are supposed to cover the most important messages that you want to communicate to your employees, and that will differ from one organization to another.

Unless you are very familiar with frames, it is IMPORTANT to keep three things in mind to avoid problems when customizing the quizzes:

• Always have a backup copy before making changes. If you mistakenly ignore the cautions in the next two points, there is a good chance you will want to revert to the backup and start over.

• If you want to replace a question with one that requires a completely different answer, delete and change the contents of the files, but do NOT delete the files themselves or change the file names. If you always make changes this way, you will not have to make any change in the Frameset.

• The URLs and titles of the answer files are keyed to whether the viewer clicked on True or False, not on whether this answer is the right or wrong answer. In other words, answer 1True is what appears on the screen when the viewer clicks on True -- even though this happens to be the wrong answer. (This is especially confusing if the answers are printed out in hard copy -- for example, when the file title 1True1 appears on what the reader knows is the wrong answer.)

The quiz answers have many links to related topics. Because the quizzes have frames, the html coding of these links differs from the coding of most other links in the program, and it is easy to forget this. The target frame for these links should be coded as _parent.

Directory and File Names: If you change a file name, FrontPage will automatically change all links to or from this file accordingly. Theoretically, the same should happen when you change a directory name, but it doesn't. Some links get broken, and the only way to learn which links are broken is to test them all. It is strongly recommended that you not change directory names.

If you do change directory names, be sure to Recalculate Hyperlinks afterwards. It appears that these changes are kept in memory rather than being saved automatically. If you exit the program before clicking on Recalculate Hyperlinks, changes you have just made will be lost.

Be aware of the case of your file and directory names. The author of this guide had a problem importing files from FrontPage on Windows NT to FrontPage on Windows 95, and vice versa. File and directory names were automatically, and inexplicably, changed from lower to upper case and vice versa. The author could never obtain an explanation of how or why this happens.

This is important, because Windows and FrontPage are not case sensitive, but the Internet is extremely case sensitive. If one letter is in upper case rather than lower case, or vice versa, a link will not work on the World Wide Web. See Testing Links, below. This is the reason why all directory and file names in this web (with two exceptions) start with a capital letter. This resisted the automatic change of case. The exceptions are the index file and the image directory.

Testing Links: You will not know if all your links are really working until you put your web up on the Internet and test it there. Previewing on your browser or your own client-server network is not sufficient. As noted above, this is because Windows and FrontPage are not case sensitive. If a file name is in lower case and a link to that file is written in upper case or starts with a capital letter, the link will still function when you preview your file on your browser or access it on your own client-server network. On the Internet, however, file and directory names are very case sensitive. If one letter is in upper rather than lower case, or vice versa, the link will not work. It is easy to be surprised by broken links when you first put your web on the Internet.

VTI Files: In addition to the files and directories that you create, FrontPage creates several independent directories of VTI files plus a subdirectory of VTI files within each of your directories. These files are unique to FrontPage and support various advanced features such as the WebBots and themes. The disadvantage of these files is that they double the size of any web program. For example, they increase the size of the Guide from roughly 3.5 megabytes to over 7 megabytes.

As currently constituted, the Guide does not use these VTI files, so we have deleted them prior to distributing the program. If you add more advanced features to the program, such as a Search function, the VTI files will probably be required.

If you import the web into FrontPage, the program will automatically recreate the VTI files, whether you need them or not.

VTI files are "hidden files" and are not shown in the list of directories and files in FrontPage Explorer. They are visible in your Windows Explorer or other operating system file manager -- but only if your operating system options are set to Show All Files. For most systems, this control is in Options under the View menu.

Deleting Files: If you delete any file in the Guide, you will want to also delete all links or other references to that file. FrontPage offers two ways to identify what else may need to be deleted. In FrontPage 2000, go to the View menu, click on Reports, and then check Broken Hyperlinks and Unlinked Files. On the Edit menu, click on Find and then search for all files that contain a word you are looking for.

Publishing to Your Network: Most networks have a shared drive where any member of the network can put working files they want others to be able to see. If you wish other members of your organization to review your work in customizing the Guide, you can "publish" your web to the shared drive. In FrontPage Explorer, go to the File menu, then Publish FrontPage Web, then browse to the location where you want to put the guide.

Substituting Alternate Topics: Under the Implementation directory is another directory called "Altrnats." Alternate versions of some of the files have been developed, and these are stored in this directory. For example, one file in this directory is called Eap.htm. It is an alternative introduction to the Understanding and Helping with Personal Problems module. It is written for those organizations that do not have a formal Employee Assistance Program (EAP). It replaces the introduction that assumes your organization does have a formal Employee Assistance Program.

If your organization does not have an EAP, you will want to replace the current introduction with the Eap.htm file from the Altrnats directory.

Separating the Guide from the Implementation Package: The Guide must be separated from the Implementation Package and the CBT module before installing it on your network. To do this, move the entire Guide to a new web, and delete the link to the Implementation Package at the bottom of Home.htm. If you are using the Guide as an independent web site, the Home.htm page will have to be renamed index.htm. (Each web must start with a file named index.htm.) If you link to the Guide from within a larger web site, you may keep the file name Home.htm or change it to any other name that fits your site. If you change the name, check to make sure that your web editor has automatically changed all the links to Home in the navigation bars throughout the program.

Separating the Guide from the Implementation Package and CBT module will break all links from the Implementation Package to the Guide. Therefore, you should wait until AFTER finishing the customization before doing this.

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