FrontPage 2003: The Missing Manual

In today's highly connected world, almost everybody has a web site, from local sewing circles to the world's largest corporations. If you're ready for one of your own, Microsoft's FrontPage 2003 has everything you need to create Web pages. It's true. Your geek friends may howl in contempt if you use FrontPage, but that's because the program has a reputation for spitting out cookie-cutter Web pages with messy, overloaded HTML code that takes forever to load. Not any more.

After listening to complaints, Microsoft has given FrontPage 2003 some pretty advanced features, including an HTML cleanup tool that helps alleviate bloated code, and new support for Macromedia Flash and XML. Now, savvy Web veterans can control as much of the process as they want, and even collaborate on a site with developers who use Dreamweaver, GoLive or other Web authoring tools. Yet, unlike those other tools, FrontPage 2003 still has automated features for beginners who don't know where to start.

There's still one flaw, though. Microsoft's idea of a user manual is a flimsy pamphlet. But that's easily solved. FrontPage 2003: The Missing Manual offers you everything from the basics to meaty sections on advanced tasks. Our book puts the program's features in context, with clear and thorough chapters that provide valuable shortcuts, workarounds, and just plain common sense, no matter where you weigh in on the technical scale. With it, you can learn to build simple Web pages, or sophisticated ones with tables and Cascading Style Sheets, and find out how to manage and publish a Web site. You'll also learn to create forms, work with databases, and integrate FrontPage with Microsoft Office.

If you haven't worked with Web pages before, each chapter provides "Up to Speed" sidebars with useful background information. If you do have experience, the "Power Users' Clinic" sidebars offer advanced tips and insights. You won't find tips like those in the pamphlet, or even in the Help file. FrontPage: The Missing Manual gives you the complete lowdown on the program above and beyond any book on the market.

Jessica Mantaro is an accomplished technical writer who has worked as an instructor, training professionals to use Microsoft Frontpage and also as a creator and editor of Web pages. She is now a freelance writer living in New England. Prior to all that, she spend time in New York's art world, where she toiled to boost technical savvy among the old-fashioned and inexperienced.