>A few weeks back a thread in this category discussed various tools for web page authoring.
>I understood that FrontPage was more than adequate for basic standard pages.
>
>Having installed it with Office2000, and never having made a web page from scratch in my life (I have edited pages with notepad), I set out to make my first one. I chose to replicate a simple "application form" from a web app. I have worked on.
>
>While I tried to read the Help in some detail, I couldn't even come up with the answer for "How do I create a Label field?" It told me about the Label form (control?) icon, but that was about all I could find.
>
>Anyway, though I found it very counter-intuitive, I eventually had 4 labelled text boxes on the form. They looked reasonable in "Normal" view mode. When I checked the "Preview" mode I was shocked. Font sizes were different, a couple of lines 'wrapped' where they had been singletons before, things were not at all placed where they should have been.
>
>My biggest concern was positioning things. I found an "absolute positioning" feature and used it for all visible parts on the page. Checking Preview, things were closer but still significantly off.
>After much detailed moving of things and too much back/forth between "Normal" and "Preview" I got them looking like I wanted But what I had in "Normal" view mode was severely overlapped bits that were very hard to work with.
>
>What are the secrets to working successfully with this product???? (There has to be some or no one could rate this as being even adequate).
>
>Thanks in advance
>
>JimN

Hi Jim,

The main place to check out is microsoft.public.frontpage.client. This is an incredibly active newsgroup, with lots of lurking experts. The FP world doesn't have wonderful resources like UT, but they make up for it with a much heavier reliance on Usenet. The trick with FP is to avoid the needless bells and whistles and focus on its essential features. It takes a while to get the hang of doing certain tricky things (like laying out tables), and the documentation often doesn't give you a clue. Once you've learned to dodge the pitfalls, FrontPage is extremely powerful and easy to use.

Mike