List of FrontPage WebBot Components

Archived content. No warranty is made as to technical accuracy. Content may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist.

FrontPage components are built-in FrontPage objects that are evaluated and executed when an author saves a page or, in some cases, when a user browses to the page. FrontPage components generate HTML, or, in some cases, client-side or server-side script code. Using the FrontPage SDK (available on the FrontPage 98 CD-ROM) users can add their own FrontPage components.

Run-time components expand dynamically when the page containing the component is fetched by a browser, or for Form handler components when a form is submitted. This is similar to a CGI script running on the server. Authoring-time components expand only when the page is saved, and not when the page is fetched by a browser.

Component

Type

Purpose

Banner Ad Manager

Authoring-time

Allows images to be automatically displayed and rotated in sequence. Users can click the images to follow a hyperlink.

Comment

Authoring-time

Text that authors can view in the FrontPage Editor but that will not be displayed by a Web browser, similarly to "hidden text" in a word processor. Comment text appears purple in the FrontPage Editor and retains the character-size and other attributes of the current paragraph style. Comments are particularly useful for instructions embedded in templates.

Confirmation Field

Run-time

Includes the values of fields in a form on the form's confirmation page.

Default Form Handler (also called Save Results component)

Run-time

Appends the contents of a form to a file on the server in any of eight formats (suitable for importing into databases, feeding into a mail merge with Microsoft Word, viewing in a text editor, viewing in a web browser, etc.). This form handler can also be configured to e-mail the form's contents.

Discussion

Run-time

Creates a threaded discussion group.

Hit Counter

Run-time

Monitors and displays the number of visits a page has received.

Hover Button

Authoring-time

A button on a Web page that contains an animation that is activated when the mouse moves over the button or is clicked on the button.

Include page

Authoring-time

Replaced with the contents of a page in the FrontPage web. If the included page changes, it is re-included. Note that the Include Page component is not the same as a server-side include. Server-side includes dynamically include pages when the page is fetched. The Include Page Component only updates the included data when the page is saved.

Insert HTML

Authoring-time

Allows the author to enter (and preserve) HTML tags. Useful for inserting tags that are not recognized by the FrontPage Editor.

Marquee

Authoring-time

Creates a horizontal scrolling text window.

Page Banner

Authoring-time

Creates a banner across the page with the page's title. Text or images are used, based on the FrontPage theme selected for the web.

Registration

Run-time

Allows end-users to add themselves to the list of users permitted to browse a protected web by registering a username and password.

Scheduled Image

Authoring-time

Similar to the Scheduled Include FrontPage component, except that only an image is included.

Scheduled Include

Authoring-time

Similar to an Include Page component, but the inclusion is only effective during a specified time period, before and after which the inclusion is automatically disabled (or, optionally, a different page is included).

Search

Run-time

Performs a full-text search over all pages in a web, or over all messages in a discussion group.

Substitution

Authoring-time

Performs macro substitutions, allowing the values of data items (such as a company's address) to be centralized for easy updating.

Table of contents

Authoring-time

Displays a complete outline of all pages in a web, and optionally updates that outline whenever any page is added, deleted, or renamed within the web.

Timestamp

Authoring-time

Indicates when a page was last edited by an author or (optionally) when it was last automatically updated, in various date and time formats.