FrontPage 98 SDK - Theme Designer

If you've used FrontPage 98 much at all, I'm sure you know what Themes are. Just in case you don't, let me review: Themes are kind of like Style Pages, only better. When you apply a Theme to a FrontPage web, it allows you to customize a look for your web which is universally applied, and includes a whole host of configurable style aspects, such as Banner style, Navigation Button style, Fonts, Horizontal Rules, Background color and/or images, etc.

Now, if you've used FrontPage 98 much at all, I'm sure you're also aware that the Themes which are packaged with it are for the most part, pretty lame (IMHO). Yes, Microsoft has some gee-whiz programmers working for them, but whoever designed those themes must have been sleeping with Bill Gates to get their job. So, if you want  a great-looking site, you'll just have to do without Themes, right?

Wrong. It's a little-known secret that the FrontPage 98 installation CD includes the FrontPage SDK (Software Developer's Kit). And among other useful little items, you can find a Themes Designer there, which is easy to install and use. Here's how:

First, put your FrontPage 98 installation CD in your CD ROM (of course). Go to your Start Menu and click Run, then click the Browse button. Browse in your CD drive to \SDK\Themes\Designer\Tdsetup.exe. Run it. This installs the Themes Designer into FrontPage. Now you're ready to use it. What? You thought it would be complicated?

To use it, open FrontPage Explorer, and select "Show Theme Designer" from the Tools menu. From the initial window, you can open existing themes, or create a new one. For purposes of demonstration, I created a new one, and will walk you through the process.

I began by creating my artwork for the banner, buttons, and horizontal rules, in Image Composer. Image Composer has some very nice utilities for creating buttons, which I made full use of. Once that was done, I opened the Theme Designer and opted to create a new Theme. Here's a screen shot of the Theme Designer with my Theme loaded into it:

Theme Designer

As you can see, it's a pretty straightforward representation of all the elements which you can customize for your Theme. Here is a complete list:

To customize an element, you just double-click it, and a dialog box pops up:

Theme Element Dialog box

The controls in this dialog vary slightly from one element to another, but they are generally the same. You can browse to the image path of the image(s) you will use for the element. In some cases, you will use more than one image, depending on whether the item is a "selectable" button, such as a Horizontal Navigation button, and if you wish to be able to opt for Active Elements (which include Hover buttons for navigation buttons), you will select alternate images for the "hover" event of the mouse cursor with the button. The "Font" tab is used to control the font on buttons, banner, text, and hyperlinks. The "Alignment" tab is used to control the positioning of the elements, and the "Preview" tab allows you to see how it will look.

Make sure that you specify all the attributes of the elements you use, in all situations (such as whether "Active Elements" is checked or unchecked in the "Themes" dialog in FrontPage Explorer). when you're done, you save the Theme, giving it a unique name (unless you're simply editing an existing Theme). When you go to the Themes View of FrontPage Explorer, you will see your new Theme in the Themes dialog:

Theme View in FrontPage 98

Now, here's a before and after shot of a web I created with the Corporate Web Presence Wizard. First I used the "Travel" theme (built-in):

Before

Like I said, pretty lame, huh? But it is one of the more attractive built-in themes. After I created my custom Theme, I applied it to the web, and here's the result:

After

Personally, I like mine better. ;-)

Now go, and do thou likewise!

Author: Kevin Spencer
Date: 03/29/98

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