Here's how to use FrontPage to update a Web site:

1. Dial up (or connect to) your service provider.
2. Open up FrontPage on your PC (Start menu if Windows).
3. FrontPage requires that we open a "FrontPage Web," which is the layout Microsoft uses to organize sites. What I usually to is create a small one, which includes only the pages I actually want to load plus three others: default.html, index.html, and index.htm. I include these three files because I use index.html (for a frameset) and default.html (for a home page) on a Web site I created on a NT host, and FrontPage will try to change the latter into the former unless I include both. (FrontPage caught me twice this way, messing up the site, before I figured it out.) The dialog boxes in FrontPage will allow you to locate the directory from which the Web files are to be loaded.
4. In opening a FrontPage Web, assuming you've got the files ready to go, select "open an existing FrontPage Web" from the dialog box or else FrontPage will create some extra files you probably won't need.
5. The primary reason I only include in a FrontPage Web the files I actually intend to update is that FrontPage is S-L-O-W. The more files you include, the longer it takes.
6. Once FrontPage loads up a FrontPage Web, you should be able to see the included files, including dates last modified, as though you did a View Details on your Desktop. This is a good way to confirm what you're doing. FrontPage also creates a couple of subfolders as part of its navigation scheme: "images" and "downloads" as a minimum, but others as needed.
7. Once you've satisfied yourself that the FrontPage Web is correctly loaded, choose "Publish..." from the File menu. You may get several options of locations to which to publish. Choose the one that's appropriate in that case.
8. You get a dialog box prompting you for userID and password.
9. FrontPage will then list what's on the site already (you won't see this, which is unfortunate); publish the files included in your FrontPage Web; update the site directory (and again you won't see this); and give you a note in the status bar ("Published files to ...") when the job is done.
10. When the job is done, exit FrontPage and log off.
11. The pages should be available to view immediately after you complete this procedure.

NOTE: Whenever you use FrontPage to edit Web files, it adds a good deal of Microsoft bloat: proprietary tags, unnecessary spacers and table elements, etc. It can also break JavaScripts and dynamic HTML (which I use in several places on the sites I've created) if we're not careful.

Here are some examples of incorrect HTML inserted into Web documents created not just with FrontPage, but with PowerPoint and Word as well:

• "smart quotes" -- opening and closing quotation marks incompatible with HTML Unicode standards
• other special characters that override standards
• missing semicolon at the end of numeric character escapes (e.g. =)
• unreadable numeric renderings of special characters (e.g. < > &)
• unquoted <table> tags containing non-alphanumeric characters
• mis-nesting of <font> and <strong> tags (by PowerPoint)
• use of <ul> and </ul> tags to accomplish paragraph breaks instead of <p> (by PowerPoint)
• missing <tr> tags in text-only slides (by PowerPoint)
• unnecessary </p> tags
• unmatched and unnecessary <li> tags in headings
• lines without word wrap and difficult to handle in a text editor

1. Special characters (e.g. "smart quotes," ellipses, etc.) are inserted by default -- and the defaults are sufficiently difficult to turn off that most people don't bother.
2. When you "save as HTML," both the special characters and any other Microsoft-proprietary tags are preserved.

References

the Demoronizer

1. Don't depend on Microsoft products to generate Web documents. You may not see the resulting errors, but the rest of the world will see them. If you must use these products to create Web documents, use your knowledge of HTML to correct the errors.
2. Always check your work in multiple browsers, and with more than one user.