One problem that many of us have is creating and maintaining a common
look and feel for our sites. There are two issues: first, unless one is a
skilled graphic designer, it is difficult to produce a set of page
elements that look good together, convey the right message, and so forth.
Second, using ordinary HTML, it is extremely tough to keep a whole
collection of dozens or hundreds of pages consistent with one another. Themes
are a useful way around those problems.
In FrontPage 2002, themes provide a coordinated set of backgrounds,
banners, buttons, typefaces, and so on that are already designed to work
together. In addition, themes require that three features of FrontPage
work together: the Themes themselves, Shared
Borders (with Link Bars), and the
Navigation
View. Here we concentrate just on the themes.
To apply a theme to a Web is simple:
- While editing any page in your Web, use the Format... Theme... menu
choice.
- In the resulting dialog box, click once on any of the listed themes
to see a preview of it on the right.
- When you find one that you like, make your choices about "vivid
colors," "active graphics," and so forth, then click
OK.
- Depending on the size of your Web, it may take several second for
FrontPage to apply the theme to all your pages.
- You can readily change from one theme to another. (If you have
trouble, simply switch to "no theme," then to the one you
want.)
- Use the Customize button to make changes to the theme itself.
- You can apply a theme to a single page or to the entire Web. In
general, you will want to have the same theme applied consistently to
an entire Web (e.g. a single course). If you want to distinguish
different parts of a site from one another, a possible strategy is to
create "sub-themes:" variations on a single theme, with
slightly different backgrounds or buttons or banners.
Although FrontPage comes with a variety of themes, you can also buy
others as well as download some for free from various Web sites.