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ACME All-Purpose Web Template (Flash)ACME All-Purpose Web Template

Current version: 1.1
Last updated: 7/1/02

Installation

You probably have an .exe file that you downloaded. This is a program that will install the template files into the correct places on your computer.

First, make sure that FrontPage is closed.

To run the installer, double-click on the icon. Some dialog boxes will pop up and take you through the installation process. If it seems to go okay, you may then create a new web! Skip the rest of these installation instructions to find out how to use the template.

If the installation fails, there are a few things you may try. First, if the installer is on your desktop, create a new folder on your desktop and drag the icon into the new folder, then try running it from there. If this doesn't work, you can try extracting the files and placing them manually. Right-click on the installer and select "Extract to folder..." Extract to this temporary directory. Note: If you are using a non-English version, please see this info page at PixelMill.

In the fp2000 folder you'll find three folders called Pages, Themes, and Webs.

Open the Themes folder and there should be another folder called acme. Copy this folder to this location:

C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Themes

In the Webs folder there should be another folder called acme.tem. Copy this folder to this location:

C:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Templates/1033/Webs

If you are unable to extract the files, then contact support.

Using the Template - Basics
  1. After installation, open FrontPage.

  2. In FP2002, go to File > New > Page or Web. (In FP2000, go to File > New > Web.) In FP2002, click on "Web Site Templates" in the right column.

  3. Choose the ACME All-Purpose Web Template from your list of templates.

  4. In the right column, make sure that the location of your new web is correct. The usual default is a subfolder inside of your "My Webs" folder. You may choose a different name for the subfolder. You may also create a new web directly on your server by typing in the URL of your web site.

  5. Click OK and FrontPage will make your new web.

  6. When FrontPage is finished working, you should see the pages of your new web site in the Folder List. (If you can't see the Folder List, go to View > Folder List.) Double-click on any of these pages to open it and edit it.

  7. While you are working on the web site, go to File > Preview in Browser to see your pages as they will appear in a browser. Try not to depend on the "Preview" tab in FrontPage. You may leave the browser window open and refresh it as you make and save changes.

  8. To make more pages, simply take existing pages and go to File > Save As. Save the page as a new file name, and click "Change" to change the page title. (Notes: The page title is what shows up in your link bars and page banners. The file name should NOT have spaces or special characters in the name, but should look like either mynewpage.htm or my_new_page.htm.) Then, switch to Navigation View and drag the page into your navigation structure to add the page to the correct link bars. (Learn more.)

  9. To delete pages, simply right-click the page in your folder list and choose "delete."

  10. To publish your web site, go to File > Publish Web. Type in the location of your server, for example, http://www.yoursite.com. If you want to publish your web temporarily and "hide" it behind your existing site, publish it to a subfolder of your web, for example, http://www.yoursite.com/testfolder. Click Publish. You may need to enter your username and password. See our Server Issues article if after publishing, some things don't look right on your published site.
Using the Template - Specifics

Below are some specific issues and questions that you may have about the ACME web template. Please also look in our support index for answers to more general questions. We've tried to organize the support issues in a "top-down" format -- i.e., starting with the index page and the very top of the page, then continuing throughout the rest of the web site. If you find an issue that you think should be on this page or in our support area, please let us know!

Your Logo here
The "your logo here" image may be replaced with your own logo. The easiest way to do this is to replace the image with one that is the same dimension (188x45 pixels) by dragging your image file (named "yourlogohere.gif") into the images folder of your web and replacing the existing one. This will replace the image across your web site. If your logo file has different dimensions, you will have to edit each page. The most time-efficient way to do this is to: Select all the pages in your folder list, right-click on the select files, and choose Open to open all the page. On the first page, delete the "yourlogohere" image, add your image and save the page, then click on the image and hit Ctrl-C to copy it. Then, go into each of your pages, click on the old yourlogohere image and hit Ctrl-V to paste in your new logo. You may either save and close your pages as you go, or keep them open and go to File > Save All to save all of them at once.

Horizontal Navigation Bar
In FrontPage 2002, this navigation bar uses a text link bar style with vertical lines separating the links. This is a FP2002 option only. FP2000 users will see links with brackets around them ([ Link 1 ] [ Link 2 ]). If you only have FP2000 and you don't want the text links, you can change the style to a button style. You will then have a limited area for your buttons. For both FP2000 and FP2002, you will have to delete the "you may change this navigation bar to a different type" on each page. Sorry! We will try to fix this in a later version to make it easier to use.

The horizontal navigation bar uses the "Top level" of your navigation structure. To edit the links on the horizontal nav bar, please see our tutorial on editing link bars.

Home and Contact Buttons
The "home" and "contact" buttons are images (NOT FrontPage-generated navigation buttons) that have been specially created to compliment this template. If you don't like them, you can delete them from each page.

Left Navigation Bar
The left link bar is displaying your "Child Pages Under Home." If you are unfamiliar with how FrontPage nav bars work, please visit this tutorial on Using Navigation View. You can then learn how to edit the buttons (changing the names, adding more buttons, etc.) in our tutorial on editing link bars.

Splash page Flash movie
In FrontPage's Normal View, the Flash movie will look like it's missing in FrontPage's Normal View. This is okay! This page uses JavaScript to detect whether the viewer has Flash or not. If you go to File > Preview in Browser and view the site in an actual browser, you should see that the movie shows up fine.

What can I change in the movie?
You may change the text that shows up in the movie ("put your own text here"), but you can't change anything else, including the imagery, text placement, fonts, color of the font, size of the font, or animation effects. All of these things will take a custom work order to change. There are several ACME "Components" available that allow you to change the imagery from gears to something else... for example, you may have a US Flag image instead of the gears. If you have Flash 5+, you may purchase the ACME Flash files Component and edit the Flash files yourself.

How do I change the text in the movie?
You can change the text in the movie by editing the HTML. There are complete instructions within the template on the Flash Information page. The information is duplicated below.

Flash Instructions
You have to careful when editing your Splash page because there is a lot of JavaScript coding. Follow these instructions carefully!

  1. Open index.htm in FrontPage. You will notice that you cannot see the Flash movie in FrontPage's Normal View. Don't worry! This is because of the JavaScript Flash detection.
  2. Go to File > Preview in Browser and choose Internet Explorer, then hit Preview. You should see the page in a browser, with the Flash movie showing up. Go ahead and leave this browser window open.
  3. Go back to FrontPage, and switch to HTML view.
  4. Scroll down until you see some red text that looks like this:
    <!--
    // in this section we set up the content to be placed dynamically on the page
    // customize movie tags and alternate html content below
  5. Underneath that will be more coding. You are interested in these two lines:
    if (!useRedirect) { // if dynamic embedding is turned on
    if(hasRightVersion) { // if we've detected an acceptable version
    var oeTags = '<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"'
    + 'codebase=...'
    + 'WIDTH=184 HEIGHT=267>'

    + '<PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="splashmovie.swf?tag=Put your own text here!">'
    + '<PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=high>'
    + '<PARAM NAME=bgcolor VALUE=#FFFFFF>'
    + '<EMBED src="splashmovie.swf?tag=Put%20your%20own%20text%20here!"
  6. After the "tag=" in the first line (<PARAM...>), edit the "Put your own text here!" with your own tagline. Please realize that space is limited.
    + '<PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="splashmovie.swf?tag=Put your own text here!">'
  7. Save your document, then switch back to your open browser window and hit the Refresh button to see your changes take place. In Internet Explorer, you should be able to see your tagline show up. Make changes if necessary back in FrontPage.
  8. Now, you want to edit the second line (<EMBED...>). You may copy and paste your tagline into the EMBED tag. Then, you have to replace the spaces with "%20" in order for the movie to show up correctly in Netscape. See the example above in Step 5.
  9. After saving, you may preview your web site in Netscape to make sure that the Flash movie works.

Flash Notes...

Please note that you cannot change the font, color, font size, or animation effects in the Flash movie without purchasing the .flas and editing them in Flash 5+.

Included in this web template in the "flash" folder is a movie called "splashmovie-allchars.swf." You will need to use this movie if you will be using any special characters (è, á, ü, etc.) in the Flash movie, along with special character codes that you can find on our Flash Tech page. To use it, rename the movie to "splashmovie.swf" and move it out of the folder into your main folder to replace the existing Flash movie. Please note that this movie has a larger file size (27.1 K as opposed to 13 K).

I followed the instructions, but the text isn't showing up.

First, try publishing your web to a temporary location. If the text shows up fine on a server, then this is a Flash 6 issue. Please see our Flash Tech page to find out how to fix this issue. We will fix this in a later version.

Page Title
All pages except for the home page (with the Flash splash movie) have a blue striped area with the page title displayed. This page title is a FrontPage-generated component. You can change it by changing the page title in your Navigation View. To learn more about how to do this, please look at our tutorial on inserting and editing Page Banners.

Gear animation
The gear animation on all the pages except for the home page is a Flash movie that cannot be edited. There are additional Components available with different imagery -- for example, flag imagery, etc.

Info boxes
The info boxes must be edited on each page. If you want to get rid of an info box, you can easily do this by highlighting the cells of the info box (the two rows) and deleting them. To make more info boxes, you may duplicate them by copying and pasting an existing info box. Click in the title area, then go to Table > Select > Table, then Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste. Be sure to insert breaks between the tables.

Pop-up windows on About Us page
The About Us page comes with two employee bio pop-up windows. There is JavaScript code on this page that helps you do this. Each of the links opens up a separate web page that has the info about your employee. These two pages are "profile1.htm" and "profile2.htm." You will have to edit these two pages, and save copies of them to create more bio pages. Then, to create more pop-up links, simply copy an existing link and edit it. If you copy and paste the first Employee link, then select the link, right-click and select Hyperlink Properties, you'll see that the link looks like this:

javascript:pop('profile1.htm');

Simply edit the "profile1.htm" URL with the URL to your new employee bio page. For example, if you have a new page called "myemployee1.htm," then your pop-up window link should look like:

javascript:pop('myemployee1.htm');

JavaScript bug fix
There is a typo in the JavaScript code on the links in this template. To fix this, go into the HTML of the page. At the top of the page are some lines of code that look like this:

<SCRIPT>
<!--
}
function pop(url)
{
window.open(url,'profile','width=300,height=350,scrollbars,resizable');
}
//-->
</SCRIPT>

Delete the extra "}" from the third line of the script. We will fix this in the next version of ACME.

Additional Flash movies on Services, Contact, and FAQ pages
There are additional Flash animations on these pages. These movies were created with Swish. The Swish files are included in the web template and can be found in the "flash" folder in your web site. You will need the Swish program to edit these movies (buy at www.swishzone.com). To learn some basics on editing the movies once you have Swish, please view our tutorial on editing Swish movies that come in templates.

"Liquid page template"
The liquid template allows you to have a page layout that resizes with the browser window. You may use it or delete it. If you use it, and want to change the other pages to be "liquid" as well, then follow these instructions:

  1. Right-click in the "your logo here" area and select Table Properties. Change the width to 100%.
  2. Then, right-click in the left nav area and choose cell properties. Change the width to 181 pixels.

Site Map
The site map is a FrontPage-generated component. To view the site map, go to File > Preview in Browser. To update the site map, you may need to open the page, click on the site map, and save the page.