Active Elements

Like FrontPage Components, Active Elements are features that add interesting elements to your pages with just a few clicks. A word of caution is in order however. Many of the Active Elements and other fancy features FrontPage offers are only supported in the very latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. They will not work in Netscape, and in fact they may very well confound users with old browser software, or text-only browsers. Therefore, you should use these with care and caution, mindful of your audience.

Also, as with counters, many of these will only work when pages are saved to the Web server because they require the FP Server Extensions.

Hover Buttons

Hover buttons use Java script to create an animated button that changes color when the user places his mouse over it. To add a hover button:

1. Click Insert à Active Element à Hover Button
2. Type some text that will appear on your button.
3. Type or paste in a URL to link to, or browse your Web for another page to link to.
4. Choose the button color, effect, background color and effect color.
5. Specify dimensions if desired.
6. Click OK.

You can also use pre-made graphic images rather than colors for the buttons. You specify the images to use under the "Custom…" section on the Hover Button screen.

Example Hover Button: 

Marquee

This feature creates an animated message on your page. At this time (2/98) it only works in MSIE.

To add a marquee:

1. Insert à Active Element à Marquee
2. Type in some text
3. Choose your settings -- direction, effect, speed, etc.
4. Click OK.

Example:    This is a sliding marquee.

Search form

Adding a search form to your page can make your site more friendly and useful to visitors. However, this search functionality only extends to the content of your FrontPage Web. It will not index anything beyond the scope of your Web. (In the case of county sites, it will index everything within outreach.missouri.edu/yourcountyname/ and on down.)

When you use a search form in a UO/E page, you should make it very clear to users that this is JUST a  search of  your local content, not a search of all UO/E content. If you don't have very much solid content in your site (i.e. newsletters, program information, etc.), you will only frustrate your users. In most cases it will be better to send them to the UO/E-wide search engine. This will index your pages plus everything else on the outreach.missouri.edu server, muextension.missouri.edu, and several others associated with UO/E.

The address for the University Outreach and Extension  search service is: http://search.outreach.missouri.edu
You can use the icon at left to link to this site.

If you feel you have enough content to support it, here is how you add a search option to your page:

1. Click Insert à Active Element à Search form
2. Change any settings desired
3. Click OK

A dashed line will appear on your page, containing a keyword box and a Search button. The dashed line indicates that this section of the page is a "Form" -- a special section that collects information from a user. It's important not to move the form elements (text box and button) out of this dashed line.

It will look like this in the browser:

Search for:

Notice that when you use this search, it will add the results right into the page.

When using a search feature on your page, you need to occasionally update the searchable index. This does not happen automatically. To update the index:

1. Switch to the FP Explorer
2. Click Toolsà Recalculate Hyperlinks
   This can take up to several minutes, depending on the volume of pages in your Web.

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Kate Akers, kate@oseda.missouri.edu Webmaster, University Outreach and Extension Last modified: 08/27/02