Navigational Elements on the Page

Navigational Levels

I'm going to assume for the purposes of the small site that we are creating that we are going to have a pretty "shallow" web site - a home page and then a set of pages that links off of that home page.  "Deeper" sites have so many levels that most of the content isn't accessed from the home page.

But, because it is about to come up, let's look at the "levels" of a web site.  Imagine that the home page is the top most level.  The home page might offer such options as "support", "products", "contact us", etc.

Then, when you click on "support" and leave the home page, you are on the "second level" of the site.  The support page is a "child" of the home page.  The "products" and "contact us" pages would also be on the second level.

There's a reason that I bring all of this up.  Let's see what that reason is...

Editing Navigation Bar Properties

This dialogue box will open.  For now...

Ah!  You can see all of that "level" babbling wasn't for naught!  You can control what navigational hyperlinks appear on the page by what level they are on.  I have this set to "child pages under home" because I am assuming we are not going to design a site with more than two levels.  I clicked on the "home page" box for pages to include so that the navigation bar would have a link to the home page.  Finally, I chose the vertical orientation (because it's a vertical menu) and buttons so that FrontPage would use its groovy graphics menu buttons.  Text links work just as well and save memory.  In many cases, they can be just as nice for aesthetic reasons as well.

Obviously, you can customize these options to your liking!  :-)

Banner/Top Menu Customization

You can also double click the navigational bar at the top of the page (if you chose to include them).  If you did include both, I would change the top menu to text to un-clutter the design.

If you want to change the text in the banner graphic,

(You can also eliminate the graphic entirely by clicking on the radio button marked "text".)

The bottom of the page...

The bottom of the page is usually reserved for copyright information and contact information.  Who are we to mess with tradition?

This box will open. 

Use a format like: "©2000 Your Company Name Here, inc."

You can also put your contact information like address, e-mail address, etc.  It will then appear at the bottom of each page.  Format how you wish.  I usually set my font size to "1 (8 pt)" for this info so that it doesn't become intrusive.

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©2000 Harry Knight

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