Microsoft FrontPage provides users with a very easy method of
creating a functional site without the complicated programming
skills needed to write it "by hand." In this segment of
my tutorials, you will learn how to change an existing theme to
match your site's look and feel.
Text
When you were looking at the themes, you noticed specific font
styles for different page elements. To change these. Click on the
text button. A new dialog box will open and provide a drop down
box to choose which page elements you want to change. For example,
you might want your Heading 1 to have a different font, or color.
There are a lot of font choices in WINDOWS, just remember that not
everyone has all of the fonts you may have. Sometimes a bit of a
color change, bold, or italics will make a better choice that a
font change.
Colors
Clicking on the colors button will bring yet another dialog
box. Again, you can choose page element to change. There is a
color scheme panel that lists all the themes and the color
combinations used. So that if you liked the colors of one theme,
but the graphics in another, you can change the color scheme here,
and have the best of both!
You can also go to the custom tab and choose individual elements
and change the colors. Just choose the element from the drop down,
and choose the color in the color box. (This is a pretty standard
WINDOWS operation.)
Graphics
You can change the graphics too! Themes can be as personal as
you want them to be!
When you click the graphics button, again, a
dialog box will come up. The familiar drop down box allows you to
choose the graphic you want to change. The tabs give you the
choice to change the font and the picture.
Be sure when you are making changes that you are changing the
correct theme. If the theme you chose is using active graphics,
then active graphics must be chosen at the bottom of the dialog
box.
Open the items in your graphics software
program to see exactly what you are replacing. When you choose to
make your own custom buttons, make them generally the same size as
the ones in the theme (they are standard sizes).
To make the change, click on the browse
button and navigate to the correct folder.
Saving The New Theme
When you are happy with the theme, click OK...you will be
prompted through the saving process...give your new theme a name
that will help you remember what project you made it for and what
theme it was made from, if possible. Something like
"Petersen Cactus." This tells me it is the cactus theme, as I
customized it for someone named Petersen.
Questions? Send
me an email Themes are so personalized, it is
difficult to get too specific here.