The Web-based Table of Contents (TOC) web component in
FrontPage is a great way of automatically creating a table of contents for
the web site, but it doesn't provide you with a way of setting which pages
should be in the TOC listing. Another web component called the "Table of Contents
based on Page Categories" component allows to set which pages will appear
in the TOC.
Before adding the TOC component to your page, it is best to
create some categories and group some pages in the web site into those
categories. Suppose you have a web site like the following:
Sample web site
Lets assume that you want to make a TOC page with 3
categories; Products, Support and Press Room. Lets also assume we have an
"faqs.htm" page that we would like to appear "Support" and "Products" TOC
listing. To assign the FAQs page to these categories, right-click on the
FAQs page in your Folders List panel and select
the "Properties..." item from the popup menu. Then press the "Workgroup"
tab. The file "Properties" dialog will appear.
Since the "Support" and "Products" categories don't exist
in the "Master Categories" list, we will have to add them to that list. Press the "Categories..." button and the
"Master Category
List" dialog will appear
Master Category List dialog
Now type "Support" into the "New Category" text field and
press the "Add" button to add the new category to the master category
list. You can add the "Products" categories at this time as well. Now press
the "OK" button and that will add the new categories to the master
categories list and bring you back to the file properties dialog.
Now you will be able to check the "Products" and "Support"
categories check boxes in the "Available categories" list. Press the "OK"
button to assign the page to those categories.
Page Properties dialog
Do the same process with other files in the web, assigning
them to one of more of the TOC categories Now we are ready to make the TOC page.
Its very easy to insert the TOC based on category
component, just bring up a blank page, place your cursor on the page and
select the "Insert->Web Components..." menu item. Then select the "Table
of Contents" from the "Component type" list as illustrated below.
Insert Table of Contents based on Category
The "Insert Web Component" dialog will appear. Select "Based
on Page Category" item and press the "Finish" button. The
"Categories Properties"
dialog will appear. You will be inserting a TOC component for each
category, so lets start with the "Products" Category TOC component first.
Categories Properties dialog
Now insert the the other two TOC components on the page. It
might be useful to arrange them into a table as illustrated below. You may
also want to apply a style sheet to the page as discussed at the bottom of
the last tip.
3 TOC components in FrontPage Design mode
You may notice that the inserted component are just place
holders on the page until you view the page in the browser as illustrated
below.
3 TOC components as viewed in the browser
Note: If you make any changes to the category
assignments, you will need to manually recalculate the hyperlinks of the
web using the "Tools->Recalculate Hyperlinks..." menu item to view the
changes in the browser.
Now your can add and subtract page and categories to the
web until you have the TOC page the way you want it. Remember to
recalculate hyperlinks to view the changes to the TOC page.
And That's it
The "TOC based on Categories" component is a powerful way to create a
nicely formatted TOC page.
