FrontPage MenuPlus Components

For the technically minded: If you look at the HTML generated by a component, you will see the component parameters in a comment preceding the output.  There were two problems: (1) The method of reading these parameters when expanding components caused the crash, only seen in FP2002. (2) The "style" parameter name appears to have been taken over as a reserved word in FP2002, which meant that the component style could not be changed after initial insertion.  The name has been changed to "mpstyle" and will be updated automatically the next time the component is expanded (on page save, or recalculate hyperlinks).

2. Added color selection to the existing Font tab on the Table of Contents properties dialog.  A color setting other than default causes links to be displayed in the specified color, overriding default behavior.

3. Fixed a problem running on FrontPage 2002 when (Microsoft) Link Bars are included in the web.

4. Fixed corruption of Navigation Bar preview when comments were embedded (such as when a substitution component has not been substituted).

5. Fixed component error when file names or folders contain special characters.

6. Major changes to process the different Japanese character set encodings correctly.

Install/Uninstall
1. Updated preset styles with additional defaults.

2. Fixed Uninstall for Server-only installations.

3. Added logging to Uninstall.

Style Manager
The changes made in this release mean that you can now fully back up and restore Navigation Bar styles and Link styles that you have created.  Earlier versions only saved partial information.

1. Added save/restore and new view dialog for Link Styles.

2. Added new items to save/restore (fonts etc.).  Also some existing items that were previously omitted.

3. Disabled trace left on in earlier versions.  This would have resulted in a trace file being generated each time the Style Manager was run.

Help
Updated for new and changed items.

Navigation Bar

Saved styles now include link style information.  The link style information determines how a link is displayed (colour and display attributes) when, for example, the mouse hovers over a link or a link has been visited.

Previously this information was not saved together with other style information in named styles.

Both components

1. Fixed a bug which caused bookmarks on non-navigable pages to be displayed (introduced in V2.5).

2. Added an option to open External Links in a new window.  You would use this if you want to keep your own site on the screen in its original window while the user visits the external site.

3. Added an option to display the target page for any link in the full window.  You would typically use this to break out of a frame in a framed page.

Style Manager

Style Manager updated to handle the new target options.

Help

Help has been updated to include the new options.

2. MenuPlus Navigation Bars can now be inserted in pages which are themselves excluded from navigation bars ('Included in Navigation Bars' is unchecked in the page's right-click menu in Navigation View).  Previously this gave an error.  The page must still, however, be present in Navigation View (it will be greyed out).

3. Registry access improved and some redundant registry reads avoided.

Install / Uninstall
1. Further fixes for server-only installation.

2. Fixes for registry access.

3. Better clean-up when installation fails due to insufficient user privilege.

4. Start Menu links are now placed in the "All Users" section and not just the current user's.  This means that when installing as Administrator, the links appear on all users' Start Menus.

Style Manager
1. Length restriction of 127 characters when viewing registry styles removed.

2. Fixes for registry access.

Colour selection for Table of Contents borders and background has been extended from the 16 standard colours to the full set of defined web colours.

Other minor fixes.

Install program
Several problems with the Install program have been fixed.  The components can now be installed on a server where there is no installation of the FrontPage client software and installation is automatic for both client and server.  A problem with setting up the Registry correctly for server installations has been fixed, so that components are expanded on Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers.

1. Fix for corrupted external links in both Navigation Bar and Table of Contents when the component is on a page in a sub-folder of the web.
2. Version number now displayed on properties dialogs.

Performance
Bookmark processing is compute-intensive.  This was being done for all components, regardless of whether bookmarks were required or not.  This meant that when a component in a border was changed (causing all pages containing the border to be saved) or many pages in a large web were saved (such as when recalculating hyperlinks) an excessive time was being taken.  Now bookmark processing  is only done for those components that actually require them.

Operation on Server
When the components were installed on a server, they could cause the server to lock up in certain circumstances.

Table of Contents
1. In some cases the theme applied to a page was not recognised correctly, causing incorrect output.

2. On the Bookmarks tab,  the selection "Show bookmarks instead of children" was changed to "Show bookmarks as well as children" (and vice versa) on exiting the dialog. 

Navigation Bar
1. When the parent of the current page is also the Home page, duplicate output could occur.

2. If a custom style is saved more than once with the same name, the entry was duplicated in the drop-down box.

Install program
1. If Web Server Extensions are installed, the components may optionally be installed on the local server as well.

2. The Readme file is now displayed by default when the installation is complete.

3. The installation log file is now written by default.

A new mini-application (MenuPlus Style Manager) is included which allows custom styles created using the MenuPlus Navigation Bar to be backed up from the registry to a text file.  As well as providing backup, this also allows custom styles to be shared between users.  This is particularly useful when two or more users are co-operating on the same web.

Timestamps have been added to styles saved in Registry to allow synchronisation with backup/restore using Style Manager.

Fixes a Navigation Bar problem. When Top Level hyperlinks are chosen and current page is at top level, only the current page was shown instead of the whole level.

This Readme file converted to HTML format for easier navigation and direct linking to our web site and email support.

Table of Contents properties editor layout changed to use tabbed sections.  This removes clutter from the dialog and removes the secondary dialog for advanced functions (now incorporated on tabs on main dialog).

Table of Contents bullets for some themes were oversized. This has now been fixed.

The Install program now uses the Registry instead of searching hard disks for installed files. This makes the process more robust and significantly reduces installation time.