Skip to content

TechRepublic

  • Top Products
  • AI
  • Developer
  • Payroll
  • Security
  • Project Management
  • Accounting
  • CRM
  • Academy
Resources
  • TechRepublic Premium
  • TechRepublic Academy
  • Newsletters
  • Resource Library
  • Forums
  • Sponsored
Go Premium
Popular Topics
  • Top Products
  • AI
  • Developer
  • Payroll
  • Security
  • Project Management
  • Accounting
  • CRM
  • Academy
  • Project Management
  • Innovation
  • Cheat Sheets
  • Big Data
  • Tech Jobs
View All Topics
Go Premium
Microsoft

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

By Greg Shultz March 1, 2012, 11:57 AM PST

Image
1
of 22

slide1.jpg
slide1.jpg
Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

Image: NVIDIA

nt 

n

ntIn October of 1995, just a few short months after Microsoft launched Windows 95, a company called Vermeer Technologies launched what it called a World Wide Web publishing and site management tool called FrontPage 1.0. The application featured a WYSIWYG HTML editor, an Explorer tool, which provided you with a graphical view of your page links, and a personal Web server, which allowed you to preview your site locally. There were many other great features included in the package such as the ability to create threaded discussion groups, a collection of templates, automated scripts called WebBots, and much more.

n

ntFrontPage 1.0 was such a great tool and worked so well with Internet Explorer, the Microsoft couldn’t stand not being in control of it. Plus the fact that at the time Microsoft was heatedly competing with Netscape Communications which at the time was working on a similar products: a Web site manager called LiveWire and an HTML editor called Netscape Navigator Gold.

n

ntIn January 1996, just 2 months after Vermeer launched FrontPage; Microsoft acquired Vermeer and soon began the process of Microsofting FrontPage. In June of 1996, just 6 months later, the product was reborn as Microsoft FrontPage 1.1.and sported a host of new and improved features including close integration with Microsoft Office. The new version carried a retail price of $149, down from the $695 that Vermeer charged for the 1.0 version.

n

ntIn this gallery of images, I’ll show you what Microsoft FrontPage 1.1 looked like.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Image: NVIDIA
Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntMicrosoft FrontPage for Windows 95 came on 6 floppy disks.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntAt just 21 pages, the manual was very slim, but was just designed to provide you with installation information and an overview of the feature set. The real documentation was in the context-sensitive Help system.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntYou can tell from the image on the box and the manual that FrontPage was destined to be a part of the Office suite. As you can see here, the tilted square design of the FrontPage product logo matched those from the rest of Office 95. In fact, the FrontPage user interface was adapted to be very consistent with Microsoft Office.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThere was a ReadMe.txt file on the first floppy disk. Check out the paltry PC Configuration Recommendations.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe splash screen clearly identified this as version 1.1.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe first few pages of the Setup wizard prompted you with questions about you configuration like which components you wanted to install.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntOnce the installation procedure was underway, you could monitor the progress in several ways. As you can see here, the early versions of Setup not only displayed a standard progress bar, but it also displayed three gas gauge meters that showed the file copy operation from disk to folder, from installation media to hard disk, as well as an approximation of the total usage of the hard disk. You don’t see those gas gauge meters anymore.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntOnce setup was complete, the FrontPage Explorer and the FrontPage Personal Web Server were up and ready for you to begin creating a Web site.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntOne of the hot features of FrontPage were the templates and Web Wizards that prompted the user for information about what they wanted to include in their Web site based on the wizard they launched and created the pre-linked Web site of template pages. All the user had to do once the Wizard was finished was to go back to each of the pages and fill in the details. Here, you can see the launch of the Corporate Presence Web Wizard.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntAs you worked through the Corporate Presence Web Wizard, you selected the type of pages that you wanted. The Home page was a given but you could add other main pages including a Feedback Form and a Search Form. These forms were created by the FrontPage WebBots, which automatically generated CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe Web Wizard would also allow you to select presentation style and color scheme. It would also allow you to insert the Men Working icon on pages that were incomplete.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe To Do List was a very nice feature in that it provided you with a way to keep track of tasks that yet needed to be completed.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntIf multiple people were working on a site, you could assign tasks to individuals. In addition, you could name the task, provide a description and even set its priority.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe FrontPage Explorer was a key component in the product’s Web administration system in that it provided you with several ways to view your Web site. The Link view provided you with visual representation of your site and allowed you to select a page and see all the links to and from that page.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe Summary view provided you with a way to get detailed information about each file in your Web site.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe FrontPage Editor was renowned at the time because it was really the first WYSIWYG HTML editor. You designed the page using the extensive word processor like feature set and it automatically generated all the HTML code in the background.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe FrontPage Editor had for its time, a great Forms editor and with the Form WebBot, to handle the data—saving it in any of the available formats and even emailing it—implementing forms on a Web site were easy.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe Search Bot provided a form that allowed full text searching of the Web site.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

ntThe Discussion Bot allowed you to create and manage a discussion group on your Web site. The Discussion Bot collected information from a form, formatted it into an HTML page, and then added the page to a table of contents as well as to an index.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

nt 

n

ntFrontPage made it easy to manage the color scheme of your Web site with the centralized Web Colors page. If you changed the colors on this one page, the colors on whole Web site would change.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

nt 

n

nt 

n

ntYou could use Internet Explorer to easily preview your Web site.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

  • Microsoft
  • Account Information

    Share with Your Friends

    Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95

    Your email has been sent

Share: Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft FrontPage for Windows 95
Image of Greg Shultz
By Greg Shultz
My first computer was a Kaypro 16 \"luggable\" running MS-DOS 2.11 which I obtained while studying computer science in 1986. After two years, I discovered that I had a knack for writing documentation and shifted my focus over to technical writing.
  • Account Information

    Contact Greg Shultz

    Your message has been sent

  • |
  • See all of Greg's content

Daily Tech Insider

If you can only read one tech story a day, this is it.

TechRepublic TechRepublic
  • TechRepublic on Facebook
  • TechRepublic on X
  • TechRepublic on LinkedIn
  • TechRepublic on YouTube
  • TechRepublic on Pinterest
  • TechRepublic RSS
Services
  • About Us
  • Newsletters
  • RSS Feeds
  • Site Map
  • Site Help & Feedback
  • FAQ
  • Advertise
  • Do Not Sell My Information
  • Careers
Explore
  • Downloads
  • TechRepublic Forums
  • Meet the Team
  • TechRepublic Academy
  • TechRepublic Premium
  • Resource Library
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Editorial Policy
  • Legal Terms
  • Privacy Policy
© 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All rights reserved.
CLOSE

Create a TechRepublic Account

Get the web's best business technology news, tutorials, reviews, trends, and analysis—in your inbox. Let's start with the basics.

Already registered? Sign In
Use Facebook
Use Linkedin

* - indicates required fields

CLOSE

Sign in to TechRepublic

Not a member? Create an account
Use Facebook
Use Linkedin

Lost your password? Request a new password

CLOSE

Reset Password

Please enter your email adress. You will receive an email message with instructions on how to reset your password.

Check your email for a password reset link. If you didn't receive an email don't forgot to check your spam folder, otherwise contact support.

Back to login
1 Finish Profile
2 Newsletter Preferences
CLOSE

Welcome. Tell us a little bit about you.

This will help us provide you with customized content.

No thanks, continue without
1 Finish Profile
2 Newsletter Preferences
CLOSE

Want to receive more TechRepublic news?

Newsletter Name
Subscribe
Daily Tech Insider
Daily Tech Insider AU
TechRepublic UK
TechRepublic News and Special Offers
TechRepublic News and Special Offers International
Executive Briefing
Innovation Insider
Project Management Insider
Microsoft Weekly
Cloud Insider
Data Insider
Developer Insider
TechRepublic Premium
Apple Weekly
Cybersecurity Insider
Google Weekly
Toggle All
No thanks, continue without

You're All Set

Thanks for signing up! Keep an eye out for a confirmation email from our team. To ensure any newsletters you subscribed to hit your inbox, make sure to add [email protected] to your contacts list.

Back to Home Page
×