Absolute paths on local FP web -- how to?

[Graham Wideman \(Visio MVP\)]

Folks:

I'd like to be able to use FrontPage (2002) to work on webs on the local
file system. FP works fine it all links within the web are relative.

But there's a problem with absolute links because FP retrieves those files
using the literal path in the URL, rather than relative to the root of the
web... and this is what I'd like to work around.

Example:
FP Web at D:\myweb, with some images in D:\myweb\images

If page D:\myweb\somepage.htm contains a link to /images/some.gif, then FP
will look for it at D:\images\some.gif, instead of at
D:\myweb\images\some.gif -- in a sense this is correct behavior if the
intent was to set up pages that IE can browse locally -- but it prevents
using local editing to simulate deployed web.

So, although the web will work fine when deployed, it doesn't work while
editing locally.

I attempted to work around this by creating a web at the root directory of
the drive (actually a subst drive), but FP refuses to set up web in a root
directory.

(When I try to start a blank web at "W:\", I get an error dialog: "There is
no web named /W".)

Any suggestions as to how to do what I'm trying to do?

(OK, one workaround is to set up IIS on local machine -- but I'd rather
avoid that effort and security hazard... this should be easy!)

Thanks,

Graham

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

Make sure you have a web open in FP at all times and if creating a new web,
it must be a folder. All links need be enter as ../images/etc.jpg etc.

--

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Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
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[Graham Wideman \(Visio MVP\)]

Thomas:

I think you missed the point. Sure, relative links work on local file
system. But I need absolute links to work too.

Why? Because I have some clusters of pages that are used on different sites
that need to point to images and other pages that are at some fixed location
on each site, while the refering pages may be in different locations --
hence relative links don't work.

For example, I have software autogenerate some pages that should all
incorporate a site-specific logo, eg: from /images/logo.gif.

But the generator software doesn't know where those pages will be located,
hence can't generate relative link. (This is just one example of the
problem.)

So I ask again -- how do you get FP to create a web at root level of a drive
(eg: using W:\index.htm as home page)... or alternatively get FP to load
absolute URLs relative to web's root dir?

Graham

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

The only way to get FP to support absolute URLs, which it can not manage if
you later change the location of the object, is to create a link from within
FP to the object on the remote server.

FP will not let you create a web at the root of drive, since when FP98 was
first released, user where converting their C drive to root web, and then
when they delete the web, they also delete the content on their C drive, so
you have to work with a folder off of the root of the drive.

If you were working via IIS, then I have a ASP solution, but it requires all
pages to be .asp.

--

==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, Forums, WebCircle,
MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================