About webdesign themes

A theme is a unified set of design elements and color schemes that you apply to pages to give them a consistent and attractive appearance. Using a theme is a quick and easy way to add interest to pages and give them a professional look. FrontPage includes many preset themes that you can use right away — you can use them as they are, or you can modify them.

The following example shows you what a plain page looks like, and then how it looks with different themes applied to it:

A theme affects all aspects of a page's appearance:

• Colors. A theme uses a color scheme to set the color of body text, headings, hyperlinks, page banner text, navigation bar labels, table borders, and the page background. You can use the normal or vivid color set.
• Graphics. A theme uses graphics for several page elements, such as the background picture, the page banner, bullets, navigation buttons, and horizontal lines. You can use the normal or active graphic set. The active graphic set uses animated page elements, such as hover buttons instead of plain buttons on navigation bars.
• Styles. A theme uses its own styles (fonts) for the body text and headings.

Certain features in FrontPage are only available when you are using a theme. For example, page banners and navigation bar buttons are displayed as graphics when a theme is used, but are displayed as text when no theme is used.

Themes let you manage your pages' appearance in one place. When you choose one theme to be the default theme for your web, the theme is applied to all existing pages and to new pages that you add later. You can change the default theme or remove it, and the change is applied to the entire web automatically. You also have the option of applying themes to individual pages.

You can change and customize themes. For example you can change a theme's background picture or heading font. By customizing a preset theme, you are really creating a new theme — you can use your own graphics, color sets, and styles.