Ilo-sett, a company in Helsinki, Finland, offers a variety of designer corporate gifts, including a special collection of water resistant cotton and wool textiles. Although the site is currently only available in Finnish, the site will soon be available in English as well.

“Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 made it possible for us to design and implement the site quickly, without compromising on quality,” said Ari Suominen, site designer and project manager. “The HTML was clean and publishing the site to the Web has never been easier. With FrontPage, we had total control of the Web site, including design, HTML code, and dynamic ASP code implementation. Our clients are happy with the results and can also feel it in their pockets.”

Web Site Requirement

Ilo-sett approached Mediafinland for assistance in developing a cost-effective online solution built on a reliable platform. They also wanted to include extranet sites for select corporate clients and an easy, but scalable content management system. Ari recommended using Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server with Microsoft Internet Information Server 5.0, Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, and Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP).

FrontPage Features

Ari began by developing templates for the site using FrontPage design features such as the ruler and grid to establish the visual layout to insure consistency across the site. Ari then called on LOT212, an Internet development company, to create a series of content management templates using Microsoft Visual Studio® to make the loading of content more efficient.

After the templates were implemented, some modifications to the design were needed. Ari was able to do the modifications quickly and easily using the Split view feature in FrontPage 2003, allowing for changes to be made without interfering with the existing functionality or design.

In addition, Ari used the new accessibility checker in FrontPage 2003 to make sure the site would be accessible to people with visual, hearing, or mobility disabilities. Finally, Ari used the Spawn pop-up windows add-in for FrontPage and the FrontPage 2003 FTP publishing feature to load the site to the external Web server.

Additional Tools

• Microsoft Access 2002 database
• Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0
• Microsoft Active Server Pages