Component attributes that are user-editable should begin with a letter that specifies the data type of the attribute’s value, followed by a dash. For example, an integer parameter named count would be represented as “I-Count=23”.
The main data types supported by the generic FrontPage Component Properties dialog are as follows.
| Code | Data Type |
| I | Integer |
| S | String |
| B | Boolean (TRUE or FALSE) |
| D | Date (in RFC-1123 format) |
| U | URL (a reference to a document in the same web) |
| C | Color (in HTML hexadecimal format: “#ff00ff”) |
When attribute names are displayed to the user, the leading data-type letter and dash are removed, and dashes are converted to spaces. For example, I-Maximum-Matches becomes “Maximum Matches.”
There are three additional attribute name prefixes that change the way a value is modified with the generic FrontPage Component Properties dialog: MIN-, MAX-, and RADIO-.
The prefixes MIN- and MAX- allow the component to specify a range of legal values for integer attributes, and a minimum and maximum length for string attributes. For example, the component could contain:
I-COUNT=10 MIN-COUNT=0 MAX-COUNT=255
The prefix RADIO- allows the component to specify that a parameter represents a one-of-many choice. Each subsequent RADIO- modifier supplies another legal value for that parameter. For example:
S-FLAVOR="Vanilla" RADIO-FLAVOR="Vanilla" RADIO-FLAVOR="Chocolate"
Any other attributes that encode the persistent state of the component but are not user-editable must not have a dash anywhere in their name.