A little feedback

[Richard Johnson]

Hi

I hope this is an OK thing to do.

I've had a lot of help here, especially from David and Spike so I thought
I'd post a few observations re use of Pub 2007.

Most relate to issues I had, all of which were easily resolved once the
cause was identified.

(1) SP2 fixes the navbar problems well and there seem no downsides now to
office 2007 SP2 at all - load it and use it!

(2) Firefox and to a lesser degree opera and safari (which covers much
handheld and mac use so its important) have some difficulty with how they
handle Microsofts text boxes. text boxes within text boxes are a problem
often, and Fill is a problem and should be avoided if there is other content.

(3) Hyperlinks within text boxes will not operate in firefox as FF saves the
whole text box as an image file when there is mixed content.. so keep them in
the main body of the page

(4) Images and text within the same text box will lose relative
positioning... on a smaller page leaving positioning exact is enough - on
longer pages placing images as "inline" will keep things in the correct
relationship

(5) read up on standard web fonts and font sizes that are web friendly and
stick to them if the page is to remain the same on the wab as it is on the
computer.

(6) scaling images isn't a great idea - resize in an outside program
(actually microsofts own picture manager is a fast and efective image editor
- I really like it)

(7) its really worth following 1 to 7 - I initially broke most of the above
rules and it really cost in website file size: Now I'm progressively
re-creating pages to minimise the automated conversions of text to image
within the "publish to web" process, the overall size of the index files
folder content has dropped from 79 meg to about 50 meg, and I suspect that by
the time ïm done, it will be less than 40 - a huge saving in host memory
usage that would have had to be paid for!

Overall Publisher web use can be a bit of a witch until you accept that to
have a simple to use wizard driven wysiwyg web creation program without the
need to write code or work within html/java/xhtml etc, you have to live with
some slightly frustrating quirks... but with a little self discipline it gets
easier and better to use every time.

My own path has been long as I completed a very large site (equivalent to
more than 1,000 printed pages) before learning all this, so perhaps my
current view is valid for many who are starting with publisher.

My conclusion - I've gone from mumbling about many things to quite enjoying
the process with Pub 2007 - Now I'm understanding its limitations, I could
even start to enjoy it.... and if I'd spent more time reading and learning
about the package by starting smaller with my site work, it'd have been
pretty well trouble free.

Finally, there will be many reloads of a website in the early days of its
setup: housekeep the website files rigorously... delete the index files and
totally replace all rather than just selectively replace, as there are so
many small image files associated with each re-issue of a page you'll soon
exceed storage limits otherwise....

So if you are currently frustrated - persevere... you will get there!

regards to all, I hope this helps someone.... and thanks again to David and
Spike

Richard

 

[DavidF]

Richard,

Very interesting and helpful post. I agree with much of what you say, but am
left with a couple questions and perhaps have come to some different
conclusions than you.

In general I think one of the most important points you are making is that a
person should test their sites as they build them in both IE and FireFox. If
a Publisher web renders correctly in both, then it will also render
correctly in the other major browsers. Furthermore you will save a lot of
time when you don't have to go back and fix a bunch of layout or formatting
that is not cross browser compatible.

One big question I have for you. You have mentioned this a couple times and
I don't quite understand what you mean. Item 4 you mention placing images
'inline' as a way to keep you layout from shifting. Would you explain
specifically what you mean by 'inline'? Please give me a specific example
and perhaps a link to where I can see it in action.

More later...

DavidF

 

[Richard Johnson]

Hi David - yes in general, but I thought some specifics would also help...
doing the check and finding the badly displayed pages is frustrating unless a
specific fix is also there... and... as I started with absolutely zero web
experience I had to first understand the problem then find what was probably
quite obvious to others... so I thought I'd add the detail.

As you said... The cross browswer check is very important, and I'd perhaps
also add those browsers designed for handheld devices to the check list as
well as FF... browsing habits are changing.

re "inline"... its in action right across my website

right click
format picture
layout tab
change top drop down (object position) from exact to inline.

This then positions the image directly relative to text, and for simply
adjusting layout it will also then respond directly to tab/spacebar and
left/centre/right text layout commands and move as text does. It stays
exactly where its put relative to text when "inline" is chosen, and behaves
like text too. It can still be also moved manually with the mouse of course,
but when released it will snap into a position directly related to adjacent
text.

Firefox and all other browsers seem happy with it too...

I am using "inline" constantly now as what I found was that no matter how I
tried, leaving pictures formatted with the positioning left at the Publisher
default of "exact" and placed manually they would never ever display in a web
page in the same position that they were in on the basic publisher
document..... on any browser including IE all versions.... Unless I grouped
things and of course that is a no-no with IE8 and firefox as we've already
discussed.

This variance in position when images were left at "exact" affected things
more and more once the page increased in length, and many of my text based
"advice pages" are at the publisher length limit.....

I hope this clarifies it a little.

Kind regards

Richard

 

[DavidF]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for posting back and providing more explanation. You have introduced
me to a new layout technique that I would like to understand better with
this 'inline' image formatting.

In general I have found that the only way to get text boxes to render the
same after converting to html was to strip out all the special paragraph and
text formatting. For example if you formatted your paragraphs for 1.5 line
spacing, when the text was converted to html it would be back to just one
line. This of course meant that the text box was 'shorter' and if you had
placed an image beside that text, the resulting web page left the image out
of line with the text. The image was rendered 'exactly' where you had put it
on your page, but the text had shifted. You would also observe this if auto
hyphenation was on...the hyphens would work on the page layout, but in
conversion Publisher would do away with the hyphens and only render whole
words. This once again shifted the text slightly depending on how many
hyphenated words you had. There are other examples of how special text or
paragraph formatting using indents, bulleted lists, etc would result in a
final text box rendering that was at least slightly different when converted
to html. And as you said, the sometimes slight differences did not
significantly alter your page layout, but the longer the page and the more
examples of this you had the more likely you would see a significant layout
problem as all those small shifts added up to a larger shift...if I said
that correctly. Furthermore, FireFox renders text just a bit different than
IE sometimes...text might be a tad larger on screen as an example. Anyway,
the only real workaround I found was to strip off the all the special
formatting. Now you are offering an alternative...using 'inline' image
formatting instead of 'exact'.

I had not experimented with this at all because 'word wrap' around images
was one of those print formatting techniques that did not translate
correctly to html. In Publisher 2000, the words would wrap, but when
converted to html, Publisher would just convert both the text and the image
into one combined image...you cannot layer image boxes over text boxes in
Pub 2000. Then again with 2003 and 2007 when you tried to use 'word wrap'
the html conversion was not successful. Now you have shown me that 'inline'
formatting will work with Pub 2007, but I still don't quite understand how
you do a few things. I understand how you can format an image as 'inline',
drag it 'inline' with the text. I also can see how you would use this with
full text lines above and below the image...like inserting a image of a
graph that is as wide as your text box. What I don't understand is how you
use this technique to at least simulate a word wrap. On your page:
http://www.dccconcepts.com/index_files/DCCdecoderpage.htm you have many
examples of different decoders. Each example is made up of a textual title,
and then a picture of the decoder with text to the right of the image, and
then again below the image. How do you place the text to the right of the
images? Is that a separate text box layered over the main text box? Please
explain how you laid out this page and each of these individual decoder
examples using you 'inline' image formatting approach. Also can you use the
inline formatting technique with images that are not layered over the text
boxes?

Thanks for teaching me something new...

DavidF

 

[Richard Johnson]

Hi David

I'll try

The whole page is one big main text box
image is set to "inline" amd within that overall main textbox
The text is in a subsidiary text box also set to "inline".

If you want space between adjacent images and / or images and adjacent
inline text boxes then space bar does it, incrementing with the same spacing
as is set for the font size etc.

Vertically the picture or "inline text box" will also respond to line
spacings of adjacent fonts and increments will be according to font size...

The image position will also respond to the text paragraph settings etc,
just as they will also respond to using text centring/left/right etc...

The images do have to be inside the main text box.

I have found that this technique works universally with IE all versions,
including using it in secondary text boxes, but...

Unfortunately with FF, you can't use it to set up a picture and text box
inline within a subsidiary text box (the picture and text box both go to full
left side and overlay each other), so there are still some limitations.

But it does really make WYSIWYG work better in general.

If you can point me to an online large file host you have easy access to
privately off this list (my email is on the website) I can post the whole PUB
file there for you to look at if you like... but bear in mind it still has a
way to go to be fully "repaired" for firefox / PDF links

I'm truly delighted my fumbling around and learning on the run has been of
some use - its nice to give back after getting so much help from you all.

regards

Richard

 

[DavidF]

Richard,

I have read through your explanation a couple times and am having problems
wrapping my brain around it. If you are open to it, I would like to see a
copy of this page: http://www.dccconcepts.com/index_files/DCCdecoderpage.htm
from your Pub file. I really don't want to download a large Pub file and
what you are doing on this one page will answer my questions. If you would
just copy and paste that onto a blank web page, save it as a sample Pub
file, then upload it to www.yousendit.com and email the link back to
yourself, and then post the link to the file here, we could download it as
we have time. yousendit is a free service and you do not need to register or
sign up for anything to use it. I have used it for a couple years now and
have had no problems.

I would appreciate it as I do want to learn another way of getting long
pages to render more accurately with less shifting, and still be able to use
some special paragraph or text formatting.

I am going to also add some comments to your other points in your original
post. While I would mostly agree with your statements, I am not sure they
are 100% accurate, and I would like to discuss them with you. Once again
another chance to learn. But that will be later...

Thanks.

DavidF

 

[Richard Johnson]

Hello David

the link is

http://www.yousendit.com/download/cmcwN3RkQ1JGOFFLSkE9PQ

please note the page did not hold all formatting during the "select all /
copy" so the early in the page text boxes are now oversize relative to text,
however the image/text box relationships were maintained, which is good!

regards

Richard

 

[DavidF]

Got it...thanks. Will respond more later...

DavidF