Publisher and IE8

[Rohe Bee Ranch]

Is Microsoft going to fix the issue between IE8 Publisher 2003 created web
pages? I have ungrouped everything in my web site and it is still broken in
IE8. Firefox and Safari display my website correctly. If MS doesn't have a
fix, other than purchasing more software, I might as well buy Adobe
Dreamweaver and start all over. This is not what I want to do, but my
options seem very limited.

 

[DavidF]

Sorry, I don't expect that you will see any more patches for Publisher 2003.
They are about ready to introduce Office 2010 so even Pub 2007 has probably
seen its last patch.

If you would provide us a link to your site we can see if perhaps the
problem is something other than the grouping issue.

You might also try ungrouping again, as sometimes users have thought they
ungrouped the navbars and had not been successful, that is assuming that it
is the navbars that are not working correctly in IE8. One way to check this
is to go into your index_files folder and look at the image files using the
thumbnails view (view > thumbnails). If you see your navbars all grouped
together in one image, then you did not successfully ungroup the navbars, so
try again. Go to Edit > Select All and then to Arrange > Ungroup. Do this
for each page.

You might also delete your old web files off the server before you upload
new.

Dreamweaver is certainly one of the top web building applications in the
industry. If you want to change if could be a good choice, but the learning
curve will be substantial. There are also many other alternatives if you
want to discuss those.

Once again, try ungrouping again, and if that does not work provide a link
and perhaps we can figure out what is going wrong. Be specific about the
problem please.

DavidF

 

[Rohe Bee Ranch]

Sorry, I don't expect that you will see any more patches for Publisher 2003.
They are about ready to introduce Office 2010 so even Pub 2007 has probably
seen its last patch.

If you would provide us a link to your site we can see if perhaps the
problem is something other than the grouping issue.

You might also try ungrouping again, as sometimes users have thought they
ungrouped the navbars and had not been successful, that is assuming that it
is the navbars that are not working correctly in IE8. One way to check this
is to go into your index_files folder and look at the image files using the
thumbnails view (view > thumbnails). If you see your navbars all grouped
together in one image, then you did not successfully ungroup the navbars, so
try again. Go to Edit > Select All and then to Arrange > Ungroup. Do this
for each page.

You might also delete your old web files off the server before you upload
new.

Dreamweaver is certainly one of the top web building applications in the
industry. If you want to change if could be a good choice, but the learning
curve will be substantial. There are also many other alternatives if you
want to discuss those.

Once again, try ungrouping again, and if that does not work provide a link
and perhaps we can figure out what is going wrong. Be specific about the
problem please.

DavidF





.
Hi David,

Thanks for responding.
I have ungrouped my site as far as possible. I even tried deleting the
navbar from every page. Some text appears, in the wrong locations and there
are no pictures displayed. My web site is:

www.rohebeeranch.com

Thanks for your help with this.
I assume that MS Office 2010/Publisher will not have problems with IE8?
I enjoy using Publisher for a lot of other things which is why I would
prefer to use it for my web site.

 

[DavidF]

I have good news and other news.

Your website loads just fine in IE8, IE7 and FF for me...eventually. It took
over 5 minutes for your home page to load. At least part of the reason for
this is that you are not using a default name for your home page. You have
named your home page: RoheBeeRanch.htm That is not a good idea and should be
corrected. When you publish your website files you should name the home page
'index.htm'.

The fact that I can get your navbar and your pages to render correctly in
IE8 and you can't suggests that perhaps you are looking at an old cached
version of the page on your computer. After loading your home page try
hitting your F5 key and forcing a reload...or empty your IE cache. Bottom
line is I think your ungrouping did work, but for some reason you are not
seeing it. All the text appears to load just fine too on the several pages I
loaded. If you have a specific example let me know.

The big mistake you are making is how you are producing your web pages. From
looking at the source code it appears that you are doing a File > Save As a
web page to produce your files. That is the wrong. You should be doing a
File > Publish to the Web to produce your files. The difference is the first
produces very bloated "rich" code and the second produces "filtered" code
that is much smaller in file size. In fact this fundamental mistake may be
accounting for some of your problems...at least the slow loading time. Your
home page is 2,631.49 KB!!! If you Publish to the Web the text portion of
your home page will end up being less than 100 KB most likely.

Now it is important to note here that you should be making any desired
changes to your original Publisher file and generating new web files each
time you want to update your site. Some people mistakenly import the web
files from the web server into Publisher, make their edits and republish. In
fact the "rich" "round-about" code with all the Office tags is what makes
that possible. So if you are one of those people that has been editing the
code rather than editing the Pub file, then be sure to save the imported
code as a Pub file before you switch to producing your web files by Publish
to the Web instead of Save As a web page. After you switch to "filtered'
code you will not be able to import it in the same way.

I am not sure how you are building your navbar as you appear to have managed
to use a custom image for the bees which is really kind of clever and cool.
However, those bees are made up of many different little images that load
separately when ungrouped. For example here are links to just a few of the
parts of the total image that is loading in FF:

http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image028.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image029.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image030.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image031.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image032.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image033.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image034.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image035.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image036.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image037.gif
http://www.rohebeeranch.com/RoheBeeRanch_files/image038.gif

I would suggest saving that composite/grouped image of the bee as a .gif or
..png and then reinserting it into your navbar. Once again, I don't know how
you managed to build that navbar with the custom image, but the bee image
will look a lot better if you combine all the elements and save as a single
image. If this is a wordart image, then select the image(s) and right click

Save as picture > change the resolution to Web (96 dpi) and try both the

gif and png format. I suspect that you will get a better image in FireFox if
you use the png format, though the file size will be a tiny bit bigger and
thus will take longer to load. Then insert that new image in where the
clipart used to be and now when you ungroup it you won't end up with a bunch
of parts of an image. I should also say that in reality this is not
essential that you do this as your navbar is loading correctly in IE8, IE7
and FF with the image ungrouped. I just think it would be a bit cleaner and
your images of your bees might be better. This is a lower priority but is a
way to improve your site.

I can't tell for sure but you should also be sure to compress your graphics
before you produce new web files and upload them. The images seem to load a
bit slow for me:

Reference: Compress graphics file sizes to create smaller Publisher Web
pages (2003):
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HA011266301033.aspx

Reference: Compress Pictures dialog box (2007):
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100363901033.aspx?pid=CL100605171033

All in all, I think you site is pretty good. It is clean and the navigation
is straightforward. I think you have done a pretty good job...congrats.
Don't take my suggestions on how to improve it the wrong way.

As per Publisher 2010 your assumptions are only partially correct. MSFT has
decided to start to deprecate the web building functionality in Pub 2010.
While you will be able to open and edit existing web publications built in
2003 and 2007, you will not be able to build new multipage web sites. You
will be able to build single web pages. The IE8 rendering issue is fixed,
but they "broke" or "hide" most of the rest of the website building
functionality. It is a shame, but they have decided to force people into
using Expression Web, SharePoint or their simplistic "Live" webs.
Furthermore they have taken away the traditional menus and added the
"ribbon" menus to Publisher 2010. By in large I have been very disappointed
in the beta of Publisher 2010 and can see no reason to "downgrade" to it
from either 2007 or 2003. But then there are others that have learned to
like the ribbon menus, while I resent MSFT forcing them on the public. But
enough ranting...to each their own. Once again if you want to discuss
alternatives to Publisher for web building let me know...

I hope that when you empty your cache that your pages load ok in IE8 for
you, as this was your original issue and it appears to be fixed for me.
Perhaps others reading this thread can confirm?

Sorry if I got off on too many tangents and hope you found the other info
helpful...

DavidF

 

[Rob Giordano [MS MVP]]

OVER 70,000 LINES OF CODE.
This has to be a new record.
Crashed IE, crashed Chrome...just to look at the code!

If I were he....I'd start at square one.



--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Giordano
Microsoft MVP Expression Web

 

[DavidF]

That is the "rich" code vs. "filtered". Produce the web pages by "publish to
the web" and he will get filtered code.

DavidF