Publisher Web Site Causes Explorer to Crash, Firefox works OK

[John k2ox]

I used Excel to graph some measurement data. I then copied and pasted to
Publisher 2003. Added some text boxes. Used preview and all was well.
FTP'd to my site and all was well. Until I tried IE v6.0. The index.htm
page has three graphs. IE would only display the second, then crash and
shutdown. Firefox works fine. I've tried this from several computers with
the same results. I've worked on this for eight hours and gotten no where.
I notice that there are tons of files that I didn't expect that get generated
by Publisher when converting to HTML. Is there any way to get rid of this
stuff? Why do I need a 3 meg 'oledata.mso' for two pages of charts. What
are *.emz files. I expected two HTML pages and a half dozen gif files.
Instead I have an exploding head!
Please help,
John

 

[DavidF]

John,

I can get you started, but you should repost in the
microsoft.public.publisher.webdesign group where David Bartosik can see it.
The issue you describe with your page loading and crashing IE, has come up
several times in that group, and David might be able to help.

Before you do, you can do a few things to reduce the size of your HTML
output.

Go to Tools > Options > Web Tab. Untick "Rely on VML..." and "Allow PNG...".
Optionally untick "Enable incremental...". It won't affect your file size
that much if you leave it ticked. OK

Use the Compress images feature. Here is a link that explains that:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011266301033.aspx

You can also experiment with Paste Special your graphs as pictures,
Publisher objects, GIFs etc. I don't know which would give you the best
result, but your file size should vary.

Then delete all the files on your host, and republish. This should at least
reduce your file size significantly, and may fix your IE crashing issue. If
it doesn't then repost your results in the webdesign group, and include the
URL.

DavidF

 

[John k2ox]

Thanks for the reply. I've tried the things you mention. But, no cigars.
I'll post in the Web section.
TNX

 

[DavidF]

Yep...your site chokes IE for me too. Hopefully David Bartosik will have
better answers for you.

In the meantime, some observations and questions. and since you posted the
URL in the web section, I will repost it here so others can see what we are
talking about, and perhaps join in with possible solutions. Hope that is
ok... www.exothink.com/SDRPhaseNoise

When I view your site in FireFox I noticed that all the text has been
converted to an image, except the text under figure 5 (second page) and in
your summary. You can observe this by trying to select the text with your
mouse. I also right clicked figure 5 and copied it, and then opened in an
image editing application. You get an image of just the chart that is 409 X
285 pixels and a total size of 341 KB. If you copy and open figure 4, you
end up with an image that is 410 X 449 at 539 KB, and you'll notice that the
extra 164 pixels in length is a black space, which just happens to be the
same size as the text following that figure.

Obviously the bulk of your HTML files are these charts/images. You indicated
in your post on the web section that these charts should be 7 kb, so the
probable answer to your code bloat issues have to do with how you
inserted/pasted these graphs into the Pub doc to begin with? If you pasted
them in-line, within the text box itself, or drug the pasted images over the
text box and tried to use word wrap, don't do that. Instead, try pasting the
images onto the page by themselves, and then using the Snap To function to
align them with your text boxes. Look at how you did Figure 5 and the
following text...did you do something different there? Then if this doesn't
help, try again using Paste Special to paste your graphs as GIFs or some
other format rather than the default, and see if that makes any difference.

You can publish your site to a folder on your computer while you are testing
these things, and then open that folder and look at the image file sizes,
and/or open the individual images. Be aware that Pub 2003 sometimes creates
multiple copies of the same image with the goal of "improving graphic
quality", so you will likely see several versions of your graphs/images in
the HTML files. This is why you see .wmz images, which are Windows Media
Player Skin Package. Unfortunately, this is just the nature of the coding
engine that Pub 2003 uses. Just look for any that have bloated from your
expected 7 kb to ~400 - 500 kb, and keep experimenting with how you
paste/insert these charts in your Pub doc, until you get them down in size.
Don't forget to use the Compress images function.

Do you happen to have Pub 2000?

Let me know if any of this helps at all with both the code bloat and choking
IE.

DavidF

 

[John k2ox]

Hiello DavidF

Thanks for the ideas. I'm thinking my ISP is blocking the *.emz files and
maybe others. I am able to use IE locally to view it.

To create the page I used Excel to greate the graphs. Then I simple
selected and copied them (cntrl c) then switched to publisher and pasted.
Next I placed a text box under the image and entered the text. Then repeated
for the next graph.
I have since tried several things and don't remember them all.

Also since the original post I cut and pasted the images/text into
Frontpage. FTP'd them and have the same problem. Firefox OK, IE no graphs.
TNX

 

[DavidF]

John,

I don't think your ISP has anything to do with it, but...who knows.

Did you delete the files on the server before you republished?

Are you using a Master page per chance? If so, get rid of it.

This may sound strange, but copy your images from your Pub file, and use
paste special as a GIF, to produce a duplicate image. Then drag your
originals off into the scratch area, and replace with the new images.

I noticed that you have layered on some images on top of your graphs, such
as the circles. Try just the graphs.

And you didn't answer my question about having Pub 2000. If you do, you can
produce your site with it, and your problems will probably go away. It uses
a different HTML coding engine.

If you have FrontPage, then try recreating the site from scratch. Don't copy
and paste from Publisher. In fact, you would probably be better off using
FrontPage in general, as Pub 2003 is a DTP, and obviously has some
limitations when it comes to producing a website.

DavidF

 

[DavidF]

Another thought...under Options, change your default Encoding to Unicode
(UTF-8).

DavidF