If I may comment, be sure to go to Tools > Options > Web tab and uncheck
"Rely on VML..." and " Allow PNG...", and use "Publish to the Web" to
produce your html files as the first step, if you haven't already done it.
The Publisher 2003 html engine use VML and optimizes the pages for IE. In
the process it will make copies of all inserted images with the goal of
serving up the best image for whatever browser is used...with mixed results.
Frequently FF images are lower quality as you have found. Also, depending on
how you layout the page, you can get some images that will combine with text
boxes and other design objects, and that will result in a poor image. I
notice that you are using non-web friendly fonts on occasion, and they are
being converted to blurry images.
One of the things I noticed about your pages is that you are somehow using a
different background color on different pages. This suggests that you are
either improperly inserting the background color, or perhaps you are using a
Master Page for the color. If you are using a Master Page then don't. That
should only be used for print documents in Publisher. Look at Format >
Background for the que to inserting a color, graphic or texture in the
background.
I have also found that if you resize and optimize your images before you
insert them into your page, you can get better results. For example if you
resize your 500 X 572 picture of the globe logo, to the actual size you will
be using on the page, you will probably get a better version in FF, in that
it seems that Publisher won't make a duplicate, lower quality image if it
doesn't need to be resized to fit the page. Note the size of the image as
you are using it on your page. You can do this several ways, but go to
Format > Picture > Size tab and you will see the dimensions. Then in your
third party image editing program, resize the original image to those
dimensions. You might also use the third party program to create the
transparent gif if you aren't already. Then after inserting the image, go
back to Format > Picture > Size tab and check that it is at 100% scale.
Try making those changes and Publish to the Web and direct your output to
your computer where you can find the files, and open and test with FF before
taking the time to upload to your host. You can also review the files
Publisher generates to see if it is creating duplicate images. If this
doesn't help substantially, then you can bypass the html coding engine
entirely, and import your images, but that will take some more work. I a
nutshell, you will upload your images to a subfolder on your site and then
use the insert html code fragment tool to insert a code snippet to import
the image to the page rather than embedding it.
By the way, you are one of the first people I know that is using Xara
menumaker with Publisher. I discovered that program many years ago and use
it myself.
DavidF
