Why has Publisher been slaughtering images?

[ladalang]

I get red x's, I get blocks of color and I have no idea why. On this page,
the red x is supposed to be a map from Microsoft clip art. It doesn't like
its own clips. This never happened a few years ago now every site I do,
same issue, it hates photos

http://www.didionproperties.com/index_files/page0007.html

I've compressed the pics, I have no idea why it's doing this to photos.
Any ideas? Nobody seems to have a solution. I've reloaded the index.html
and index_files folder thinking it was a bad load. When I do, new pictures
get red x's or color blotches.

 

[DavidF]

If you view your site in FF you will see that your clipart loads ok.
http://www.didionproperties.com/index_files/image280.gif
Publisher converts it to gif files for FF while leaving it in the "native"
format for IE. However I would guess that you used to use IE6 and are now
using IE7...IE6 would load the "native" clip art format, IE7 won't. IE6
would load most anything.

Solution...convert your clipart to .gif files...or perhaps .png
files....both support transparency. If you like the version created for FF,
then just publish your web files to your local computer and find the gif
files in the index_files folder, and insert them into your page instead of
the native clip art. Or, in your Publisher file right click the clipart,
copy and paste special back onto your page, as an image. Or right click,
save as a image, and save the file as a gif file and perhaps edit it in a
photo edit program, especially if you are not using a full size version of
the image. Bottom line is don't use the native clip art format in your web.

And by the way, pictures that are 100 KB or less are not compressed with the
compress images feature. If you want to optimize small gif files, then
optimize and size them in a third party image editing program before you
insert them into the page.

DavidF

 

[Spike]

What version of publisher are you using?
What browser are you using?
What OS are you using?

The last picture on that page is looking for image275.jpg
http://www.didionproperties.com/index_files/image275.jpg
And if you look at that image, it is a RED X

If you do a web preview in publisher, how does it look?
Have you looked at the site in your browser from your hard drive?

Spike

 

[DavidF]

Spike,

I am glad you posted, because it made me take a look at the source code.
While my original answer might be correct, it also appears that ladalang is
also using Publisher 2003, and is making the mistake of doing a "Save As a
web page" instead of "Publish to the Web". This produces bloated "rich" code
that is full of Office tags. Publish to the Web produces "filtered" code and
will load more quickly, and may very well fix the problem. And even if it
doesn't, it will make a big difference in loading time. This option to save
as rich code was removed in Pub 2007.

DavidF

 

[ladalang]

I don't understand what you mean a "save as" rather than a publish to the
web. I'm working on the index.html file and saving it. which while it's
saving says publishing. Then I open filezilla and over write the previous
files. Is that wrong and please tell me how I should be doing it? My host
no longer supports front page extensions so I have to publish ftp.

 

[DavidF]

When you want to make a change to a Publisher web you open the original .pub
file in Publisher, make the changes and produce your new web files, the
index.htm file and the index_files folder which contains all the supporting
graphics and images, and all the pages of the site other than the home page.
In Publisher 2000 you would go to File > Save as a Web page to produce those
files. Then MSFT changed things up and in Pub 2003 you would go to File >
Publish to the Web to produce your web files. Though the option of doing a
Save As a Web page was still available, that produced the bloated, "rich"
code with the Office tags. Hopefully you still have the original .pub file,
because you don't open and edit the index.htm and other .htm files in
Publisher.

DavidF

 

[ladalang]

I was hoping you weren't going to say that. lol. I've made so many changes
but if it will fix this issue I guess I have no choice. I'll just rebuild it
from the original. This was a really important thing to know, thanks I've
been doing this for a while and would explain why it didn't use to do that.
I'll stay away from the index files from here forward, thanks again.

 

[DavidF]

If you are saying that you are going to have to rebuild the Publisher file,
I am sorry to hear that. You are not alone or the first that assumed that
you edited the code directly. Unfortunately, Publisher just isn't a code
editor.

Reference this article: Common Sense Computing 101 aka "Why in the world
would you lose your publisher file?":
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/archive/2006/01/19/81461.aspx

At the bottom of the page are directions for rebuilding your Pub file. It
isn't that hard to do, just tedious. You might be able to just copy and
paste some of the changes on your pages to your old Pub file, and save
yourself some time.

As per editing the code directly, you still can, I do. I edit the code each
time to add code that will center my pages, as this option is not supported
directly by Publisher. Just remember that you will have to do it each time
your produce new .htm files after making the change in the Pub file.

DavidF