Any hope for the future? SOmething to convert to? REally need advi

[KcbK]

I'm a three year 50+ page commercial website all Publisher 2007
www.branscombfarm.com I built and maintain all by myself. I LOVE the
development tools but am of course REALLY frustrated by the cross
browser/platform incompatibilties especially lately with the IE8 upgrade and
the sudden failure of the Nav bars and the Safari compatibility? Tried the
ungroup workaround (50pages makes it really hard) but only moderate success.
Not good enough to live with. Bought Expression Web today but it is way too
hard for me and no migration tool from Pub. Any ideas on what to do short of
giving up and hiring some poor idiot to rebuild my entire site from the
ground up in some tool I won't be able to maintin myself? Really need good
advice!

 

[DavidF]

The larger the site, the more difficult it will be to manage with Publisher,
so this might be a good time to rebuild in another program whether it be
Expression or some other program. However, as you have discovered the code
that Publisher generates is way too different to import easily into another
program, and even if you could the layout, formatting and design of our
current site would need to be changed. To switch to a different program, you
would need to rebuild and invest a good deal of time in learning the new
program and specifically HTML and CSS coding with Expression.

To stay with Publisher you also will need to do some rebuilding. I looked
at your site in IE7, IE8, Safari and FireFox and you have a number of
design, layout and formatting issues that need to be changed in order to get
good cross browser compatibility. And even if you switch to a different
program you will need to redesign your site. What ever you do it is going to
take some time to fix your site. I will comment on some of those issues now,
and if you decide you want to stay with Publisher either I or others in the
group can help you with all the details.

As per the navbar issues, the Office 2007 SP2 patch will fix the problem of
the 'standard' Publisher wizard built navbar not rendering in IE8. And if
that patch breaks Publisher, there is a hotfix patch to fix that. When I
viewed your home page in IE7, IE8, FF and Safari the navbar works. So if you
are having some other problem, you will need to be more specific. I did
notice that your navbar is a hybrid of some sort and not a standard navbar.
You have some of the text on some of the navbar buttons showing a underline
hyperlink, which only happens if you added the hyperlink manually. You are
also using a non-standard bottom navbar, but that is not necessarily a
problem. Bottom line, if you are having continuing problems with the navbar,
post back with specifics but I did not see any on the home page.

I test in both IE and FireFox. If the pages work correctly in FF, then they
will work correctly in Safari. In FireFox most all your text on your home
page has been converted to images and I notice the same is true in Safari.
Here is one text box on your home page:
http://www.branscombfarm.com/index_files/image1403.gif . Note if you load
the page in FF and try to left click, drag and select any of the text you
will discover you can't...the text is an image. Try the same test in Safari.
You can also look at all the files in your 'index_files' folder in thumbnail
view to spot the text boxes that have been converted to images. Anyway, it
is important that your text not be converted for not only the obvious
reasons, but also because it kills the link within the text boxes. So you
first need to find the reason for this.

It may be as simple as having your text boxes 'grouped' with some other
design element. Grouped elements will be converted to an image for FF and
Safari. The solution...ungroup. If that isn't the case it can be caused by
using some fill colors in a text box or using a 'fancy' border. I would
first of all get rid of the so called border you have around the entire page
of your site. It looks bad and could be causing the problem. Then perhaps
remove the fill color in the text box and test again. Then perhaps remove
the border on the text box and test again...or try a simple black border.
You can use some fill colors and some simple small black borders, but in
other cases the use of fill color and borders will convert the text box to
an image. I can't give you an absolute rule. Just try different combinations
to see what you can and cannot do. And if you are really invested in the
fill color and border you are currently using there is a workaround.

Remove the fill color and border from the text box that is being converted
to an image. Create a second text box the same size as the original, apply
the border and fill color to that text box and layer it on top of the
'plain' original text box, go to Arrange > Order > Send to Back. Now by
layering these two text boxes you will get the same effect as before but the
text will not be converted to an image.

On your home page I spotted a couple other text boxes that had been
converted, but that was the only cross browser issues I spotted. If there
are more post back with the specifics.

I would highly recommend that you consider fewer images on your home page.
It takes too long to load. And at the minimum you need to compress all the
images on your site:

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

Run the Design Checker under Tools to see if that spots any other issue.

And finally, I would recommend strongly that you not make your page so wide.
It currently requires horizontal scrolling which would keep me from spending
any time viewing your site. Make your pages no more than 984 pixels wide.

So, yes...if you stay with Publisher you have some work to do, but if you
switch to a different program you will have to do much of the same work.
Your pages are too wide regardless of what program you use. You should use
fewer images and compress and optimize them for the web regardless of what
program you use. You will have to plan carefully how you want to organize
your site and how to build your navigation system regardless of what program
you use. And you will have to tweak the either the coding, the layout, the
formatting or the design to get good cross browser compatibility. You can
fix all your issues with Publisher or switch, but either way you have some
work to do. You had most of these problems before IE8...that just forced you
to deal with them.

Post back with details if you want more assistance with your Publisher
pages.

DavidF

 

[KcbK]

Thank you David for the amazing thoughtful response and for looking at my
site. I am WILDLY grateful for your expert guidance and consideration. Here
are a few of my thoughts re your advice:
1. Re the Nav bar: IUntil the IE8 problem and my install of SP2, I had a
standard Nav bar. I began to modify the Nav Bar based on the advice in the
group to other users regarding the "ungroup" solution. The version of the
site you saw has all fifty pages "ungrouped" by the select all - arrange-
etc. method. When I did that some of the nav bar headings got scrambled (no
idea why..just did) and I had to go back and manually re-enter the labels. It
didn't happen on every page - just weird. Then I reloaded and several of my
client/testers said that only parts of the buttons would link -if you
selected the text in the button they would not. Since the text was the center
of the button and this was confusing - I went back and entered manual
hyperlinks on all the text buttons -- voila the messy -hybrid -nav bar that
you see today (sigh)
2. The text box problem is probably the background color fill and border and
I can fix that.
3. Re the green page border -no problem to nuke that - check next update in
a day or two
4. Page width and loading. I have always compressed all my images to either
"web" or 200 dpi print quality prior to converting to HTML but there are a
lot of images --unfortunately we sell horses and people really want to see
what they look like in good quality photographs and videos on the page. The
width I did recently to respond to complaints that the web site didn't "fill"
the browser page for people with big screens. I can see going back to an
earlier version and updating it.

So my biggest issue right now is the cros browser compatibility of the nav
bar and the image links working. Having ungrouped, everything is very
unweildy. Do you recommend that I roll back to a version of the site before I
"ungrouped" and return to the standard Nav bar. When I did SP2 it didn't
appear to solve the problem so I hate to go to all that work and find the
same problem. The hot fix I noted in some people comments caused other issues
so I was nervous about trying that. What is your advice about the best way to
proceed specifically on the nav bar and picture hyperlink problem?

Also, if I did get the time to learn a new tool and give it a try -which one
would you suggest?

Finally, I do have several orphan pages (old horse pages that aren'tlinked
to very often or at all) I could eliminate from my site at some risk I would
have to recreate them again in the future - should I kill them anyway?

Is there a way to move a whole page from another version of a Pub web doc to
the current one or do you have to move them one element/group at a time?

I killed my Master Page and recreated the same elements on every page per
the advice in this group --Is that still the case if I rebuild from scratch
or try to roll back to a previous version -- it was a lot of work to get rid
of it.\

Thanks again for all the great and very useful advice:}

 

[DavidF]

Respond in-line:

Thank you David for the amazing thoughtful response and for looking at my
site. I am WILDLY grateful for your expert guidance and consideration.
Here
are a few of my thoughts re your advice:
1. Re the Nav bar: IUntil the IE8 problem and my install of SP2, I had a
standard Nav bar. I began to modify the Nav Bar based on the advice in
the
group to other users regarding the "ungroup" solution. The version of the
site you saw has all fifty pages "ungrouped" by the select all - arrange-
etc. method. When I did that some of the nav bar headings got scrambled
(no
idea why..just did) and I had to go back and manually re-enter the labels.
It
didn't happen on every page - just weird. Then I reloaded and several of
my
client/testers said that only parts of the buttons would link -if you
selected the text in the button they would not. Since the text was the
center
of the button and this was confusing - I went back and entered manual
hyperlinks on all the text buttons -- voila the messy -hybrid -nav bar
that
you see today (sigh)

When you ungroup a wizard built navbar you will see that each button it is
made up of a text box, an image/picture box plus a hyperlink 'hotspot' box
which looks like an empty hash lined text box. When you ungroup the button
select the hotspot box and enlarge it to the same size as the text and image
boxes, and go to arrange > order > bring to front. Now when you do a web
page preview you can point at any part of the button and it will be 'hot'.
You can add hot spot link boxes by going to the far left of your work page
and look for the small green ball icon in a hash marked square. Click it and
draw a hot spot box and add the hyperlink.

So, you can remove the underline on your navbar buttons and put a new hot
spot link box, or perhaps it would be easier to just go to Insert > navbar >
existing and insert a new navbar on the page, and ungroup it and enlarge the
hot spot boxes as I suggested.

Since you are running Pub 2007, you can also just insert new navbars,
install the Office 2007 SP2 patch and then if that 'breaks' Publisher...ie,
you cannot open existing pub files, then run the new 'hotfix' patch. Most
people don't seem to have problems with the SP2, and it does fix the navbar
rendering problem with IE8...and the hotfix seems to fix the problem with
sp2.

Manually ungroup the navbars or apply the sp2 patch...which is better is
your choice. As much as I hate to say it, if you have your computer set to
automatically download and install MSFT patches then you might as well get
it over with and install the sp2 patch and fix it with the hotfix patch if
necessary. I drag my feet on such patches, but that is me.

2. The text box problem is probably the background color fill and border
and
I can fix that.
3. Re the green page border -no problem to nuke that - check next update
in
a day or two

As per the border around the whole page that is a 'print' document
formatting technique that doesn't work as well on a web page. Don't forget
that Publisher will automatically truncate the page after the last design
element on the page when you produce the web page. That means it will
truncate after that border if is there. Better to have it truncate after
the bottom navbar in my opinion.

4. Page width and loading. I have always compressed all my images to
either
"web" or 200 dpi print quality prior to converting to HTML but there are a
lot of images --unfortunately we sell horses and people really want to see
what they look like in good quality photographs and videos on the page.
The
width I did recently to respond to complaints that the web site didn't
"fill"
the browser page for people with big screens. I can see going back to an
earlier version and updating it.

Use as many images as you think are necessary. Just remember that the more
you use the longer it takes for that page to load. Sometime is better to
have the 'extra' pictures on other pages for those who want more pictures.
Always use 96 dpi or ppi option for web pages. If you try to use 200 you
will end up with a worse version of your image in FF and other non IE
browsers.

As per the width, you don't have to fill the width of a large screen
monitor. In fact many of us still prefer pages that are 760 pixel width for
lots of reasons. So though the best width is debatable you must live with
the fact that Publisher produces a fixed width page, and that if you force
people to scroll horizontally they are not going to be happy viewers...they
will most likely leave your site....or at least much more so than being
forced to scroll vertically. As the largest Publisher template provided is
984 pixels wide, I wouldn't exceed that.

Read the following article that was written some time ago, and then also
realize that we have developed a workaround for centering Publisher pages.
So though there is nothing wrong with left justified, fixed width pages, if
you decide you want to, we can tell you how to center your pages. I would
focus on getting your pages to render well in both IE and FF first though. A
much higher priority....

Reference: Understanding background padding in a Publisher web (aka white
space):
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/archive/2006/01/07/80563.aspx

So my biggest issue right now is the cross browser compatibility of the
nav
bar and the image links working. Having ungrouped, everything is very
unweildy. Do you recommend that I roll back to a version of the site
before I
"ungrouped" and return to the standard Nav bar. When I did SP2 it didn't
appear to solve the problem so I hate to go to all that work and find the
same problem. The hot fix I noted in some people comments caused other
issues
so I was nervous about trying that. What is your advice about the best way
to
proceed specifically on the nav bar and picture hyperlink problem?

Also, if I did get the time to learn a new tool and give it a try -which
one
would you suggest?

Finally, I do have several orphan pages (old horse pages that aren'tlinked
to very often or at all) I could eliminate from my site at some risk I
would
have to recreate them again in the future - should I kill them anyway?

As you are going to have horses come and go, and this part of your site is
going to be dynamic, I would suggest that you organize your site so that you
produce those 'orphan' pages with a different Publisher file and upload them
to their own subfolder on your site, and link to them as you need them. Read
this article: Building a web site with multiple Publisher web publication
files : http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/pages/81264.aspx Personally I
organize using subfolders on my host but it explains another way.

Is there a way to move a whole page from another version of a Pub web doc
to
the current one or do you have to move them one element/group at a time?

Sure. Just Edit > Select all (or Ctrl + A) and then I would Arrange > group

copy and move to the second instance of Publisher and Paste, move the

group around until you have it where you want and then ungroup.

I killed my Master Page and recreated the same elements on every page per
the advice in this group --Is that still the case if I rebuild from
scratch
or try to roll back to a previous version -- it was a lot of work to get
rid
of it.\

Good decision. Do not use a Master page in a Publisher web.

Hope this helps. The hardest part is actually coming up with your content,
and you have that part done. Now you just have to tweak the formatting,
layout and design so that it is cross browser comptable. It might take you a
while, but you should be able to get there. Good luck.

DavidF

 

[KcbK]

Thanks again David. You are great. I'm trying to investigate other possible
tools to migrate too but I'm still kind of in love with how easy Publisher is
for someone like me. I actually am sort of proud that I got as far as I did
before I ran into problems. The site has been up since 2006. So I'm thinking
if I bite the bullet and simplify it and do the subfolder organization for
the dynamic parts as you say, maybe I can just continue limping along without
having to change tools. I did like Dreamweaver but it was still not as
straightforward as Publisher and I haven't found anything that my Publisher
generated code just reads directly into so I can just focus on editing.
Mostly it doesn't seem to migrate over too well. Anyway, I'm feeling like I
can make some adjustments and keep going. I'm owrking on a new Publisher
based version of the site now. Thanks again for all your help

 

[DavidF]

You are welcome.

Dreamweaver is a fine choice, and you should realize that many people
eventually outgrow Publisher and move on. When they do chances are the whole
design of their sites also changes and so rebuilding from scratch naturally
happens. I know that the nature of my sites have evolved and I would not
even want to import some of my earlier creations into Dreamweaver or another
web building program. If you move to Dreamweaver or Expression chances are
you will want you site design to be entirely different, so don't obsess
about not being able to directly and completely import it. After all,
remember that you have all the components...the images, the text, etc and
can easily copy and insert those into the new program and new design.

And with that being said, I think the decision about whether to use
Publisher, to move on from Publisher, to use Dreamweaver, blogging software,
or any of many, many different choices for building a website depends upon
what your goals are for your site. I have found that the 'limitations' of
using Publisher to be a good thing many times in that it has forced me to
KISS. I personally think that too often web designers forget the goals and
purpose of the web and start adding a lot of pop and fizzle and suddenly the
pages take forever to load and the 'web experience' becomes more important
than the content of site. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean
you should. The limitations of Publisher has forced me to keep my sites
simple and prevented me from adding a lot of extra stuff that only distracts
from the message and the content. I think that is why I have stayed with
Publisher over the years. I have found that if I can't do it with Publisher,
then in most cases I shouldn't be doing it...or that perhaps there is a
better, more simple way of doing it.

Anyway, there are a few of my thoughts and opinions. If your site gets
really big, you will probably need to move to something else. If you want to
build totally 'standards compliant' webs then you will need to move on. At
the same time, if you test as you build and are willing to adjust your
design and formatting, you can build a cross browser compatible site with
Publisher. You are the one to decide if it is too limiting...

DavidF