Can doc and pdf files be treated this way?

[Serious_Practitioner]

Good day, and thank you in advance for any assistance.

I have very little experience with any sort of Web design product, HTML
editor...any of this. I'm more of a database person. If I'm asking for
something simple, please forgive me and tell me where to look. Here's what I
want to accomplish -

I've begun to design a Web page that will allow users to either download one
of several files or look at it. The files are all Word 2000 .doc files; for
this project, they have been or will be converted to .pdf files. In my
innocence, I figured that, with the proper code, I could make either the
Word file, or preferably the .pdf, come into a page when the page was
loaded. So, for instance, you want to view the contents of file1.doc (or
..pdf, if possible); you'd click on an image, a new page would open and the
file would be imported at that time. You want to download the file called
file1.pdf; you click on an image and the file download window comes up.

I have the download part working using the .pdf files. What I am looking for
is a way to get the contents of file1.doc or .pdf to be loaded into a page,
for viewing, as the page is loading. My thought is that I have a .doc., a
..pdf and a page to maintain if the file contents change; if the file can be
made to load into a new page as the page loads, I only have to maintain the
..doc file in the future, convert it to .pdf and upload it to the server.
Less time spent and no messing with the Web pages themselves. I can import
the .doc files into new pages, but then the pages have to be edited every
time I do an import, because there seems to be a severe loss of formatting.
I'm looking for a way around that, as well as a way to use one file, the
..pdf, for viewing and downloading.

I understand that the user has to have the appropriate Adobe Acrobat reader
or plug-in...that's assumed.

I hope this makes sense. Thank you for your assistance.


Steve E.

 

[Jon]

Hello Steve E.

I think in your quest for simplicity, you are creating unnecessary
complexity. There is not any reason why your .doc documents plan won't
work, but I don't know about the PDF ones.

Either way, when you see how simple it is to update pages using FrontPage
you won't want to bother converting file types.

If you start with a template and name the pages and titles correctly, and
set the navigation structure you have it done.

Then to make changes it is as easy as opening the web, and cutting and
pasting the new info onto the pages you are changing. Then either save or
publish (depending on if you opened the web from the server or from your
harddisk).

This is basically easy. If you could learn to do database stuff, FrontPage
web publishing should be a snap for you. It is different from database, but
basic web publishing is easy enough so everyone can do it.

Jon

 

[Serious_Practitioner]

Good day, and thank you for your reply. I was occupied Friday and couldn't
respond.

I'm in need of some further particulars about the .doc documents. Can they
be made to open as I'd like; that is, like an image is brought in from a
file?

I understand that it is easy to update Web pages, but I may be thinking
about a different process than you - to my mind, updating means either -

A. Going to the site and then opening and editing the .html document, then
saving it. Then the next time the page
is called, the updated version comes to the screen.
B. Downloading the .html document from the site, editing it locally and then
uploading/publishing it. If editing was
extensive, this would be the path I'd take, so as not to be online
through the process.

I thought I'd need to convert the file types in order to increase the number
of people who might be able to download the documents (don't I?) - not
everyone has Word and or wants to mess with viewers and converters.

And yes, the process you describe for editing the .html pages is simple, but
my version of FP, 2003, seems to insist on adding a lot of formatting I
don't want, and it also sometimes changes the layout of areas that aren't
even being edited. This has meant a lot of wasted time in the past to fix
those unwanted additions and changes, which is why I was looking for a way
to open the .doc file in the page (perhaps in a table cell), not making the
contents of the .doc file a part of the page.

So I guess I'm back to the original question - can a .doc file be made to
open in a page like an image? In other words, can an .html page be made,
through coding, to import a .doc file as the page is opened?

If I'm seeing this problem backwards, I'd appreciate any righting of my
thinking.

Thank you again.


Steve E.

Hello Steve E.

I think in your quest for simplicity, you are creating unnecessary
complexity. There is not any reason why your .doc documents plan won't
work, but I don't know about the PDF ones.

Either way, when you see how simple it is to update pages using FrontPage
you won't want to bother converting file types.

If you start with a template and name the pages and titles correctly, and
set the navigation structure you have it done.

Then to make changes it is as easy as opening the web, and cutting and
pasting the new info onto the pages you are changing. Then either save or
publish (depending on if

you opened the web from the server or from your harddisk).

This is basically easy. If you could learn to do database stuff,
FrontPage web publishing should be a snap for you. It is different from
database, but basic web publishing is

easy enough so everyone can do it.