CONCERNED About the Publisher 2007 index file size

S

Stevan

My current site (www.TimesaversForTeachers.com) is created using Publisher
2002. I hesitate to recreate the site using Publisher 2003 or 2007 as I hear
that it creates a large index file. My fie size is just right at the moment
and I do not want the viewers to be slowed down by file size. if you have
experience with crating a website using Publisher 2007, please tell me
something that will take this concern away for me. What has your experience
been and is your index file large also. I know that positive features of
this version, but are there any other things that I should watch out for?
Thank you!
 
E

Eric James

and I do not want the viewers to be slowed down by file size. if you have
experience with crating a website using Publisher 2007, please tell me

They already are, so you do not have much to lose by moving to 2007.
Unfortunately all versions of Publisher post-2000 create hugely inefficient
and largely proprietary html. If you want to find out how bad it is, create
a replica of one of your Publisher pages using some other tool - or for
maximum efficiency, using raw html & css. You'll probably find that your
Publisher html files are ten or more times bigger than they need to be, even
if you did manage to avoid having it convert large blocks of text into image
files.
Sadly all this baggage was introduced by Microsoft from other programs in
the office suite where the requirements were slightly different - notably
including 'round tripping' whereby an office program could open an html file
and see and edit it pretty much as the original office document. That
feature wasn't deemed necessary for Publisher so they took out most of the
useful(?) functionality to leave more efficient(!) 'filtered html' which is
still at least ten times bigger than it needs to be. (And riddled with
errors.) Go figure.
 
D

DavidF

Stevan,

I presume you read the articles I referenced by David Bartosik about the
difference between Pub 2000, 2002 and 2003. As that articles noted the code
for 2003 totaled higher than for 2002, which totaled higher than for 2000.
If you want to know how much heavier the code is for 2007, then simply open
your site (use a copy of your original Pub file in case you want to go back
to 2002), and File > Publish to the web and direct your output to somewhere
such as your desktop on your local computer where you can find the files.
Right click the index.htm file > Properties and it will tell you how large
the home page is, and you can compare that to your home page generated from
Pub 2002. I would imagine that you will find the file size is larger in Pub
2007 than in 2002, but is the size difference that important?

While you will find some expert web designers, coding and software purists
complaining about how Publisher has "code bloat", in the real world 99% of
the people who view your site will not ever look at your source code, nor
care about it. All they care about is whether the page loads relatively
quickly, the page looks good and the navigation system is straight forward
and easy to follow. Publisher effectively takes a print document and
converts it to HTML and in the process does produce a lot of code in order
to accomplish that, but the amount of code does not necessarily mean
anything when it comes to loading time.

For example, go to http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ and
input your URL. In the results page you will see that your main html is
about 42 kb and takes about 8.55 seconds to load with a 56k connection. If
Publisher 2007 doubles that, then it will take about 18 seconds, which is
still quick enough that the average viewer will not grow impatient. (Note
that in reality it won't take twice as long to load.) Now let's look at an
"expert" site. Input the URL for the Microsoft Development Network:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ and compare the results. The main page is about
14.6 kb and takes 3.11 seconds...cleaner and less bloated code, and much
better right? Not necessarily.

I test my sites using a dial-up connection at 31.2 kb. Your home page text
loaded within a couple seconds and the whole page with images took
approximately 23 seconds to load fully. The MSDN site took more than 40
seconds before even the banner at the top of the page loaded and several
more seconds before the text was loaded. I sat and looked at a blank page
while I waited. My point is that in the real world some of the most
sophisticated code built by the experts that weighs the least takes longer
to load than the 'bloated' Publisher code. Try loading a site built with
Flash...those pages can take so long that I simply will not wait.

So, don't get overly concerned about whether your page is 42 kb or 84 kb, in
the real world it won't really matter to the people who view your site. If
they are using a high speed connection, they won't notice it at all.
Furthermore Pub 2003 and 2007 pages tend to load the text very quickly
within seconds, so people will have something to read while the images load.
And that is the real issue...the images. The more images you have the slower
your page will be to load.

If you do switch to Pub 2007 be sure to go to Tools > Options and turn off
the option to use PNG files. They are heavier than either gif or jpg. Also
be sure to either optimize your images before you insert them in a third
party image editor at the correct size and 96 dpi, or use the compress
graphics feature to compress the images over 100 kb.

Reference: Compress Pictures dialog box (2007):
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100363901033.aspx?pid=CL100605171033

David Bartosik is a web design and coding expert and that was part of the
reason he commented about the increase in the weight of the code in the
newer versions of Publisher. But he also was coming from a place when most
hosts severely limited the total amount of webhost space. Back then 5 and 10
meg hosting spaces were common, so you need to be more aware of the total
size of your web pages. These days most hosts offer a gig or more in hosting
space, so that is no longer an issue.

Bottom line is as I said before, if you are happy with Pub 2002, then stay
with it. Heck, I have all versions of Publisher available to me and I still
use Pub 2000 for my production work. But if you want to switch to Pub 2007
then don't let the size of the html put you off. It won't make that much
difference in the real world. And don't forget that you can have more than
one version installed. Just do a 'custom' install with the second version
and install it in its own folder and tell it to not overwrite the previous
version.

DavidF
 
S

Stevan

David,

Thank you for such a thorough response. It is more than I expected. I will
follow your advice, install Publisher 2007 as a separate installation and
then recreate the site. One problem that I experienced before with Publisher
2007 (the reason why I took it off) is that I could not click on the bottom
tool bar to go from page to page. There was nothing to click and the only
thing that I saw was the first page. Do you know anything about this, do I
need to turn on an option, how do I fix this

Thanks much again David! You are something else :)

Stevan
 
D

DavidF

Stevan,

You are welcome.

I see from another post you may be having problems with the dual install.
While I was writing all those words, I should have also cautioned you to
keep your Pub 2007 files separate from your Pub 2002 files. They are
supposed to be interchangeable, but I have heard occasions when they aren't.
I will repeat this when I get to your other message. Hopefully you kept a
backup file of your original file.

And, did you get the page sorter figured out? If it is what I think you are
talking about it is a sometimes bug in 2007. Mary Sauer just posted about
this today in the general group. Here is her response:

Some Publisher users have posted the sort tabs are missing from their
application. The fix is here, the sixth FAQ
http://ed.mvps.org/Static.aspx?=Publisher/FAQs

DavidF
 

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