Formatting changes when publishing to the web

[CosmicFaery]

Greetings,

I'm currently re-designing my website In Publisher 2007, and have chosen
certain formatting styles (paragraph and line spacing), which are ignored
when I preview the page in IE 7. This means the text is condensed leaving
gaps on the page. Also, when I try to add a PayPal button on a certain point
on the page, in the preview window it's ended up somewhere completely
different. How can I resolve this issue?

Many thanks!

 

[Spike]

Without looking at your site, my best guess is that your site is built using
printer fonts and spacing. Internet Explorer works best using web friendly
fonts, sizes and spacing. Look at
http://www.accordmarketing.com/tid/archive/websafefonts.html and for more
info, search the web for "Web Friendly Fonts".

Spike

 

[CosmicFaery]

The font I'm using is Verdana, however, it's the line spacing (1.25 pt) that
is being ignored; it only shows at 1pt. Don't know why this doesn't work
out. The font on the webpage looks fine......

 

[Spike]

IE is converts the line spacing to integers. So 1.25 becomes 1. So
selecting 1 pt to begin with will get you started on the WYSIWYG Trail.
Once you find the settings that work best for you save them as a style. You
can select the saved style in the future for easy text box set up.

Spike

 

[CosmicFaery]

So if I understand you right, then IE converts the line spacing from 1.25 to
1; I wonder why? Also, if IE does that, what about the other browsers, like
FireFox? How compatible are Publisher websites with all the various browsers?

Then there is the issue I have with PayPal buttons, which (as a result from
IE's conversion of line spacing) I have to place on top of text in the
document, so they show up in the right place on the published webpage. They
look ok in IE, but where on earth will they show up on other browsers?

Thank you again for your time helping me.

;-)

 

[Spike]

I suggest that you look at the thread:
Publish with Fire Fox from jriz35 3/10/2009
A lot of reading, but a lot of ideas and answers are there

Once you have the text box issue font size and line spacing resolved, your
pay pal button will show up where you placed it in publisher.
When I first had this same issue I made a simple test page and experimented
with font sizes and spacing between lines and paragraph spacing (before and
after). Take a moment and try that and you will quickly see the affects of
changing the settings. Publisher as I have been told is primarily set up
for printers.

Spike

 

[DavidF]

If I may add to Spikes comments, you are running up against a common
problem. Not all formatting that you can use in a print publication will
work in a web publication. They are two different mediums. You will need to
work within the limits of what you can do in HTML. Among other things you
many not be able to use are special character spacing, line spacing, spacing
of lines before or after paragraphs, tabs, indents, etc. All these things
can have unpredictable results when converted to HTML. If your layout shifts
when you do a web page preview, change the formatting.

In your case you will probably need to strip the formatting from the text.
Click the text box > Format > Styles > Clear Formatting. As Spike suggested
you can experiment to see what you can and can not do, and then save that
'style'.

Once you get the text boxes correctly formatted, then your PayPal button
will probably be where you want it. It probably wasn't moving around...your
text box was.

As per how this looks in other browsers, you should find out for yourself.
Download and install FireFox (7.8 MB): http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
As long as you opt out of making it your default browser, it will not cause
any problems for you. Then to test your web pages, when you 'Publish to the
Web' direct your web files to somewhere on your local computer where you can
easily find the files. Find the index.htm file > right click > Open with FF.
If you get your pages to look good in both IE and FF, then your pages should
have good cross browser compatibility in general.

DavidF