Need help using CSS style sheets to create web pages in Word

[Shelley]

I cannot find any references and resources from Microsoft to help me
attach CSS to word documents. There are instructions for this in the
Word for Windows documentation on the web, but the steps don't apply.
When I go to the Tools/Templates and Addins I find no Linked CSS, as
the instructions indicate. In fact, There is nothing there other than a
normal template. I try to link to a CSS that I've downloaded, but can't
do anything. Does anyone have recommendations? I want to create simple
web pages with CSS, but don't want to use front page.

Thanks for your help.

Shelley
;

 

[matt neuburg]

I cannot find any references and resources from Microsoft to help me
attach CSS to word documents. There are instructions for this in the
Word for Windows documentation on the web, but the steps don't apply.
When I go to the Tools/Templates and Addins I find no Linked CSS, as
the instructions indicate. In fact, There is nothing there other than a
normal template. I try to link to a CSS that I've downloaded, but can't
do anything. Does anyone have recommendations? I want to create simple
web pages with CSS, but don't want to use front page.

Admirable, but I wouldn't use Word for this either. It generates the
worst HTML on the planet. Use GoodPage, or PageSpinner, or (this is what
I use) BBEdit along with Style Master. m.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

You are on a MacWord group. You need to ask WinWord questions on a general
Word group. For a better answer, be sure to include the link to the
instructions you are trying to follow.

If you have FrontPage, use it. It's much better than Word for webpages,
*especially* for simple pages. If you don't have it, consider using
anything but Word for webpages. I assume Mozilla has a Composer module on
Windows? That would be free.

The entire principle of CSS is contrary to the way that Word creates
webpages, I should think.

 

[matt neuburg]

You are on a MacWord group. You need to ask WinWord questions on a general
Word group.

Sorry, Daiya, I assumed that this *was* a MacWord question (and the OP
was saying that instructions for WinWord were not working on Mac). m.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Sorry, Daiya, I assumed that this *was* a MacWord question (and the OP
was saying that instructions for WinWord were not working on Mac). m.

Equally as possible, probably more. I was using "don't want to use
FrontPage" as a Win indicator since there is no Mac FrontPage, plus I
noticed the other day that one of the MS approaches to the newsgroups has us
as the first group listed under Word. But actually the OP was using Google,
so that bit was irrelevant.

Oh well, advice for both cases has been given, so it's all good. She can
always ask for more.

DM

 

[Shelley]

Dalya--
This is a Mac/Word Question. I am using Mac G4 with MS Office. The only
documentation I could find was in the WOrd for WIndows portion of the
Microsoft Website.

Shelley

 

[Shelley]

Matt-
You are correct. THis indeed is a Mac/Word question, i.e. as a newby
here, MS Word for Macintosh. I don't know why you are apologizing-
thanks for your help here.

Shelley

 

[Helpful Harry]

I cannot find any references and resources from Microsoft to help me
attach CSS to word documents. There are instructions for this in the
Word for Windows documentation on the web, but the steps don't apply.
When I go to the Tools/Templates and Addins I find no Linked CSS, as
the instructions indicate. In fact, There is nothing there other than a
normal template. I try to link to a CSS that I've downloaded, but can't
do anything. Does anyone have recommendations? I want to create simple
web pages with CSS, but don't want to use front page.

Thanks for your help.

You'd be better off using a proper web design application. Despite what
many companies like to try and make you believe, NONE of the
applications that got an "HTML export" option tacked into them are
really any good for creating web pages, unless the pages are EXTREMELY
simple - that includes Word, AppleWorks, PageMaker, etc. The fad a
while back of shovelling in the "HTML export" option into almost every
application was more of a sales gimmick than anything useful.


Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

 

[Shelley]

Thanks, Harry-
I'm trying to find a really easy way to develop web pages. Its not the
HTML- its the design, and I want to take a design and fill in content
and publish, so I assumed I could do this with MS Word. Which Mac
packages do you recommend that are easy?

SHelley

 

[Kurt]

Thanks, Harry-
I'm trying to find a really easy way to develop web pages. Its not the
HTML- its the design, and I want to take a design and fill in content
and publish, so I assumed I could do this with MS Word. Which Mac
packages do you recommend that are easy?

SHelley

I use Adobe Golive, but like everything these days, still has a learning
curve.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Thanks, Harry-
I'm trying to find a really easy way to develop web pages. Its not the
HTML- its the design, and I want to take a design and fill in content
and publish, so I assumed I could do this with MS Word. Which Mac
packages do you recommend that are easy?

If you know HTML or some other markup language, than any text editor can
work.

But it sounds like you need a program where you can say "I want it to look
this way" and the program handles putting together the HTML or other markup
language to make it look that way. Is that right? These are usually called
WYSIWYG editors. If so, then the Mozilla Suite includes a Composer module
that will help you with that. It's free, so that might be a good place to
start. I know the manual includes some tutorials.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/

The market leader is Dreamweaver, and it's competitor is Adobe GoLive, but
those are both pretty expensive, though they do have 30 day trials. I'm not
sure which programs are in the middle--others may have better suggestions.

What do you mean by "take a design"? Where is this design coming from?

Any text editor or web design program should let you link an existing CSS
file to the page you create. Some will offer a "link CSS" command--if they
don't, you might have to learn 1 line of markup language to link it.

There's a whole lot of info on the web--the resources here
http://webdesign.about.com/
I've found to be pretty helpful (skim the left sidebar for tutorials, etc)

 

[Kurt]

If you know HTML or some other markup language, than any text editor can
work.

But it sounds like you need a program where you can say "I want it to look
this way" and the program handles putting together the HTML or other markup
language to make it look that way. Is that right? These are usually called
WYSIWYG editors. If so, then the Mozilla Suite includes a Composer module
that will help you with that. It's free, so that might be a good place to
start. I know the manual includes some tutorials.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/

The market leader is Dreamweaver, and it's competitor is Adobe GoLive, but
those are both pretty expensive, though they do have 30 day trials. I'm not
sure which programs are in the middle--others may have better suggestions.

Dreamweaver is more a favorite with the programmers and hand coders,
GoLive, IMHO, is more intuitive for those more graphically oriented.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hi Kurt,

I use Adobe Golive, but like everything these days, still has a learning
curve.

A lot of people don't like GoLive.
Dreamweaver is nice - but expensive
Nvu is free... (and not so bad),


Corentin

 

[Kurt]

Hi Kurt,


A lot of people don't like GoLive.
Dreamweaver is nice - but expensive
Nvu is free... (and not so bad),


Corentin

Don't know why - I've used both, and as a graphic designer, find it far
easier to use. But then again, that's why I use Macs!

 

[Kurt]

Hi Kurt,


A lot of people don't like GoLive.
Dreamweaver is nice - but expensive
Nvu is free... (and not so bad),

Free is good, if you aren't planning on doing a lot of serious web work.

 

[Helpful Harry]

Don't know why - I've used both, and as a graphic designer, find it far
easier to use. But then again, that's why I use Macs!

I've used both GoLive and Dreamweaver too, but I prefer Dreamweaver,
partly because it seems faster on my Mac and simply more consistent. Of
course, with Adobe buying out Macromedia and creating basically their
own little monopoly in the graphic industry we might all have to get
used to GoLive. (

The other "major player" is Freeway which is reportedly easy to use,
but it can easily produce bloated, slow loading websites because it
converts lots of things to GIF and JPG images.

I can't say I've tried it or Nvu though. There's probably other
shareware / freeware webpage editors around too.



Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

 

[Helpful Harry]

Thanks, Harry-
I'm trying to find a really easy way to develop web pages. Its not the
HTML- its the design, and I want to take a design and fill in content
and publish, so I assumed I could do this with MS Word. Which Mac
packages do you recommend that are easy?

Word and all the other applications with HTML export / Save As options
can usually handle VERY VERY simple pages, ie. one column of text with
a sprinkling of images, but don't bother trying to do anything even
remotely fancy. They're simply not designed to do that and you'll end
up with a mess that looks nothing like it's supposed too.

Unfortunately there's nothing "easy" about web page design ... at least
not if you want to do it properly and have pages that work on the
various near-non-standard web browsers. Plus NONE of the web design
software is that great and you have to get your hands dirty with HTML
code at some stage, even if it's just to do a tidy up at the end to rid
the code of useless tags that litter it.

The major players are Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver (possibly
disappearing soon) and Softpress Freeway. None of those are that cheap
or particularly easy to use, but they do all offer demo versions that
you can download and try (if you've got a fast Internet connection or a
lot of spare time) - demo versions also often appear on the free
CD-ROMs / DVDs on magazine covers too.

If you're a student or know a student you can get BIG discounts on most
software, as long as you're not using it for business use (ie. you
can't run a web design business using "educational" versions of the
software).

As someone else said, there's Nvu which is free. I've never tried it,
but the old saying usually applies: "you get what you pay for". It
might be worth trying though.

There's a list of various web design software with brief descriptions
and links at http://www.pure-mac.com/webed.html , but not all of that
is for "page layout" / WYSIWYG editing.




Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Shelley:

I am afraid it doesn't matter whether you are using WinWord or MacWord,
there is no way to attach a CSS to a document from within Word

I think that's coming in the next version (You can attach stylesheets to an
XML file in WinWord 2003).

Here's how I do it:

1) Create the start of your web page

2) Save it

3) Set Word>Preferences>General>Confirm conversions on open to ON

4) Close and re-open the web page

5) When prompted, set the TYPE to "Text File"

Instead of a WYSYWYG view, the web page will open as raw text.

6) Type your CSS link into the Head division by hand.

7) Save and close the document, then switch off Confirm conversions and
re-open it.

Once the link is there, it will stay there. Make your other pages by
copying the first.

Cheers

Dalya--
This is a Mac/Word Question. I am using Mac G4 with MS Office. The only
documentation I could find was in the WOrd for WIndows portion of the
Microsoft Website.

Shelley

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Harry/Guys/Girls:

Can we have a think about how we're approaching this??

The user has asked how to add a Cascading Style sheet to a Word HTML file.
If you know a better method than the one I use, then please share it.

However, my point is that advising users that there are any number of
"better" HTML editors out there is not helping the user. Telling the user
how awful you consider Word's HTML is, is not helpful either.

Now, I happen to agree with you, there are better HTML editors than Word out
there. But please give our users credit for a modicum of brain-power
They are doing the very best they can. If they had a choice of being able
to afford better software, chances are they would exercise that choice. If
they had the training to use professional-level software, chances are they
would. If they had the time available to learn a new application package,
chances are they would do that too.

This user has come to us because she wants to create SIMPLE web pages in
Word. NOW. Word is all she has. There are reasons for that, and they're
none of our business

I get equally fed up with shops that try to sell me something other than
what I asked for. I feel like shouting if I WANTED "fries with that", I
woulda said so...

Similarly, those of us who carry on forever about how bad Word's HTML is
have missed the point Word doesn't write HTML. Never did. It has
always written XML. Marketing made the product group change the name on the
menu because they thought users couldn't understand and wanted to "make
things simple". They have created years of confusion instead...

They chose XML for Word because they knew HTML was not good enough. HTML
will not describe a Word Document sufficiently accurately to store all of
the information. You have to use XML. Word is not trying to make "Web
Pages" -- it's trying to make "Office Documents that work in a browser."

That's a different task. You can't do it in HTML. You need XML to render a
Word document in a Browser. And Word does a very good job of that.

There are other products around that are better if you are going to make
websites. I use one myself, to maintain www.word.mvps.org. But some of
them cost more than a thousand dollars. And chances are a particular user
will not get a "better result" from them than they will from Word -- unless
they can spend a few months learning those applications and web coding.

There are users out there who simply want to put photos of the cat and dog
on the web. Word is fine for that. And that's what they're asking...

Now: OUR job is to help that user do what she wants, with the time,
software and training she has right now. Are WE doing the best WE can?

'Scuse the rant

You'd be better off using a proper web design application. Despite what
many companies like to try and make you believe, NONE of the
applications that got an "HTML export" option tacked into them are
really any good for creating web pages, unless the pages are EXTREMELY
simple - that includes Word, AppleWorks, PageMaker, etc. The fad a
while back of shovelling in the "HTML export" option into almost every
application was more of a sales gimmick than anything useful.


Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Kurt]

I've used both GoLive and Dreamweaver too, but I prefer Dreamweaver,
partly because it seems faster on my Mac and simply more consistent. Of
course, with Adobe buying out Macromedia and creating basically their
own little monopoly in the graphic industry we might all have to get
used to GoLive. (

I actually think that GL will be downplayed.
Adobe goes for marketshare.