Hi Shelley:
Sorry to be late getting back. I've been sitting on Jetplanes getting from
Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles. We're all on our way to the annual
conference at Microsoft
One of the functions of an MVP, which you may regard as valuable although it
tends to be Microsoft's least favourite aspect of us, is to reset
Microsoft's expectations and remove their delusions of adequacy. We do this
once a year: as Daiya's students may tell you, this year Microsoft should be
afraid. Very, very afraid
Since you are computer-savvy, let me approach your question a little
indirectly. I get extremely frustrated by all the well-meaning "advice" I
see out here about Microsoft, Word, and HTML. Much of it has more to do
with religious conviction than technical reality, and a proportion of it is
completely devoid of business practicalities such as "How long will this
take, and just exactly what will this all COST?"
1) Hypertext Markup Language is an encoding standard that stores "text".
Not "web pages" -- 'text'. It is commonly used for web pages, but that's
only one of the zillion kinds of text it can describe. People who miss this
somewhat fundamental point really have not grasped the basics of HTML, and
you need to treat whatever follows their intake of breath with some reserve
2) Microsoft Word employs HTML to describe Microsoft Word documents. A
Microsoft Word document is potentially vastly richer, more flexible and more
complex than even the most stupendous web pages. Or to put that another
way, a "web page" is a simplistic cut-down of a Word document.
3) The point I am trying to make is that Word is not trying to make "web
pages", and never was. Word is trying to store your document in a format
that can be read by a modern web browser. At this task, it tends to succeed
brilliantly: Word 2003 on the PC can save a document in such a way that if
you throw it up in a solid browser such as FireFox or IE 6, you seriously
may not be able to tell the difference between the document version and the
web version. Apple's Safari will struggle and wilt under the challenge: but
it had different design goals. In the computer industry we have a saying:
Small, Cheap, Powerful: pick any two... Safari is small and cheap
4) OK, so Word's "Users" WILL be trying to make "web pages". Word will do
this, but it's not designed to do so. We can force it, but we have to get
under its skin, and we have to help. All of the building blocks are there,
we just have to put them together.
So to make web pages in Word, the procedure is this:
1) Create your document
2) Save it as HTML
3) Use View>HTML Source to reveal the raw code
4) Select the whole of the STYLE element (on a small web page, this will be
a huge proportion of the code: maybe 80 or 90 per cent). The Style element
occurs just below the </xml><![endif]--> tag. Leave that there, and just
take the style element, all the way down to </Style> Cut it.
5) Create a new document. Paste in the Style element.
6) Remove the line at the top that says <style> and the one at the bottom
that says </style>.
7) Save the remainder as Text Only. Ensure the extension is .CSS. E.g.:
"stylestd.css"
8) Go back to your HTML document and add a line like the following:
<link href="stylestd.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
Make sure you specify the relative path from the web page to its stylesheet,
and use forward slashes for the path separators: colons are illegal in HTML.
Remember that in HTML, everything is case-sensitive: be careful how you
capitalise things.
9) Now come out of View Source, and Save the web page again: this time
check the checkbox that says "Save only Display information..."
Word will save the document again, this time stripping much of the
formatting. It will save a new Style Element. This time, go back into HTML
Code view and simply delete the Style element. Check that your stylesheet
line remains there, and SAVE. This time, save as text only
Word will now leave your style settings as you want them, and you have made
a web page relying on CSS formatting. Since the style sheet was
machine-generated by Word, it will be perfect
Since you saved as Text
Only the last time, Word doesn't get a chance to fiddle with the code.
To make subsequent web pages using the same style sheet, you need only save
as Web Page with Display Only checked, then add the style sheet link line
and remove the style element (make sure these web pages come from the same
document or template, so their formatting is already in the stylesheet you
created above).
When you get more practiced, you will find that you can cut out half of the
style sheet's elements: Word writes a style sheet containing every kind of
formatting that "could" be in your document. Most of it "isn't", but Word
has no way to know that when it creates the Style element.
There's a more advanced technique you can use that splits a whole book into
its component web pages and saves the lot in one go. Come back if you need
that one: that's the one I use to create 800 page websites in four hours
No HTML editor will come anywhere NEAR that kind of throughput.
Which is why I say that Word, for certain specific purposes, is one of the
finest web editors there is
You just have to remember the first law of computing: "If at first you
can't find the answer, change the QUESTION!" Whenever people are trying to
persuade you you need a new computer, a new set of software, and years of
training to do something "perfectly" when all you wanted was "good enough
for now", two good questions to use are "How long will this take?" and "How
much will this cost?"
Ask those two questions in computer circles, and the answer will immediately
tell you whether the other person is giving professional advice or maybe
indulging in a little religious dogma
Hope this helps
John-
You are a life saver. This is exactly the answer I was looking for
(didn't know the details) to the question I was asking. I am fully
appreciative of all the answers people gave me about using Dreamweaver
vs. GoLive. You are correct and perceptive in your response to the
list. I was just about to give up and unsubscribe. I do appreciate all
the comments about how poor Word's HTML editor is, but I am not in the
web design business and was just trying to find a simple solution to a
little problem. So, should I disregard the Microsoft Word instructions
on their website and follow your advice?
One other thing- While not a sophisticated web designer or builder, I
am fairly computer savvy and can tell the difference between windows
and Mac (LOL).In fact, I have one of each in my world. I would not have
posted to this group if I was a Windows user, so I was a bit insulted
by the initial posts to me that I perceived as rude. I'm a good online
community builder, and didn't get a warm reception here.
You are a hero- thank you.
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
