Percentage Reduction Of Text

[Rafael Montserrat]

Word 2004
OS X 10.4.7

Hi,

I'm making HTML pages that I transfer to the description window on eBay's
sell page. I know how to do that. What I can't figure out is this: I make
my first document in Word, then turn it into an .htm document. I find that
in my original text compostition I used font sizes that make the lettering
in the ad too large. I have different fonts and different font sizes in the
document. I have tried selecting the text, going to Format>Font>Character
Spacing>Scale, and scaled to lower percentages. In the word document the
whole body of text shrinks the way I want it to. Then I "Save As Web
..HTML", then View>HTML, then select>copy the HTML and paste it into the eBay
window.

When I "PreviewMy Description" eBay produces a window and the HTML shows as
my original Word text. The trouble is, the size of the lettering doesn't
change. It stays at what was the original 100% size. In
Format>Font>Character Spacing>Scale I have tried 4 or 5 different
percentages of scale but it makes no difference.

I've also fooled around in spacing and position, but I get lost at that
point.

And my point is ... I would like to know how to downsize the document so
that it downsizes in the final eBay copy.

Thanks,

Rafael

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Yikes! Eek! Horrors!

Please don't paste HTML from Word into an eBay page. Word's HTML is
designed to let Word reconstitute a Word document from it, and it adds a
bunch of extra stuff which just isn't needed in eBay. Basically, if you
intend to look at/touch the HTML at all, don't use Word to do webpages.

I'm guessing that no one here has any idea how to answer your question,
because if they wanted to customize webpages, they wouldn't use Word.

I suggest you try the free and wysiwyg Nvu--for simple pages, I'm guessing
using it will be pretty similar to using Word, B icon for bold, etc. The
HTML you get from Nvu will probably paste to eBay much better, as it should
be pretty standard HTML that is designed to look fine in any browser (which
Word's HTML is not designed for!).
http://nvu.com/index.php

Daiya

PS.

I have different fonts and different font sizes in the
document.

It's suggested by web designers that too many font changes and size changes
on the web can be a bad thing.

PPS.

I have tried selecting the text, going to Format>Font>Character
Spacing>Scale, and scaled to lower percentages. In the word document the
whole body of text shrinks the way I want it to.

Thanks. Amazing. I had no idea that was there.

Daiya

 

[CyberTaz]

Just one point to expand on Daiya's quite excellent reply... and I'm not
100% sure of this, but -

I believe your problem is that the Font Scaling feature is internal to Word
and there is no equivalent in HTML. Therefore Word knows to print & display
the text at X% of the specified font size, but if it is 18 pt it gets output
to the web file as 18 pt, *not* X% of 18 pt.

 

[Rafael Montserrat]

Thanks for the informative replies and the <nvu.com/index.php>.

After I wrote you yesterday, I went back to work on the ad, gave up on
trying to scale down, and re-wrote my original text using smaller font sizes
all around, still keeping relative large and small fonts, color, bold,
italic etc.

When I turned it into HTML, copied that, and pasted it into the ebay window,
it came out fine, just the way I had wanted it to when I tried downscaling
the word document. So it seems I have control over making an html document
that works on eBay, if the settings on my original copy are right.

Looking at the html code, it is really long and complex and an awful lot of
characters to do what I want. But that didn''t seem to thwart the outcome I
was looking for .

Other than finding an easier or better program for this task, is there any
way that doing what I'm doing can mess something up?

Thanks,

Rafael

 

[Phillip Jones]

Daiya's suggestion is great for someone just dabbling in HTML.

But this is a suggestion only if your doing "Major" with Web pages and
keeping up Web sites. Macromedia (Adobe) DreamWeaver. At all cost stay
away from MicroSoft Front Page. Its not any where close to W3C Standards
compatible and most like make your pages only readable by those using
IE. They simply don't work with Mozilla Products (Netscape, Mozilla,
SeaMonkey, FireFox), Opera, OmniWeb, iCab and others to numerous to
mention. There were only two other products created that was as bad or
worse for the Mac OS9 crowd from Adobe. "PageMill" and SiteMill"

Yikes! Eek! Horrors!

Please don't paste HTML from Word into an eBay page. Word's HTML is
designed to let Word reconstitute a Word document from it, and it adds a
bunch of extra stuff which just isn't needed in eBay. Basically, if you
intend to look at/touch the HTML at all, don't use Word to do webpages.

I'm guessing that no one here has any idea how to answer your question,
because if they wanted to customize webpages, they wouldn't use Word.

I suggest you try the free and wysiwyg Nvu--for simple pages, I'm guessing
using it will be pretty similar to using Word, B icon for bold, etc. The
HTML you get from Nvu will probably paste to eBay much better, as it should
be pretty standard HTML that is designed to look fine in any browser (which
Word's HTML is not designed for!).
http://nvu.com/index.php

Daiya

PS.

It's suggested by web designers that too many font changes and size changes
on the web can be a bad thing.

PPS.


Thanks. Amazing. I had no idea that was there.

Daiya

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
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[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Rafael,

You should be okay as long as you don't need to do a lot of fussing with the
HTML that Word creates (which is extremely bloated for most purposes). If
you're able to produce what you're looking for in Word, then you're fine.
But you should check the results in at least the following browsers before
you call the job done: Win IE, Win Firefox, Mac Safari, Mac Firefox.

Beth

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Looking at the html code, it is really long and complex and an awful lot of
characters to do what I want. But that didn''t seem to thwart the outcome I
was looking for .

Other than finding an easier or better program for this task, is there any
way that doing what I'm doing can mess something up?

Probably not today, and probably not for your purposes, except for Beth's
caveat that just because it looks right to you doesn't mean it looks right
in all browsers.

General principles (and I'm no expert, this is just what I've picked up here
and there):

--Messy inefficient code can take longer to load. Of course, no one notices
the milli-milli-second, and even over millions of webpages it doesn't really
seem to make a difference.

--Messy inefficient code comes across as unprofessional.

--Efficient code is more likely to keep working in the future, since that's
the whole point of developing shared standards.

Probably none of these things really apply to your particular situation of
temporary for sale posts on eBay. And I assume you don't copy over the
entire source, but just the part you need.

What might apply, and I have no idea how Word does on this, is accessibility
issues--for instance, if a font size is hardcoded as 14pt, then the ability
for nearsighted people (e.g., me) to hit cmd-+ to upsize all the text in the
browser might not be there. But a superquick test here suggested that isn't
the case.

Daiya

PS. I just looked at Word HTML.

Lots of information about me included at the top. That's not so cool.

 

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

Hi Rafael:

Don't let the perfectionists in here put you off I publish Word HTML
all the time on the web, it's fine! Word will expand the amount of code in
an eBay page by around 700 bytes, extending download time by ... Lesseee
here ... 0.000033333333 seconds... Not many lives will be lost waiting

Or you could waste a couple of days futzing around getting it "perfect" by
hand. Your call Much of http://www.word.mvps.org is pasted straight in
from Word

However: The property you are setting is "Kerning", which is not supported
in HTML. Word can encode it in its XML-enhanced version of HTML, but most
browsers can't render the result.

Format your text using either points, or pixels, or per cent and it will
work fine. However, not from Format>Font>Character Spacing>Scale!

I rarely use percentages for sizes in HTML, because figuring out what the
percentage will be based upon is very complex (particularly within a complex
page full of DIV tags such as eBay).

Stick to Points or Pixels

Hope this helps

Word 2004
OS X 10.4.7

Hi,

I'm making HTML pages that I transfer to the description window on eBay's
sell page. I know how to do that. What I can't figure out is this: I make
my first document in Word, then turn it into an .htm document. I find that
in my original text compostition I used font sizes that make the lettering
in the ad too large. I have different fonts and different font sizes in the
document. I have tried selecting the text, going to Format>Font>Character
Spacing>Scale, and scaled to lower percentages. In the word document the
whole body of text shrinks the way I want it to. Then I "Save As Web
.HTML", then View>HTML, then select>copy the HTML and paste it into the eBay

window.

When I "PreviewMy Description" eBay produces a window and the HTML shows as
my original Word text. The trouble is, the size of the lettering doesn't
change. It stays at what was the original 100% size. In
Format>Font>Character Spacing>Scale I have tried 4 or 5 different
percentages of scale but it makes no difference.

I've also fooled around in spacing and position, but I get lost at that
point.

And my point is ... I would like to know how to downsize the document so
that it downsizes in the final eBay copy.

Thanks,

Rafael

--

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 (0) 4 1209 1410