Trim out MS-Fat from Pub HTML

[Electric Monk]

Hi all.
I'm sure this has been touched on before, but I can't find a
definitive answer on the newsgroups or microsoft download site.
Is there a tool or methodology that will help me trim all the excess
code from a web page I created in Publisher 2003? The page itself is
static and has no imbedded objects, yet still weighs in at 595k.

TIA

Brett Monten

 

[Rob Giordano \(Crash\)]

The answer is no...well maybe you could if you were a supreme code guru with
a lot of time on your hands...but if you were you'd not be using Publisher
to build web sites.

You is you understood...not you personally.



--

Rob Giordano
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage





| Hi all.
| I'm sure this has been touched on before, but I can't find a
| definitive answer on the newsgroups or microsoft download site.
| Is there a tool or methodology that will help me trim all the excess
| code from a web page I created in Publisher 2003? The page itself is
| static and has no imbedded objects, yet still weighs in at 595k.
|
| TIA
|
| Brett Monten
|

 

[DavidF]

Brett,

Publisher does not produce the most efficient code, but you can take steps
to minimize it.

Open you Pub file > Tools > Options > Web tab and uncheck "Rely on VML..."
and "Allow PNG...".

If you do have any images Reference: Compress graphics file sizes to create
smaller
Publisher Web pages:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HA011266301033.aspx

When you are ready to produce your html output, use File > Publish to the
Web to produce filtered html. Don't do a File > Save As a web page in Pub
2003. That includes a lot of Office tags and is unfiltered and more bloated.

DavidF

 

[Electric Monk]

Thanks to both. The office tags were the main problem, I think, and
publishing filtered helped a bit.

Brett

 

[DavidF]

You are welcome and thanks for posting back.

By the way, after making the changes, how big was the page?

DavidF

 

[Electric Monk]

The index.htm file went from 595kb down to 74kb, and the size of the
index_files folder reduced from 1.14mb to 732kb. The size of this
folder is mainly due to me creating a photo gallery page and not
cleaning it up yet (it still has the 10 or so sample pictures in it).

Looking at the HTML source, it's still pretty crappy, but I guess you
have to expect some compromise for having a milti-purpose user-
friendly code generator, don't you?

In answer to Rob's point about being able to code HTML, I can and have
done it before with several different tools, but wanted to build a
site quickly. I'd never used Publisher for this kind of thing before,
but I've seen what other Office products do when generating HTML, so I
shouldn't have been surprised.

thanks again.

Brett

 

[DavidF]

Brett,

Thanks. I was curious to see some hard data. Publisher is a DTP that is in
essence is converting print formatted publications to html. The process is
very inefficient and results in a lot of code.

Though you unchecked "Rely on VML..." the coding engine still uses VML to a
degree. If you insert a print resolution, oversized image, Publisher will
make copies of the image in various formats and resolutions, with the goal
of rendering the best picture for whatever browser is used....with mixed
results....and a bloated index_files folder. Resizing and optimizing the
images for the web before you insert them into the publication and sizing
them at 100% gives you the best results. Or actually importing the images is
really the best, but that gets away from the goal of building the site
"fast".

You can compress the images significantly from within Publisher...the fast
if not the best way.

Reference: Compress graphics file sizes to create smaller
Publisher Web pages:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HA011266301033.aspx


DavidF