Devra,
By the way, I didn't read your original post very well. You did say that you
were using Pub 2007 and I just didn't notice. I tend to assume people are
using 2003 and thus the directions about VML...sorry.
You have fallen into the common trap of using print document formatting,
fonts, and design techniques. Web pages are a different medium, and you
can't convert everything you do on a print document to html. You have to
change your mindset.
This is probably why the hyperlinks do not work on an MAC, or in FireFox as
Mike points out. Everything including the links are converted to images in
FF, and this kills the links.
You should design and test your Publisher webpages so that they work in both
IE and in FF. If you accomplish that goal, then I would bet that your MAC
friends will also find the links work.
The first thing you should do is download and install FireFox.
http://en.www.mozilla.com/en/firefox/
It is a relatively small file size and a quick download...and is free. Then
you can install it, but opt out of making it the default browser, so you can
still use IE as the default.
Then when you want to test your Pub webpages in FF, just Publish to the Web
and direct the html output, the index.htm file and the index_files folder,
to your computer where you can easily find them. I use a folder on the
Desktop. Then open FireFox and go to File > Open File and browse to where
you put the index.htm file. This way you can preview and test the page
before you upload it.
As you now have FF installed and have produced test files, when you open
either your internet home page or the test "index.htm" file of your web site
on your computer, try to left click, drag, select any text on the page and
you will notice that you can't. It has all been converted to an image. And
of course the hyperlinks are dead.
To fix your page so it will work in FF, you are going to have to change some
stuff...and should probably redesign most of the page. First to the stuff:
Run the Design Checker in Publisher and see what it finds are design
problems. It will likely find most of the things I noticed, and perhaps
more.
First of all if you are using a Master Page in your document, then don't.
This works fine in a print doc, but not a web doc. If you were using a
master page and have fixed all the issues found by the design checker, then
much of the rest of this reply may not apply.
You probably need to get rid of that green border. It appears that you drew
lines around the content and in doing so you created one big image in
FireFox.
http://www.islandtimerealty.com/index_files/image408.gif
This means everything within it is also converted to an image and that the
page is forced to be as long as the image, even though the page length isn't
needed. Publisher normally automatically ends the page after the last design
element, and thus will produce custom length pages. In this case, you end up
you forcing a 4608 pixel length page...the length of that border.
Another possible reason for everything being converted to an image is that
you have apparently "covered" the background image that was in the original
publication. It is in the code, and in the background, but it does not show
on your page. Here is the background image:
http://www.islandtimerealty.com/index_files/image321.gif
Here is the image that you "covered" the background with:
http://www.islandtimerealty.com/index_files/image809.gif
This is a white colored image that is 1344 X 4608! I am not sure how you did
this, but if you added the image to cover the background or a white filled
text box, that was the wrong approach. If you want a solid white background
on your web pages go to Format > Background. Under Apply a background select
the white color. That will replace image321.gif as the background image, and
you will not need the white image or text box you added to the Pub document
as a background. Fix this and you may fix the page length problem and
everything turning into an image when you create the html.
The next problem to fix is the fonts you have chosen to use. Papyrus is not
a web friendly font, and as a result Publisher converts it to an image, and
kills the links. Change your nav bar button fonts to a web friendly font.
Select the text, go to Format > Font and in the dialog make sure that Show
only Web fonts are selected. Choose one of those. Test to see if this alone
will fix the problem of killing the link in FF. You may also have to remove
the border on those text boxes. If you prefer to use a non-web friendly font
in a title or some other way, then might be ok if you are ok with it being
an image. However, that text will probably look a little fuzzy as an
image...and of course the search engine robots won't be able to index your
page cuz they don't read images...your choice.
Now those are just the problems I caught on your home page...there may be
more. Remember some things you do in print, just won't convert to html. Here
is a good reference and though it is talking about formatting an email
message in html, many if not most of the formatting issues it discusses also
apply to web pages. So you can use this list to help you troubleshoot any
other issues you have on your page(s). Reference: Tips and troubleshooting
for sending a publication page as an e-mail message:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HP010390591033.aspx?pid=CH062524821033
Now I also asserted that it would probably be a good idea to do a complete
redesign. As you will already be making a lot of changes that will probably
require you to change your layout, I would suggest that you reconsider your
page width. If you purposely chose to make your page 1344 +/- pixels wide,
then in my opinion that is a major mistake. That is way too wide.
If you go to Edit > Page Setup you will notice that you have three default
web page widths of 600, 760 and new to Pub 2007, 984 pixel wide pages. And
if you see these measurements in inches then back up a step and go to Tools
Options and on the General Tab change the Measurement units to pixels from
inches. It is much better to design a web page using pixels rather than
inches. But I digress...there are reasons the widest default page width is
only 984 pixels wide. The primary one being that pages wider than that are
going to require horizontal scrolling on way too many users' computers. Yes,
monitors are coming bigger and bigger, but think about the 14" and 15"
screen laptop users. Chances are they are going to have to scroll sideways
to read your page, and guess what...they won't. They will leave the page
rather than deal with the hassle.
With this said, though you can probably make your pages work at their
current width in FF and thus on MACs, since you are already redesigning and
redoing much of the page anyway, I would suggest that you also change the
width of your page to either 760 pixels wide or at most the 984 pixels and
change your layout to fit that width. The people that view the page will
thank you.
As you redesign, you should also read this: Understanding background padding
in a Publisher web (aka white space) :
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/archive/2006/01/07/80563.aspx
Until we figure out a way to do it with code, the best you can do is
simulate centering your web page in 2007.
OK, now that I have written a small book, I will turn it over to you. I know
I have suggested a lot of work, but if you want a functional web site, you
will have to make changes. Work through what you can, and if you need more
help please post back with the specific problem and the URL pointing to it,
and we will try to help more.
Good luck.
DavidF
