I have several Word docs (.doc) that I want to get into my site. In their doc form they’re very unattractive. But if I save them as web pages, the layout is really nice and quite attractive. I was wondering
how I might save them as web pages out of Word and then get them into my FWPro document.
how I could then let people download the actual Word document from the page they’re looking at on the site. I realized I have no idea about how to set up downloads. I also have these documents in pdf format, which are also not particularly good looking not as good looking, but I was thinking that if I could get that Word web page into my site, I could let them download either the doc or the pdf depending on which type of download might be easier to implement.
Well, I figured out the answer to 2. Once again it was a question of RTFM. But I still don’t have a clue about 1.
Thanks again,
Martin
On Feb 5, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Rice Martin wrote:
I have several Word docs (.doc) that I want to get into my site. In their doc form they’re very unattractive. But if I save them as web pages, the layout is really nice and quite attractive. I was wondering
how I might save them as web pages out of Word and then get them into my FWPro document.
how I could then let people download the actual Word document from the page they’re looking at on the site. I realized I have no idea about how to set up downloads. I also have these documents in pdf format, which are also not particularly good looking not as good looking, but I was thinking that if I could get that Word web page into my site, I could let them download either the doc or the pdf depending on which type of download might be easier to implement.
if I save them as web pages, the layout is really nice and quite attractive
So this implies that you know the answer to part 1 of Q1 - for part 2 you can FTP these word webpages to your website and then use one of the actions such as Text Link to new window using the Other selector then the External tab to insert the address/URL of the uploaded webpages ie /word_webpages/wordpage1.html
how I could then let people download the actual Word document from the page they’re looking at on the site
Personally I don’t like the idea of downloading Word Docs because of the potential threat of macro viruses etc. and some companies wont permit it through their systems!
But it is easy to achieve in FW using either Link to File or Link to PDF or Graphic Link to File or Graphic Link to PDF - take your Pic as FW will upload these files for you after you have selected them.
There’s a way to do this (but not in the very latest version of
Freeway – it seems broken in 5.5 but works in 5.4), but you need to
step back a bit and think about a few other things first.
Freeway is not an HTML editor. At all. Full stop. You can trick it
into consuming HTML content and re-playing it word-for-word, but it
will treat it like a black box, like a QuickTime movie, to be more
precise.
Word is a truly awful HTML generator. It writes acres of non-
standard, useless, floofy code, and is even capable of creating hidden
characters that will render your entire standard page blank in IE. Not
kidding, and it’s really kind of ironic.
Most HTML Editors (Dreamweaver, BBEdit, even JavaScript rich text
editors like CKEditor) ship with a “Word HTML Filter” feature which is
meant to strip out the more egregious of these junk tags. When a
commercial software product invests its precious development time on a
feature (which they will need to support, ad perpetua) designed to
remove another application’s “feature”, you had better take a serious
sideways look at said “feature”.
Now that we’ve cleared the air about why Word is not an HTML
generator, here’s how you can go ahead and use it as such anyway.
If you don’t already own a Serious Programmer’s Text Editor,
download the free and fabulous TextWrangler from http://barebones.com
Generate your HTML versions of the documents using Word. I won’t
tell anyone.
Open the HTML in your text editor. If you own BBEdit or
Dreamweaver, check the help system for the precise way to use that
application’s “Word Cleaner” feature. If you don’t, then you may have
trouble later, can’t say for sure.
All HTML follows this structure in terms of outline: doctype, html,
head, /head, body, /body, /html. What you need to do is to isolate
all of the content that sits inside the body and /body tags, and
delete EVERYTHING else, including the enclosing body tags. You should
not have a body tag when you’re done, only the content of that body tag.
Save the file as plain text, and give it the filename
extension .inc when you do. You can leave .html in there, as long as
the final filename is filename.html.inc
In Freeway, draw an HTML box where you want this “html” to appear
on your page. While that box is selected, choose File / Import from
the main menu and navigate to your inc file. When you’re done, you
will see a little plug-in icon in the corner of your HTML box and none
of the actual content will appear in your designed page. It’s a good
idea to leave the entire page below this element blank, so as to
accommodate any amount of content your Word file may contain.
Preview in your browser, and you may see all of your content in one
Freeway-designed page. You may also see a lot of unstyled text where
Word once had made a lot of extra styles for you. This is difficult to
fix without a lot of detective work in your text editor.
Now if all of this seems like a lot of effort for little gain, you are
correct – it is that. What you may find a lot easier (and even
possible in 5.5) is to simply copy the text out of each Word document,
paste it into TextWrangler to remove all of the hidden crap, copy it
out of TextWrangler again (as pure, plain text) and paste it into a
new Freeway page where you have set up the text styles and page layout
you desire. Get into a rhythm and you will be able to do several (or
dozens of) pages an hour, maybe more if your text doesn’t have a lot
of extra local styling. And then the code generated will be free from
annoying artifacts and will appear precisely the way you want it to.
Walter
On Feb 5, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Rice Martin wrote:
how I might save them as web pages out of Word and then get them
into my FWPro document.
Thanks, David, I appreciate it. Hadn’t thought about the dangers of the Word docs though I’m aware of it. But that’s no trouble, I can have the .pdf file as the downloaded one.
Thanks again,
Martin
On Feb 5, 2011, at 10:13 AM, DeltaDave wrote:
if I save them as web pages, the layout is really nice and quite attractive
So this implies that you know the answer to part 1 of Q1 - for part 2 you can FTP these word webpages to your website and then use one of the actions such as Text Link to new window using the Other selector then the External tab to insert the address/URL of the uploaded webpages ie /word_webpages/wordpage1.html
how I could then let people download the actual Word document from the page they’re looking at on the site
Personally I don’t like the idea of downloading Word Docs because of the potential threat of macro viruses etc. and some companies wont permit it through their systems!
But it is easy to achieve in FW using either Link to File or Link to PDF or Graphic Link to File or Graphic Link to PDF - take your Pic as FW will upload these files for you after you have selected them.
This is terrific! Thank you for taking the time to spell all of this out for me.
Clearly the last alternative is the most attractive and best. I can see how I can get into a rhythm there, too. I do have TextWrangler already. Fortunately there is very simple styling on these pages, essentially just a little bolding. I can make a new master for this set of pages and then proceed as you’ve outlined.
Thanks again for the help.
Martin
On Feb 5, 2011, at 10:36 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
There’s a way to do this (but not in the very latest version of Freeway – it seems broken in 5.5 but works in 5.4), but you need to step back a bit and think about a few other things first.
Freeway is not an HTML editor. At all. Full stop. You can trick it into consuming HTML content and re-playing it word-for-word, but it will treat it like a black box, like a QuickTime movie, to be more precise.
Word is a truly awful HTML generator. It writes acres of non-standard, useless, floofy code, and is even capable of creating hidden characters that will render your entire standard page blank in IE. Not kidding, and it’s really kind of ironic.
Most HTML Editors (Dreamweaver, BBEdit, even JavaScript rich text editors like CKEditor) ship with a “Word HTML Filter” feature which is meant to strip out the more egregious of these junk tags. When a commercial software product invests its precious development time on a feature (which they will need to support, ad perpetua) designed to remove another application’s “feature”, you had better take a serious sideways look at said “feature”.
Now that we’ve cleared the air about why Word is not an HTML generator, here’s how you can go ahead and use it as such anyway.
If you don’t already own a Serious Programmer’s Text Editor, download the free and fabulous TextWrangler from http://barebones.com
Generate your HTML versions of the documents using Word. I won’t tell anyone.
Open the HTML in your text editor. If you own BBEdit or Dreamweaver, check the help system for the precise way to use that application’s “Word Cleaner” feature. If you don’t, then you may have trouble later, can’t say for sure.
All HTML follows this structure in terms of outline: doctype, html, head, /head, body, /body, /html. What you need to do is to isolate all of the content that sits inside the body and /body tags, and delete EVERYTHING else, including the enclosing body tags. You should not have a body tag when you’re done, only the content of that body tag.
Save the file as plain text, and give it the filename extension .inc when you do. You can leave .html in there, as long as the final filename is filename.html.inc
In Freeway, draw an HTML box where you want this “html” to appear on your page. While that box is selected, choose File / Import from the main menu and navigate to your inc file. When you’re done, you will see a little plug-in icon in the corner of your HTML box and none of the actual content will appear in your designed page. It’s a good idea to leave the entire page below this element blank, so as to accommodate any amount of content your Word file may contain.
Preview in your browser, and you may see all of your content in one Freeway-designed page. You may also see a lot of unstyled text where Word once had made a lot of extra styles for you. This is difficult to fix without a lot of detective work in your text editor.
Now if all of this seems like a lot of effort for little gain, you are correct – it is that. What you may find a lot easier (and even possible in 5.5) is to simply copy the text out of each Word document, paste it into TextWrangler to remove all of the hidden crap, copy it out of TextWrangler again (as pure, plain text) and paste it into a new Freeway page where you have set up the text styles and page layout you desire. Get into a rhythm and you will be able to do several (or dozens of) pages an hour, maybe more if your text doesn’t have a lot of extra local styling. And then the code generated will be free from annoying artifacts and will appear precisely the way you want it to.
Walter
On Feb 5, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Rice Martin wrote:
how I might save them as web pages out of Word and then get them into my FWPro document.
Walter, just wanted to say your suggestion is working like a charm. I’m really pleased with how well the process is going.
Thanks again,
Martin
On Feb 5, 2011, at 10:36 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
There’s a way to do this (but not in the very latest version of Freeway – it seems broken in 5.5 but works in 5.4), but you need to step back a bit and think about a few other things first.
Freeway is not an HTML editor. At all. Full stop. You can trick it into consuming HTML content and re-playing it word-for-word, but it will treat it like a black box, like a QuickTime movie, to be more precise.
Word is a truly awful HTML generator. It writes acres of non-standard, useless, floofy code, and is even capable of creating hidden characters that will render your entire standard page blank in IE. Not kidding, and it’s really kind of ironic.
Most HTML Editors (Dreamweaver, BBEdit, even JavaScript rich text editors like CKEditor) ship with a “Word HTML Filter” feature which is meant to strip out the more egregious of these junk tags. When a commercial software product invests its precious development time on a feature (which they will need to support, ad perpetua) designed to remove another application’s “feature”, you had better take a serious sideways look at said “feature”.
Now that we’ve cleared the air about why Word is not an HTML generator, here’s how you can go ahead and use it as such anyway.
If you don’t already own a Serious Programmer’s Text Editor, download the free and fabulous TextWrangler from http://barebones.com
Generate your HTML versions of the documents using Word. I won’t tell anyone.
Open the HTML in your text editor. If you own BBEdit or Dreamweaver, check the help system for the precise way to use that application’s “Word Cleaner” feature. If you don’t, then you may have trouble later, can’t say for sure.
All HTML follows this structure in terms of outline: doctype, html, head, /head, body, /body, /html. What you need to do is to isolate all of the content that sits inside the body and /body tags, and delete EVERYTHING else, including the enclosing body tags. You should not have a body tag when you’re done, only the content of that body tag.
Save the file as plain text, and give it the filename extension .inc when you do. You can leave .html in there, as long as the final filename is filename.html.inc
In Freeway, draw an HTML box where you want this “html” to appear on your page. While that box is selected, choose File / Import from the main menu and navigate to your inc file. When you’re done, you will see a little plug-in icon in the corner of your HTML box and none of the actual content will appear in your designed page. It’s a good idea to leave the entire page below this element blank, so as to accommodate any amount of content your Word file may contain.
Preview in your browser, and you may see all of your content in one Freeway-designed page. You may also see a lot of unstyled text where Word once had made a lot of extra styles for you. This is difficult to fix without a lot of detective work in your text editor.
Now if all of this seems like a lot of effort for little gain, you are correct – it is that. What you may find a lot easier (and even possible in 5.5) is to simply copy the text out of each Word document, paste it into TextWrangler to remove all of the hidden crap, copy it out of TextWrangler again (as pure, plain text) and paste it into a new Freeway page where you have set up the text styles and page layout you desire. Get into a rhythm and you will be able to do several (or dozens of) pages an hour, maybe more if your text doesn’t have a lot of extra local styling. And then the code generated will be free from annoying artifacts and will appear precisely the way you want it to.
Walter
On Feb 5, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Rice Martin wrote:
how I might save them as web pages out of Word and then get them into my FWPro document.