Re: Firefox Compatibility, Pub2007

Tech-Archive recommends: Speed Up your PC by fixing your registry

Sigh...

This is a PS to Warden or anybody else that happens upon this thread. I am
sorry Warden that you have been sucked into this nonsense. Just do the
experiment I suggested and you will see how Publisher 2007 works for
yourself. Also here are some MSFT references for you that I should have
included the first time:

Reference: Compress graphics file sizes to create smaller Publisher Web
pages (2003):
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HA011266301033.aspx

Reference: Compress Pictures dialog box (2007):
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100363901033.aspx?pid=CL100605171033

By the way...dpi and ppi are frequently used interchangeably, and the
difference does not change the facts as I explained them. Our troll is just
trying to muddy the waters...

DavidF


"DavidF" <Nope@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23KWmauJwJHA.6068@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Warden,

You are welcome.

While it certainly your choice to use Publisher or another program to
build
your site, be advised that the other person that answered your question is
our resident troll. Unfortunately his primary mission here is to not help
people, it is to convince people to not use Publisher to build websites,
and
sometimes attack those of us that help people here. Even more
unfortunately
he does have some knowledge and can appear credible, but obviously he does
not understand how to use Publisher correctly, as you can tell by his
answer
about what was causing the ftp issue. You probably know the type...just
enough knowledge to be dangerous <g>. Much of the rest of what he had to
say
is also inaccurate, and certainly his suggestion that you need to use a
different program. If you want to stay with Publisher we will be able to
help you work through all the other issues you might have with your site.
Your choice.

I noticed that you are concerned about some of the poor quality images
that
are rendered in FireFox. While you weren't specific I can see that your
'banner' area image needs some tweaking. If you were to look in your
'index_files' folder in thumbnail view on your local computer, you would
see
this image: http://www.alal.co.uk/index_files/image468.gif As you can see
all the elements you have used in your 'banner' have been converted to one
combined, low quality .gif image. This is usually caused by 'grouping'
different elements together. When you do that Publisher makes a combined
image of all the elements that are grouped together and serves up that
image
in FF.

Assuming that is the problem, the fix is probably as simple as ungrouping
the elements from each other. Chances are when you click on any of those
design elements, you will see a grouping icon at the bottom which looks
like
a couple boxes overlapping each other. Just click that icon and this
ungroups the elements from each other. If you don't recognize the grouping
icon, you can also go to Arrange > Ungroup. While grouping elements
together
so that you can drag them around while you are designing and laying out
your
pages is a handy tool, be sure to ungroup them before you publish your web
files.

Now to test this, rather than take the time to upload new web files, when
you 'Publish to the Web' direct your index.htm file and the index_files
folder to somewhere on your computer where you can easily find them. I
direct them to a test folder I keep on my desktop for this purpose. After
publishing new files, go to the 'index.htm' file (your home page) or the
other *.htm files (your other pages) in the 'index_files' folder, right
click > Open with > FireFox. This way you can preview what your pages will
look like in FF before you upload. You can also just open FF > File > Open
File and browse to where you directed your .htm files on your computer if
you prefer.

Now to the follow up on the comments in the second post by our favorite
troll about how Publisher handles images, his answer and information is
again inaccurate and misleading and again demonstrates his ignorance of
how Publisher works. I will explain with a specific example. On your home
page you have this image: http://www.alal.co.uk/index_files/image332.jpg .
I
suspect that after you inserted your original .jpg image you resized the
picture box to get the size and proportion you wanted on your web page. I
also suspect that you then used the 'compress pictures' tool on that image
because it has been 'resampled' from the original size and resolution to a
384 X 256 pixel image at 96 dpi. This is exactly the correct thing to do
with Publisher. Now if you had inserted a large, high resolution image
and
changed the size of the picture box, and not used the 'compress
pictures' tool Publisher would have made either a low resolution .gif
image
copy of that .jpg or possibly a resized jpg for FF and other non-IE
browsers, and also made a copy of the original jpg for IE. Unfortunately
that original high resolution image would take a long time to load in IE
and
if Publisher made a .gif copy for FF it would be low quality. You can test
and confirm this for yourself. Try this experiment.

Open a blank Publisher web page. Insert either your original high
resolution/large .jpg image that we talked about above or another high
resolution image. Now resize the picture box to less than the original
size
of that image. Then without using the 'compress pictures' tool, Publish to
the web and direct your output to that test folder on your desktop. Open
the
index_files folder and look at the contents in thumbnail view (View >
Thumbnails). You will see at least two copies of the image that you just
inserted. It may be two jpg images or a jpg and a gif. Now switch to
Details
view, and if you have the Size showing, notice the difference in file
size...or if you don't have the size showing in Details view you can also
just right click the thumbnail > properties and it will show you the
difference in file size. In fact if you compare the file size of the
larger
one, you will notice that it is the same file size as your original
image...it is simply a copy of that original.

Now, go back to the Pub file > Select the image > and find the 'compress
pictures' button on the Picture Toolbar and click. On the dialog that
comes
up choose 'Web' under 'Target Output'. Now Publish to the Web again and
again go to the index_files folder. Now you will see only one copy of your
image, and that copy will have been resampled and compressed, and it will
be
the image that is rendered in IE and in FF and other browsers. If you open
that copy in a graphics editor such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or
Irfanview which is a good freebie, you will also see that the picture is
now
96dpi. As I said, our resident troll has just enough knowledge to be
dangerous as he is misleading people.

As per his comments about using the Master Page feature in Publisher, once
again I would suggest you ignore him as once again he demonstrates that
not
only does he not understand how Publisher works, but he is dogmatic about
his views even when he is wrong and in spite of when given evidence to the
contrary. Besides one of the biggest advantages of using Publisher is that
you should never need to look at or directly edit the HTML coding in a
Publisher web. You change your pages by changing your design, layout or
formatting in the original Pub file and when you Publish to the web, the
Publisher html coding engine handles all the coding in the background just
as you did by properly moving the design elements off the Master Page.
Much
easier than learning how to write and edit code...

Now, as per the fonts. I notice that you are using 'Cambria'. This is not
a
'web safe font' which are fonts that most people have on their computers.
Select any of your text boxes > Format > Fonts. In that Font dialog notice
the option box 'Show only Web Fonts'. Check that box and now you will see
a
list of the fonts that you can safely use on the web. If you choose to use
a
non-web safe font frequently what will happen is that Publisher will
convert
that text into an image, which as a rule you would not want to do. Text
that
has been converted to an image cannot be read by the search engine webbots
when they index your site, or by text readers. One exception to this rule
in
my opinion would be if you were using a specialty font in a logo, a banner
or some other design element where the design is more important than the
text. In that case you could add an Alt tag to the image, and that would
be
read and indexed by the search engines and read by the text readers. So,
while I did not search out where you were using Cambria, you should
consider
changing the font. Oh, and by the way...it would probably not matter what
program you used to produce your site. If you use a non-web font and the
viewer does not have that font installed on their computer, then the
browser
will usually substitute in what it thinks is a suitable replacement, and
your design will still not be as you intended. Best to use web fonts in a
web page, but if you are using it in a logo, etc. post back and I will
explain how best to use it in that capacity.

Now, as to the text on your navbar buttons. The reason that text is
'fuzzy'
is again because it has been converted to an image for FF. Each button on
your navbar is made up of several design elements. Usually it is a
background image, a text box and a 'hotspot link' box. All those elements
are grouped together and you can again select the navbar > Arrange >
Ungroup
and that will fix the text. However, before you do this you should know
that
it will also 'disengage' the navbar from the Publisher navbar wizard. This
means that if you decide to add another page then a new navbar button will
not be added and propagated throughout your site. In that case you would
need to rebuild your navbar, but that would not be that difficult with as
few pages as you have. However, you might want to wait a few weeks until
the
new Office 2007 SP2 is released, as it sounds like it is going to fix some
things, and one of them is likely to be this navbar issue. I can elaborate
on that if you want, but it is a longer discussion, that you can read in
my
reply to the post " Re: Buttons disapear on my web page with IE" by
bradedwards17 the 17th . The short explanation is that it *sounds like*
the
SP2 will fix the navbar issue and may even fix the 'grouping' issue that
you
are currently having with your banner.

Reference: Navigation bars and other content is missing from Publisher
HTML
output in Internet Explorer 8: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969705

Once again our resident troll misleads and tries to scare people by
suggesting that there are major problems with Publisher webs being
compatible with IE8. The only compatibility issue reported thus far is
this
'grouping' issue and it is easily fixed by ungrouping.

I will stop now, but if you have other questions please post back. Once
again, there is absolutely no need to switch to a different program if you
don't want to. Obviously if you just tweak a couple things with your
design
and formatting, your site will look good in both IE and FF, and as a
result
will also look good in all the major browsers. Also be ready for a follow
up
to my post by our troll. He will find some term I used or something that I
didn't explain exactly right, bring up some other totally irrelevant or
spurious argument against using Publisher...or he will resort to a
personal
attack or name calling, because the reality is there is no logical,
rational reason to not use Publisher to build your site. But as I said, it
is your choice...good luck.

DavidF




"Warden" <Warden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:C02BA10B-4665-497C-BC04-CEBC7AB494C2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thank you, DavidF, you hit the nail on the head! I had used the master
page
as I normally do with any publication. When I dragged copies onto the
individual pages and re-uploaded, I no longer had the authentication
request
on Firefox. I never would have guessed that fix! In case others think it
was
a coincidence, I uploaded several times yesterday with stuff on the
master
page, and the authentication request appeared every time.

"DavidF" wrote:

This usually is caused by having pictures and other design elements on
the
Master Page. Go to View > Master Page and if you are putting anything
there,
drag those elements off into the scratch area, switch back to the main
page
and drag the elements onto that page. It is unfortunate but the Master
Page
feature works fine in a print publication but does not work consistently
in
a web publication and you should not use it.

DavidF

"Warden" <Warden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4161A533-C359-45F1-94AC-8D4B5411E5F9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Website created on Pub2007 works fine on IE7, but on Firefox after a
few
seconds I get a dialogue box headed "Authentication Required" and
asking
for
user name and password for ftp://alal.co.uk. (My web address is
http://www.alal.co.uk.) I have to cancel the box a few times to get
rid
of
it, then I find I've lost contact with the host and can't change
pages.
Connection remains broken even if Firefox is closed down and
re-started.
Web host says it's a compatibility issue between Publisher and
Firefox.
Any ideas?

















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