[Laura McCue]

Hello,

I use Window's Publisher to create a newsletter for our local art guild in north GA. I them upload it to my Hostmonster server. Everything works fine and I have no problems with this set up, however, lately the members who use Firefox complain they can't open the webpage (newsletter) or if they can see it, they are unable to use the links to the different pages. Although I've been telling them "Hey, it's not my problem you use Firefox"...I have been wondering if there is something different I can do on my end to make the newsletter accessable to all. A few of the Firefox users told me they simply switch to Internet explorer to view the page.
Any thoughts?

[cwwozniak]

Hi Laura, and welcome to TSG.

Originally Posted by Laura McCue

I've been telling them "Hey, it's not my problem you use Firefox"

That's one way to alienate 41% (as of June, 2008) of the people surfing the Internet. I use Firefox and unless I have real compelling reason to visit a non-Firefox friendly site, I just skip the site.

Have you considered publishing your newsletter as a PDF file? There are free programs, like PrimoPDF, that will work with any program that can print a document.

[colinsp]

Laura, you could download Firefox and the addon developers toolbar (both free) and then use the information that you get to correct your web pages. IE 6/7 is not a standards compliant browser whereas Firefox is. IE8 is supposed to be standards compliant too and so new IE8 users may well have the same problems. IMHO if you are publishing a website it should be available to all NOT just those that use IE.

[Laura McCue]

Yes, I was hearing more and more people were switching to Firefox. I'll look into it myself and see. Is there a charge?
The newsletter is an online version only so I don't use PDF files. In fact, it looks like I'll have to purchase another program (like MS office) since I've used up my "25 uses" since getting this newer PC and I can't find any "Product key" to enter.

[colinsp]

No charge for Firefox if you download it from the Mozilla website and once you have it downloaded then search for the webdeveloper tool bar in the free add-ons on the Mozilla site.

If you are looking for something to compose your websites in my advice would be to forget the M$ suite of programmes for any HTML page generation. These applications create bloated non compliant code. You are better off with a straight forward editor like Notepad++ or if you want WYSIWYG editing then have a look at Komposer or have a search on Google for HTML editors.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by colinsp

If you are looking for something to compose your websites in my advice would be to forget the M$ suite of programmes for any HTML page generation. These applications create bloated non compliant code. You are better off with a straight forward editor like Notepad++ or if you want WYSIWYG editing then have a look at Komposer or have a search on Google for HTML editors.

I would change this a bit since M$ Expression Web can generate standard compliant code.

Peace...

[Laura McCue]

So, I think I may plan to restart to whole webpage using a different HTML editor. There are so many choices...perhaps someone could steer me in the right direction.
I need to work with photos, background color, multiple pages, a better choice of fonts than MS supplies, clipart, and music (from my midi file collection). Basic webpage stuff. Is there an advantage to purchasing an editor over the free downloads?
I have a contract with Hostmonster for another year so I'll be publishing with them.
Also, regarding my original question...will I still need to work through Firefox or can I just download the new editor (I have Windows Vista) and get to work.
I've been using IE directly to connect to Hostmonster as I could not reach the FTP area through Windstream (our DSL).
Thanks again!

[tomdkat]

You should be testing in Firefox, IE 6 and IE 7 (maybe even IE 8), Opera, and Safari regardless of the tool you use.

So, you should find a new HTML editor (free or paid, whatever you prefer) and get the current site imported into it (as a starting point) unless you just want to create the site from scratch. If you post a link to the site, we can see what the generated HTML looks like and make a better recommendation on how to proceed. There might be a nice CSS layout you can use to keep the site looking the same AND solve the cross browser issues all at the same time.

Peace...

[Laura McCue]

Ok here is my "newsletter". I send this to a list of members in our Art Guild on a monthly basis, sooner if there are updates. http://www.artyfactsnewsletter.com
Soon, I may be asked to take over the main site for the guild since it is quite outdated with info and our current webmaster hasn't the time to update in a timely fashion. It is this site that concerns me as it will need to look more professional than the newsletter as well as be able to seen by all. That page is http://www.northgeorgiaartsguild.com

[tomdkat]

Wow, that newsletter page can be cleaned up TREMENDOUSLY! Do you know the file size of the home page (just the HTML) is 210kb! That's HUGE for a HTML file! Dump the M$ tools you've been using immediately. You can use a simplified table layout or a relatively simple CSS layout for that page and reduce the HTML file size to something reasonable (UNDER 10kb if not less than that, at least) and it will function across browsers.

It looks like the North Georgia Arts Guild page was created using Mozilla Composer, I think from an old version of Netscape. The home page for that site is 23kb in size and has more "real" content than the newsletter home page.

On the newsletter page, the reason some of the links don't work is because of invalid HTML coding. Here is an example:

<a href="index_files/page0001.html"><![if pub]><![if pub]><xml>
    <b:PageLinkInfo>
     <b:PageLinkType>5</b:PageLinkType>
     <b:PageLinkTarget>2</b:PageLinkTarget>
    </b:PageLinkInfo>
   </xml><![endif]><![endif]>EVENTS</a>

A HTML comment is formatted like this:

<!-- comment -->

The "<![if pub]>" conditional stuff is incorrectly formatted which is probably interfering with Firefox's parsing of the anchor. The "Events" link near the top section of the page (on the left) doesn't work in Opera either.

Please don't take any of my comments personal. I've got nothing against you or the job you did on the site. M$ Publisher is to blame for generating crap HTML and so much of it! When I looked at the error console in Opera 9.51 on Linux, there were SO many CSS errors the bottom of the window actually said "Too many CSS errors, bailing out".

I'll save a copy of the existing newsletter site home page on my machine and will post a cleaned up version that should work in the modern browsers (IE 6, IE 7, Firefox, Opera, and Safari). That will be a "proof of concept". Then, we can find you a better web development tool and get some more efficient pages created for the site.

As for the North Georgia Art Guild site's appearance, there are some GREAT free website templates you should check out and possibly use as your base. That way, you won't have to worry about the aesthetic look of the site much and can simply fill in your content.

Peace...

[colinsp]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

I would change this a bit since M$ Expression Web can generate standard compliant code.

Peace...

I was referring to M$ publisher and the Office suite that Laura was using / suggesting using I had forgotten about Expression Web (Is it available as part of the latest office suite I am still using 2003?)

[tomdkat]

I don't think Expression Web is part of M$ Office, but I'm not 100% sure.

Peace...

[tomdkat]

Ok, I've been playing with a version of the current newsletter site using a different web design tool (Kompozer) and using CSS primarily for the layout. There is only one HTML table, which I put in as a temporary measure.

Here is the HTML:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
  <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type">
  <title>Artyfacts - The North Georgia Arts Guild</title>
  <style type="text/css">
.pagebody {
  border: 1px solid black;
  display: block;
  margin-right: auto;
  margin-left: auto;
  position: relative;
  margin-top: 40px;
  width: 672px;
}
.header {
  background-image: url(artyfacts_files/image002.jpg);
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
  display: block;
  background-position: center top;
  height: 358px;
}
#titleImg {
  display: block;
  margin-right: auto;
  margin-left: auto;
  padding-top: 30px;
}
.header-text {
  color: #99ff99;
}
#navcol {
  display: block;
  padding-left: 10px;
  padding-right: 10px;
  float: left;
  width: 150px;
}
#content {
  display: block;
  margin-top: 0px;
  padding-top: 0px;
  top: 0px;
  margin-left: 0px;
  padding-left: 0px;
  left: 0px;
}
.site-nav {
  border-bottom: 1px solid black;
  list-style-type: none;
  display: block;
  margin-left: 0px;
  padding-left: 15px;
  padding-bottom: 10px;
}
.site-nav a {
  text-decoration: none;
}
.site-nav a:hover {
  color: red;
  font-weight: bold;
}
#content-body {
  border-top: 1px solid #66ff99;
  border-left: 2px solid black;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #66ff99;
  display: block;
  margin-left: 170px;
  padding-left: 10px;
  padding-right: 10px;
  font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}
.footer {
  border-top: 1px solid black;
  display: block;
  bottom: 0px;
  left: 0px;
  width: 100%;
  position: relative;
  text-align: right;
  font-style: italic;
  height: 25px;
}
  </style>
</head>

<body style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(102, 255, 153);" alink="#000099" link="#000099" vlink="#990099">

<div class="pagebody">

<div class="header"><img id="titleImg" style="width: 542px; height: 122px;" alt="North Georgia Arts Guild title" src="artyfacts_files/image003.gif"><br>

<table class="header-text" style="width: 100%; text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td style="text-align: center;"><big> </big>
      <h1 style="font-family: papyrus; font-weight: bold;"><big><big>Arty
Facts</big></big></h1>
     </td>
      <td style="text-align: center;">
      <h2 style="font-weight: bolder; font-family: Comic Sans MS;"><big>Newsletter</big><br>
July/August 2008</h2>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<br>
</div>

<div id="content">
<div id="navcol">
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Front Page News</h3>
<ul class="site-nav">
  <li><a href="#">Events</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Workshops</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Secretary's Report</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Member Links</a></li>
</ul>

<h3 style="text-align: center;">Previous Newsletters</h3>
</div>

<div id="content-body">
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Come visit us at our next
meeting!
July 17, 2008</h3>

<p>The topic of discussion (in lieu of guest speaker)
will be the upcoming <span style="font-style: italic;">Art
at the Lake</span> show in Lakemont. This art show is
being held at
the beautiful Lake Rabun Pavilion on Saturday, July 26. </p>

<p>Many North Georgia Arts Guild members will be exhibiting in
their own booth and the guild will also have group tent set up. Those
who have
signed up for the group space will need to be aware of the limited
space per artist (approx 4’ by 4’). Only the two North Georgia Arts
Guild browse
bins will be available so there will also be a limit on the number of
unframed, matted pieces artists can bring.</p>

<p>In addition, there will be discussion on the opportunity to
exhibit our art at the Rabun County Library through most of the month
of
August.</p>

<p>As usual, the North Georgia Arts Guild meeting will be held at
the St Helena Catholic Church on Warwoman Road in Clayton. Meeting
starts at 10am with a coffee reception starting at 9:30.</p>

<h2 style="text-align: center;">Hope to see you there!
</h2>
</div>
</div>

<div class="footer">footer</div>

</div>

</body>
</html>

This HTML doesn't contain ALL of the text on the original newsletter page but the above is just less than 5kb in file size. Attached are screenshots of the above HTML in Firefox 3.0.1, Opera 9.51, Safari 3.1.2, Maxthon 2.1.1 (IE 6 rendering engine).

The "Events" link which is red is the result of the mouse hovering over it. I did this to show how the link works in all the browsers I tested. I tested using the above specified browsers running on Windows XP.

Peace...

[Laura McCue]

Wow...I do appreciate your efforts, and I do now understand why the newsletter site was not being seen be all computers. I believe I need to update my profile to beginner, not intermediate as I do not know how to read "codes"!
I did download Mozilla and I'm checking out the Firefox...
And I've decide to use Kompozer...here's my problem...I went to the Kompozer site, it said to download now, so I did (for Windows) and I have a nice file with a bunch of Kompozer items in it sitting in documents. Apparently I am missing something somewhere because I don't know where to go to start the new webpage. Is this work with the HTML editor done while online? Or was I to receive a program with all the tools necessary to begin. Perhaps you would kind enough to steer me again? Remember all I've used in the past is the MS publisher...oh and AOL's free webpage
If I need to go to another thread where this has already been discussed I can do that too.
THANKS THANKS THANKS!

[tomdkat]

Ok, the Kompozer downlod for Windows is a ZIP file you will need to uncompress. So, you can right-click on the icon for the file you downloaded and click "Extract all" and specify the location where you want Kompozer to go. Once it's extracted, NO icons will be created on the desktop or anything but you can use Windows Explorer to go to where you extracted Kompozer and create a shortcut for the Kompozer icon on your desktop or something.

Once you have the downloaded ZIP file extracted, you double-click the Kompozer icon to start it. When it's started, it will look like the attached screenshot. From there, you can start designing a new page or you can load an existing page and edit it.

I tried loading the home page for the newsletter site and it crashed Kompozer, I'm guessing due to the sheer size of the file.

You don't have to use Kompozer, to do this but it's a free tool that works well. The site manager isn't the best so that might be the ONE reason you wouldn't want to use it.

Peace...