A5w Pages font problems

[EricN]

Tried typing this in MS Word then copy and paste into the A5W page, I get these mixed fonts in browser. I try typing directly into the page, same result. Firefox and IE. Thing is, this looks much better in the A5 editor but terrible in the browsers.

I do have a lot of xbasic embedded throughout the page.

Any ideas?

[Steve Wood]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

MS Word probably is the worst program in the world to copy-paste text out of. It carries an insane amout of formatting code with it. Your A5W web pages are better just simple text, copied from Notepad if you like. The only formatting you need at all on your example is this

<h2>Title 1</h2>
<p>paragraph 1</p> 
<p>paragraph 2</p> 
<h2>Title 2</h2>
<p>paragraph 1</p> 
<p>paragraph 2</p>

Then use style sheets to dictate how h1 and p will look on the page. Get your two columns using a simple 2 column table.

[EricN]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

Thanks Steve,
I remember the good-old-days when I could reliably use MS FrontPage and get the desired results using buttons similar to the picture below. I thought the A5 editor would deliver similar results.

I ended up going into source and deleting tons of garbage. A few lines had more than one font embedded so they were conflicting. I also deleted several hundred blank lines. Each carriage return seemed to have produced at least 50 blank lines. Lot of work for one page...

Very frustrating.

[EricN]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

Forgot my picture...

[Steve Wood]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

The A5 Editor will do what you want. Just start with plain text and forget using Word. If you want an HTML Editor to use inside your Alpha applicaiton, download the HTML Editor from my website.

[NoeticCC]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

Tried typing this in MS Word then copy and paste into the A5W page, I get these mixed fonts in browser. I try typing directly into the page, same result. Firefox and IE. Thing is, this looks much better in the A5 editor but terrible in the browsers.

I do have a lot of xbasic embedded throughout the page.

Any ideas?

Try using this free program, it's the only one I have found so far that strips all formatting out of your text - when you install it (or rather put it in your startup list), it lets you paste using Windows key + V (similar to Ctrl + V) into any app that allows Ctrl+V pasting: http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/

[Steve Wood]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

Nice little utility. But I had to reboot after testing it out as it disabled my Ctrl-V.

[NoeticCC]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

Nice little utility. But I had to reboot after testing it out as it disabled my Ctrl-V.

I think if you right-click on it when it's running in your system tray you can specify what key combo to use.

[EricN]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

Thanks for your input. I did start with simple text. Point is (and I've seen this brought up before) the editor could, should be improved so a Alpha customer does not need to use a 3rd party utility. When I design an A5W page, I should be able to rely on the included editor to do the job. I can live with a few of the shortcomings but this particular 'simple' page consumed a great deal of my time (hours) when it should have taken minutes.

BTW: Steve...do you ever sleep?

[Steve Wood]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

I don't understand your complaint. The editor can create your page exactly as you want with minimal editing. Do you mean for all the custom xbasic generated part? We'd have to see your code to see if that part was effecient. But creating and formatting the text as you want it, as in your example, is easy.

Sleep - I have twin 3.5 year old boys. I work when I can.

[EricN]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

Well I guess we could go on here.
This is what I did.
Typed in simple text to begin with. Where appropriate, I added some xbasic (just simple lookups to bring up a number). As I was working on the page, I noticed some sentences were of a different font and size. (At this point I didn't use MS Word) I selected them (in the A5 editor) and attempted to change to match rest of material. After several attempts, it finally changed the fonts (or so I thought). When viewing in IE it looked as my picture above. Firefox looked a little better. Thinking a simple copy and paste might do the trick, I used the MS Word hoping to get the page finished and move on to my next project. Well I wish I read your post before I did that. This really made a mess.

I then used carriage returns and this really set the formatting awry.

Maybe I did something wrong, but I have used FrontPage for years and the only difference is the addition of my simple xbasic. I ended up recreating the page from scratch and periodically going into the source area to "clean" up the extra several hundred blank lines. This is not the only page I've had problems with but I was able to work around the editor's limitations until I came to this page.

I can live with this, I guess. I don't want to continue complaining in this thread.

... well, at least the boys are past the "terrible-twos," correct?

[Steve Wood]

Re: A5w Pages font problems

Being fair, the editor does have its problems. Once you set a particular area to a given font or html tag, its often difficult to remove formatting or replace with new formatting. I am used to toggling between WYSIWYG and source, so I don't notice it as much.

I didn't mean 'complaint' as in you were complaining; just as in a description of the fault. I complain to myself all day about Alpha Five even though it's 95% perfection. The editor is one area and it should be replaced, my other complaints are publishing faults and the forced application of style sheets.

Speaking of FrontPage; I upgraded to MS Expression and it is driving me nuts. It's supposedly "web standards" and so applies css styles to everything I do. But it autocreates new styles everytime I format an object. So, on a simple page I might have a dozen styles that I did not create, do not want, can't figure out how to get rid of.