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Merging Word's HTML into Web pages with Freeway
You may have been handed an existing Word document or you may be about to mark up a massive pile of text. If you get everything - well, the standard text styling at least - done in Word you can simply export the document in HTML form and most of the tiresome task will be done for you automatically.
How you proceed from there depends on which Web layout tool you use, whether you want to incorporate the Word-generated HTML into a complete layout design, or whether you would like to clean up the fairly unpleasant and bloated code the word processor creates. The simplest way to use this HTML file is to link straight to it. Alternatively, you could open it in an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver for further formatting, although this negates the time and effort saved by formatting things in Word to begin with. Here we'll show how to include a Word-generated Web page in a Freeway layout (and even clean it up first) without having to work with Word's idiosyncratic HTML.
When you say 'includes' to a Web designer they'll usually think of server-side includes, or SSI for short. Because of the way that Freeway works - by creating the optimal code for the layout on demand rather than adjusting HTML code constantly as a page is assembled - it is able to perform a similar local form of SSI. This is usually referred to as a 'local
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In this tutorial we include large portions of formatted HTML text, but this process can work with any Web page data. For example, the thumbnails page of an iPhoto-produced photo gallery can be built into your own layout very easily and without trying to assimilate the code directly. For this sort of thing it is wise to make sure that the HTML box is wide enough for the included content layout. If it isn't then the results will simply stretch to accommodate it all in the browser, but this may affect other parts of the page layout. Alternatively, work with this in mind by turning on the Width Can Grow option for the HTML box in the Inspector palette.
If your included document references images within its layout, you'll need to upload these to the Web server yourself. Freeway does a very good job of managing the site on the server, uploading and deleting files automatically to keep the site fresh and complete. However, content referenced by an external included file is left to be managed externally. This is actually the most flexible approach, but it does mean that you have to remember to upload any extras manually after Freeway finishes its online site uploading and management.
You can use whole Web pages complete with their own <head> tags and so on if you wish. However, this is technically bad form and isn't recommended; it also makes your pages look decidedly old-fashioned and clunky. Some HTML coders prefer to leave the tags in place, but in practice, browsers aren't affected by these redundant tag structures - it's all a question of personal preference. You may find that some background colour declaration codes affect the included area, so watch for this. CSS style definitions can be left in place; as long as they are declared before they are needed in the page code they'll work perfectly well.
Click 'Next Page' below for the step-by-step guide...
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