Fonts & cell borders change in PREVIEW and PREVIEW IN BROWSER

[Gringa Loca]

I am using FrontPage 2002. My page looks fine in the NORMAL mode, but
when I use either PREVIEW or PREVIEW IN BROWSER, the fonts (Comic Sans
MS) and cell borders (blue) do not appear the same. I use IE 6.0 and
Mozilla Firefox browsers.

In the plain PREVIEW mode, parts of the text change to Time New Roman,
some cell borders are absent and others are a different color. In the
PREVIEW IN BROWSER mode in IE, the same things occur. In Mozilla
Firefox, the text problem persists and the cell borders are all present
and in black.

I realize there will be differences between browsers, and I can live
with the colors of the borders changing if they are all present and
consistent. The font problem is another matter.

I have not FTPed my pages yet due to another problem related to the
password not being accepted. It's a simple process that I've done with
other web sites, but this one just doesn't want to accept the password.
I'll have to go to Yahoo for that solution, I'm sure.

In desperation, I used the Yahoo's File Manager to at least upload the
basic index.html file: http://blogitoergosum.net/ Of course, the
images are missing, but you can see the problem with the text.

Your help would certainly be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

How are you setting the fonts and borders? Are you doing it via a <span
style="..."> tag or a <font> and a <table> tag? If the latter, attempt the
former. Because span seems to be more widely accepted in formatting for new
browsers.

 

[Murray]

What?

Span is not more widely accepted than any other legal HTML tag.

The problem is much more profound than that.

1. Basic best practices suggest that it's a bad idea to use file/pathnames
that contain any spaces or punctuation - like this:

Who%20I%20am%20policically,%20and%20why.htm

(policically?)

1b. These practices also suggest that it's not a good idea to mix case in
those file/pathnames as well -

<img border="0" src="images/Gregg%201%20text.JPG" width="250"
height="299">&nbsp;&nbsp;
<img border="0" src="images/Gregg%202%20text.jpg" width="250"
height="298">&nbsp;&nbsp;

2. Basic best practices suggest that one should always use "web-safe fonts"
when placing text on the web page -

<span style='font-family:"Stylus BT"; '>

Stylus BT is not web safe. You can find a list here -

http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

3. Basic best practices suggest that one should never trust preview mode.
If the preview in browser shows a characteristic, it's safe to conclude that
this is because there is something in the code that is driving that display.

I can see two problems with your code -

style="border-style:solid; border-width:3; padding-left:4; padding-right:4;
padding-top:3; padding-bottom:3" height="312" bordercolordark="#0000FF"
bordercolorlight="#0000FF"

The first is that you have used border widths without units. This is
improper syntax - all such values MUST have units so that the browser will
know whether it's 3 inches, 3 furlongs, or 3 pixels. The second is that you
have used IE proprietary attributes (bordercolordark/bordercolorlight) that
will not be reliable on the web. Your line should look like this -

style="border-style:solid; border-width:3px; padding-left:4px;
padding-right:4px; padding-top:3px; padding-bottom:3px;border-color:#00F;"
height="312"

and you will get more reliable results.

 

[Gringa Loca]

Thanks for the response. I managed to fiddle around with the table and
cell borders to get the boxes where we wanted them. Still struggled
with the font thing, though

I made a copy of two copies of the index page on in FrontPage to
experiment. One, which is also the one that is also on the server, now
shows the fonts correctly in the right-hand text box. This content
will be changing daily as he writes. The second copy, massaged the
same way, did not display correctly as a PREVIEW IN BROWSER. The font
reverted back to Times New Roman or Verdana or whatever. Obviously
different and unacceptable.

In the correct version, there are no <table> tags. There ARE <font>
and <span> codes. I am anything but an expert in HTML, so I compared
the two documents line for line and made changes to the dysfunctional
one to match the other. I guess I'm being forced to bite the bullet
and learn the stuff.

It would be so nice if I could simply copy the text from a document
that he creates in Word 2002 into that box every day, do a minimal of
formatting, and upload. I'm going to create another discussion about
that.

Many thanks.

 

[Trevor L.]

Gringa Loca wrote:
[snip]

It would be so nice if I could simply copy the text from a document
that he creates in Word 2002 into that box every day, do a minimal of
formatting, and upload.

I haven't followed this thread, but this sentence stirred me to reply

Many here would say:
Never use Word to create a web site

However, if you have set up the <font> tags etc in HTML, or better still
some CSS, you can use Word provided you do this:
Paste the text from Word into NotePad
Paste the text from Notepad into the HTML file, replacing the previous text
(but not any <font> tags or CSS styles)
--
Cheers,
Trevor L.
[ Microsoft MVP - FrontPage ]
MVPS Website: http://trevorl.mvps.org/
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