Posted by SpaceGirl on 09/30/27 11:17

JohnWMpls wrote:
> On Mon, 30 May 2005 10:18:54 +1000, dorayme <dorayme@optusnet.com.au>
> wrote:
>
> =>> From: dorayme <dorayme@optusnet.com.au>
> =>
> =>>> From: JohnWMpls <johnwfa@mn.rr.com>
> =>>
> =>>> A year or so ago I started using MS Word 2003 to read .doc files people
> =>>> sent me - to save as HTML for posting. Files sizes ballooned - full of
> =>>> css stuff. I went back to using MS Word 98 for this - nice clean HTML
> =>>> code. {g}
> =>>
> =>>
> =>> There are one or two docs for which I have used MS Word 98 to get a rough
> =>> HTML layout for and it is a mess. But a *much better mess* to clean up than
> =>> with later MS Words... So, I sort of agree with you, seriously.
> =>
> =>
> =>I should add, I suppose, that I agree with comments by others (now that I
> =>have read them) that css is not at fault so much as the crazy use of it in
> =>later MS Word. To tell the truth, 98 is better because one can then css
> =>style the "cleaner" html that you see in a more rational manner.
> =>
> =>dorayme
>
> Interesting - not CSS but Word. It's maybe really Microsoft. What
> triggered my comment was a conversion I did from MS's Publisher to HTML -
> and if you think Word 2003 was bad,....! {g}
>
> But MS is maybe not alone. Mozilla's new Composer provides the option for
> code in css or HTML and it is defaulted to css.
>
> I think css is great. I maintain a few sites with a couple hundred pages
> each and just one simple 12-15 line .css file per site sure saves a lot of
> coding on all the pages.
>
> I'm an old guy and I'm guessing that some newer people think css is the
> only way - regardless of how complicated it can make things.
>
> JohnW-Mpls
>

CSS *is* the only way if you want as much control as possible over the
end users "experience" (aguably, along with CSS and Flash). But all of
these technologys can be misused - just like HTML itself. If a program
(or a designer!) generates crappy HTML it's not the fault of HTML either :)

Microsoft Office apps are well known for generating awful HTML from the
psuedo-XML format the documents are stored in natively. You should avoid
using them for ANYTHING other than office type work. If you want to
publish to WWW, convert your docs to PDF and simply link to them from a
hand-designed page - or, if you know your stuff, use DreamWeaver, but
again be warned, if you are inexperienced you'll make a mess in that too.

CSS doesn't have to be complex to work well... we have some pretty HUGE
sites with less than 1kb of fairly simple CSS controlling the entire
look & feel. The resulting UI is complex and powerful, but the CSS is
simple.

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