Using Microsoft Word to write website content

Blogs - Web Technologies Blog

Written by Marco Conti Wednesday, 19 November 2008 14:29

How to convert MS Word to HTML cheaply and effectively

Many people are comfortable writing their website content with a Word Processor. For most that means using Microsoft Word.

Unfortunately, Microsoft Word is not very compliant with most modern browsers and it adds a plethora of superfluous code to your HTML that is very hard to clean properly. The result is that if you copy and paste from MS Word to your HTML document, regardless of the system you use, the result will be less than satisfactory and it often will even break your page.

The reason is that MS Word uses a number of proprietary tags and even saving your document a HTML page won't cure the problem.

(Pressed for time? Don't want to read the entire post? Skip the article and use the Checklist)

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 - first impressions

Blogs - Web Technologies Blog

Written by Marco Conti Thursday, 13 November 2008 11:39

Adobe just released the stable version of their popular IDE, Dreamweaver. Now in version CS4 (or version 10 if you like to keep track of it that way), Dreamweaver continues to be the editor of choice for many web developers and whenever a new version is released it is an important milestone in the business.

In this "First Impressions" review I am going to look at Dreamweaver CS4 as applied to the editing of Joomla templates and websites and not so much as related to the more traditional uses of the program. For more information in regard to my Joomla (and dynamic website) workflow, please refer to my blog post here.

Reflections of an old school designer

Blogs - Web Technologies Blog

Written by Marco Conti Tuesday, 11 November 2008 18:29

This is a very quick adaptation of a forum post I made on the Adobe  Dreamweaver forums. After writing it I thought it contained some valuable info that others may find useful or inspiring. Read it with a grain of salt and consider it's initial intended audience.

I was very lucky...

Blogs - Web Technologies Blog

Written by Marco Conti Sunday, 09 November 2008 20:52

I want to open my new Web Dev blog with a post about backups and why I was so damn lucky.

I finally got around to launch a new version of my website. I worked at it for over 6 months and I was either never happy with it or I had something more pressing to do. My old website was about 2 1/2 years old and it no longer reflected neither current technologies or my personal abilities.

Finally, over the past weekend I decided to take the plunge and launch the site. It wasn't finished, but it was good enough for me.

Usually, when I make a site launch for a client I move like an old spinster. I very cautiously backup every file, I keep a log with notes on the move and only after I check things twice I finally make the move.

On my own site, of course, I was more cavalier and I paid the price.