Creating a Macromedia Contribute-Friendly Word Document



Creating a Macromedia Contribute 2.01-Friendly Microsoft Word Document 1

About Using Text in Both Word and Contribute (Round-Tripping) 1

Basic Formatting 1

Styles and Contribute 2

Applying Styles in Word 2

Customizing styles 2

About Fonts and Line Spacing 3

Lists 3

More fun with lists 4

Sample Lists 4

Tables and Images 5

Tables of Contents 6

Text Boxes 6

The Table of Contents above doesn't work in a Contribute 2.01 document and will be deleted in the web version of this document.

Creating a Macromedia Contribute 2.01-Friendly Microsoft Word Document

When importing a Microsoft Word document using Macromedia Contribute, Contribute decides how to format the text in your web page based on the formatting you apply to your document. However, Contribute looks at your formatting in a special way when it is translating your document into HTML In this document you will see what types of formatting Contribute does and does not look at when it is turning your document into html and learn how to create a document that will work well in both Word and Contribute.

About Using Text in Both Word and Contribute (Round-Tripping)

Contribute allows you to insert a Word document into a Contribute document, but the two documents are in no way synchronized. The simplest way to make changes to both the Word document and the Contribute document is to make your changes in Word, save the Word document, delete the Word text from the Contribute document, and insert the updated Word document. If the Word document is the only text in a Contribute text area, then you can delete the outdated text from the Contribute document by simply putting your cursor in the text area, pressing Control-a and then pressing the delete key.

Basic Formatting

Contribute will recognize the following formatting when it is importing your document (17 pts after):

Boldfaced text, italicized text,

Right-aligned text

Centered text

Styles and Contribute

You can use an almost unlimited number of styles when creating your Word document. Contribute, however, only recognizes seven. Paragraphs that have styles not recognized by Contribute will be treated as plain text. The following is a list of the styles that Contribute recognizes:

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

Normal

Applying Styles in Word

In order to apply a style to a paragraph, put your cursor in the paragraph you wish to apply the style to and select the style from the "Style:" drop down menu in the Formatting Palate (the Formatting Palate can be opened by clicking on "Formatting Palate" in the View menu).

Customizing styles

You can use styles to give your paragraph any appearance you want it to have. However, you may want to have your heading styles match the default style for the heading in Contribute, since Contribute will apply that formatting as well as any formatting that is applied to the Word version of the heading. For instance, if the Word version of Heading 3 is underlined and the Contribute version of Heading 3 is boldface and italicized, then the text inserted in Contribute will be boldface, italicized, and underlined. Additionally, the tags needed to do the underlining will add to the file size.

To change the formatting of a style throughout your document:

1. Select a paragraph containing the style whose appearance you wish to change.

2. Change the font and paragraph attributes (whether it is in italics or boldfaced, how much whitespace follows the paragraph, etc.) to what you want them to be.

3. Select the style that is presently applied to the paragraph from the drop down menu in the Formatting Palate.

4. You will then see a dialog box, which will ask whether you want to update the style to reflect the changes you just made or reapply the original formatting of the style to the paragraph.

5. Select "Update the style…" .The style will be updated and every paragraph that has that style applied to it will take on the same font and paragraph attributes as the paragraph you just updated.

About Fonts and Line Spacing

If your administrator's site settings allow you to set fonts and font sizes, Contribute will apply font size and font face formatting to each individual tag in your document based on the formatting in the original document. This formatting bloats the html file and is largely unnecessary since the creator of your Contribute site has most likely created default formatting which is designed to complement the web page design. To get rid it, after inserting the Word document, select all of the newly inserted text and choose "Default Font" from the font menu and "Default" from the font size menu. If a heading is underlined, the underlining will also be applied separately and you may want to get rid of this as well.

A paragraph that is formatted to have spacing before or after creates what appears in Contribute to be, and behaves like, an extra paragraph (or two, if there's enough space before or after) before or after the original paragraph. The "extra paragraph" can be "deleted" and the result will be for Contribute to apply "style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"" to the paragraph, overwriting any top and bottom margin. If the "extra paragraph" is not deleted, and the page is published the code will be as it should be, with no extra paragraphs.

If you are the creator of your Contribute site, you will want to create text formats with 0px top and bottom margins and use padding to insert space, because Contribute automatically applies 0px top and bottom margins throughout the document and these will override any top or bottom margins you set in a stylesheet. Setting your own top and bottom margins to 0px will ensure consistent formatting.

Lists

Contribute can handle ordered and unordered lists as long as they obey certain rules. These are:

1. Lists should be contained to a single area. If list that begins in one place and continues in another (automatically numbered section headings, for example), the results will most likely be different from what was intended. Contribute will either restart the numbering (if it as first level numbering) each time the list resumes or use an unindented paragraph with the bullet or numbering as the first character of the paragraph (if the paragraph is second level bulleting or third level numbering). Sometimes, it will substitute bullet characters for numbering.

2. Ordered lists should be no more than two levels deep and unordered lists should be no more than one level deep. If Contribute encounters an unordered list with two or more levels, it will render the entire list as unindented paragraphs with a bullet as the first character of each paragraph. If Contribute encounters a list of more than two levels, it will render the first two levels correctly, and then present the third level as unindented paragraphs with the numbering typed at the beginning of each paragraph.

3. Don't change the paragraph formatting. This will cause Contribute to stop viewing the list as a list.

4. Only use basic bullets and regular numbering. This will also cause Contribute to stop viewing the list as a list.

5. Try to do it right the first time. Trying to make a list behave correctly after it has been 'broken' is very problematic. If you separate the unnested first level of a multi-level unordered list from the nested part of the list by inserting a blank line between them, Contribute will still render the single level part of the list as paragraphs with bullet characters in them.

6. If all else fails, select the list in Contribute, apply list formatting to it manually. You can use find and replace to get rid of the bullets (by coping the bullet and space and pasting them into the Find and Replace box).

More fun with lists

To force your Word list to be a Contribute list as well, you can try the following strategies:

1. Select the text that belongs in the list, go to "Format->Bullets and Numbering," change the list format to "None," and then, with the text still selected, go back into "Format->Bullets and Numbering," and make the appropriate selection.

2. Delete the line breaks (the paragraph marks) between the text preceding the list and the beginning of the list, as well as every line break in the list, recreate them, and the apply a different (but still basic!) list format. If applying list formatting doesn't cause it to indent, list formatting probably won't apply in Contribute.

3. Use the Format Painter to copy the formatting from a known-good list, then use Format->Bullets and Numbering to restart the numbering (if applicable).

Sample Lists

• Unordered lists

• Are your friends

• Sometimes

• But this one is not

• Because Contribute sees it as a continuation of this one

• Will this work?

• No!

• How about this?

• No again!

1. One item, a fine idea

a. A sub item, also a fine idea, except that it will cause your document not to validate (more on this further on in the document).

b. Sub item 2

i. A Level 3 sub item, not a good idea

2. Another item, which will begin a separate list.

1. A new list.

2. Which should continue

3. Until I stop it

Line break (works!)

4. Now

About Validation, Lists, and Special Characters

Producing HTML that is ‘valid’ (that follows the W3C specification for how a web page should be coded) is a good thing because it will help your document to be read correctly by the greatest number of browsers and that it will be readable by future browsers. The HTML created when this document is inserted into a Contribute 2.01 document is not valid. There are two major problems with it. The first is the various special characters that appear in this document. These included smart quotes, ellipses and the bullets that Contribute inserts when a list is not handled correctly. The second problem is that when Contribute nests lists, it does so in an improper way. Documents that have these problems will display correctly in most browsers (although in some cases the special characters will display incorrectly or not at all), but it is safer to avoid nested lists and special characters when possible.

Tables, Images, and Equations

It can also handle tables and images.

|…and tables. | | | |

|Tables may contain merged cells. You may apply borders to your table, but the borders will not carry over to your web page. Shading will carry|

|over to the web. |

[pic] An example of an image, with some text following it. Images that appear in web documents need alternative text, also known as alt text. This is text that is used in place of an image if the image doesn't appear or if a screen reader is reading the page. Alt text can be set in Word and will carry over to Contribute. To set the alt text of an image, select the image, right click, select "Format Picture" and choose the "Web" tab. Type your alt text into the text entry box labeled "Alternative text:”

Equation Editor equations are rendered as pictures in Contribute. Like ordinary images, they can and should be assigned alt text in Word. The procedure is the same as that for assigning alt text to an image, except that you will be looking for “Format Object” instead of “Format Picture” in the context-sensitive menu (the one that appear when you right click).

[pic] This is an Equation Editor equation.

Headers and Footers

Headers and footers do not show up in Contribute documents.

Tables of Contents

As will see if you insert this document into a Contribute document, a Table of Contents (TOC) doesn't work very well in a Contribute document. If the TOC was last updated on a PC, all of the links from the Table of Contents to the various headers will be broken and will remain broken when the page is published. If the TOC was last updated on a Mac, there will be no links, but the TOC will appear to be a single level outline, even if the original had several levels and the formatting may look bad. Therefore, if the document you are inserting into Contribute has a TOC, it would be best to delete it from the Contribute document.

Text Boxes

If a text box is positioned in front of or behind the text, then Contribute will pick a spot in the text near where the text box is located and insert the contents of the text box there. If the text wraps around the text box, then the entire text box will be rendered as an image and inserted at the appropriate location. The alt text will say: "Text Box: This is a test box with the text wrapping around it.” regardless of what the alt text of the image is.

This is some text surrounding the text box. Let's see what it does.

This is some text for the text box to be in front of.

-----------------------

[pic]

This is a test box with the text wrapping around it.

[pic]This is a text box positioned in front of the text.

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