taff — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 21:39:33 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
Does that do a better job than DW's "Clean up Word HTML" command? Is it a stand alone thing or what?

It doesn't help that most people don't know how to use Word properly either...

oh yeah, much better. It strips away almost everything and then I just make a few global search/replace sweeps to get what's left behind.

It is a standalone tool...
http://office.microsoft.com/Downloads/2000/Msohtmf2.aspx

It supposedly works for Excel also but I've had mixed results there.

Megan — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 20:12:39 +0000

Does that do a better job than DW's "Clean up Word HTML" command? Is it a stand alone thing or what?

It doesn't help that most people don't know how to use Word properly either...

taff — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 20:00:37 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by Suzanne
Simultaneously? Coooooool.

yeah. I have to admit, I've found myself using Dreamweaver a little more often lately. I keep the screen at about 3/4 wysiwyg and 1/4 code so I can keep an eye on how it's coding. If you don't like something, give the code window the focus and edit manually.

I've still yet to create anything from scratch in DW but it is becoming a very handy editting tool.

Quote: if you really want to see bloated code try saving a ms word doc as html

I create HTML from Word all the time. Just run it through the MS Office HTML Filter afterward and you've actually got pretty clean code just waiting to be formatted again.

Suzanne — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 11:51:39 +0000

Simultaneously? Coooooool.

The Webmistress — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 07:17:51 +0000

In DW though you can see what's happening to the code as you use it!

DW makes it easy to use CSS by using the CSS panel, then to attach a class to something you just click on the relavant element at the bottom and click on the style in the panel. I don't know what unnecessary code it's adding for you, can you show an example?

nike_guy_man — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:12:39 +0000

Thanks y'all
How do I tell dreamweaver to use CSS and code the way I want it to? I have tried using the style functions to create the CSS but it still puts in unnecessary code
Thanks

Suzanne — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:09:18 +0000

Hee hee...

Any tool that's automated can create bloated code because they only care about making it look as the person on the other side intends. WYSIWYG applications are a bit black-box-ish in that way -- you can't see *while you're making the changes* what's happening with the code, so going into the code later is just perplexing (to those who don't understand how it works in the first place).

That's why I think it's really important for people to gain a solid understanding of how the language works when they do this professionally. If it's a hobby, or a personal site, does it matter? I don't think so. Then it's solely display. If their audience complains, they will learn more about it, of course, and evolve and learn along the way.

ROB — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 00:09:54 +0000

if you really want to see bloated code try saving a ms word doc as html

Megan — Wed, 18 Jun 2003 13:00:57 +0000

Exactly, Julia. DW is just a tool, it isn't an automatic code creator or a psychic. It all comes down to what the user tells it to do. If the user tells it to use font tags, it will. Similarly, if the user creates style sheets, that's what DW will output. IT can't force you to do something different. DW didn't write that code by itself, your partner made it do that. YOu want to see some stuff I've done with DW? Clean as clean can be.

The Webmistress — Wed, 18 Jun 2003 12:33:24 +0000

My point is that looking at those two sets of codes the DW one isn't even trying to do what the hand coded one is! You can use DW to produce exactly the same code as the hand coded code.