Position of webpage using ms publisher

[gypsey7]

Iam developing a website in ms publisher, but can't seem to get my website to display in the centre of a screen when i publish to the web... any suggestions?

[Buenchico]

From Microsoft Publisher help files:

"You can optimize your Web page so that it can be viewed on either high or low resolution screens.
On the File menu, click Page Setup.
Click the Layout tab.
In the Publication type list, select Web page.
Under Page Size, do one of the following:
Select VGA for a narrower Web page (recommended for low resolution viewing).
Select SVGA for a wider Web page (recommended for high resolution viewing).
Select Custom, and then enter a width and height. "

I suspect that selecting 'SVGA' might be all that's required. Otherwise, try 'Custom' and see what different widths produce.

Chris

[gypsey7]

Thanks for the reply, but I am using 2007 and can't seem to get the options that you mentioned. What else do you suggest.. should i cut my loses and move to 2003

[Buenchico]

I've just checked the 'About' reference in my version of MS Publisher. It seems that I'm using '2002' (from which I copied and pasted that info).

I got to that information by going to the help file (press F1) and searching on 'web page' for any relevant information. Perhaps the same method might help you?

The problem with using MS Publisher, to produce a web page, is that you're using an 'auxiliary function'. MS Publisher is primarily a DTP tool, so it's not going to be great at producing web pages. You really need to be using MS Frontpage (or, somewhat strangely, MS Word - which, in my opinion, is actually rather better at producing web pages than MS Publisher is).

Alternatively, use a dedicated web page creation program, such as Serif WebPlus SE, which you can download for free here:
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/WebP lus/default.asp

Chris

[VHG]

> You really need to be using MS Frontpage (or,
> somewhat strangely, MS Word

Microsoft stopped making FrontPage ages ago (last release was 2003). They have replaced it with a product called Expression Web.

Must disagree with Buenchico (not often I do) but Word is AWFUL for producing web pages or web sites.

The problem is that when you save a Word document in HTML format, it generates enough HTML so that if you want to bring it back into Word at a later date it can fully create it in Word.

Problem is, to do this it generates about 10 times as much HTML as you actually need to display it on a web page.

I would say that neither Word or Publisher are good for producing web sites or web pages.

[VHG]

gypsey7, not exacly sure what you mean when you say you want to display the page in the centre of the screen.

Do you mean a bit like the Answerbank site, which has the text down the centre with two white borders either side ?

If so this is not that easy to do, and I will explain why.

When HTML was first developed it was a simple language and was great for basic text and simple things like headings and paragraphs.

What it was NOT good at was page layout.

Normally, when you have say a paragraph statement the text will expand to fit the width of the page. The text starts on the very left and goes to the very right.

If the user changes the size of the browser window, the text will shrink or stretch and reflow to fit the width of the browser window, but it will always use the full width of the browser window, so no borders.

Some people got round this by putting their text in HTML tables. They made the table a width of say 80% and centred it. This placed the table (and text) in the centre and left two borders down either side of 10% each.

As the browser window grew or shrank the text always stayed as 80% in the middle with 10% borders down either side.

This got round the problem, but was not really a very good solution.

more....

[VHG]

continued......

Because HTML was not good at page LAYOUT someone came up with the idea of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

CSS allows you to divide the page into different areas, called Divs.

So you can define a centre "Div" of say 80% and put all your data in that, and then a left Div and a right Div of 10% and leave them empty.

So you finish up with a 3 column layout, and this 3 column layout "flows" as the browser page shrinks or grows.

Here is an example of a 3 column layout (it shows text in the 2 outer columns but you could leave them blank)

http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/layout3.h tml

Notice as the browser window gets bigger and smaller the 3 columns "flow" and stay in a 3 column layout.

The problem is that Publisher and Word are not able to produce CSS which is why you really need to use a "proper" HTML tool to create web pages.

[VHG]

I have found an example where the text is in the middle and borders either side are blank.

http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/center1.html

Is that what you are trying to do ?

But as you can see, this example also uses CSS.