4 ms·

This reminds me of the MS Word generating HTML

by goshx 13y ago

scholia 13y ago
Not really. MS Word was designed to generate HTML that would look like your original MS Word document and be round-tripped. This is not particularly easy. However, it made sense if you wanted to use your word processor to create and edit web documents (rather than find and learn another program), or publish existing documents as web pages. Which some businesses did. This did actually make the world a better place insofar as the web got some HTML pages that would otherwise have been Word doc file downloads. MS Word also produces much smaller HTML pages if you save your web page as "filtered HTML", sacrificing some Word functionality in the process. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/about-using-filtered-html-HP003085278.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/about-using-filt... However, to do that, you would have to know the "filtered" option was there, and why you might want to use it. Which is probably not your average office drone.
- goshx 13y ago
  I lost count of how many times I had to open a Word generated HTML document (by a regular Word user that though copying from Word and posting it in the CMS was a good idea) and clean it up by hand so it wouldn't break the page for browsers other than IE (even in IE it would break sometimes... surprise, surprise). So yes, Sir. Yes, really. HTML generators like this (or MS Word, or Dreamweaver, you name it) unfortunately are not optimized to do just the job they are used for. A good example for that is the one gave by our fellow commenter above. It adds a lot of useless code because it is simpler to do it that way. In the times where every Kb/s used to count, load a HTML page with 3 times the size it should be was a real issue. Also, MS Word to HTML was the worst thing I have ever seen in terms of compatibility for other browsers. That to me does not sound like making the world a better place, sorry.

This reminds me of the MS Word generating HTML

by goshx 13y ago

This reminds me of the MS Word generating HTML

Not really. MS Word was designed to generate HTML that would look like your original MS Word document and be round-tripped. This is not particularly easy. However, it made sense if you wanted to use your word processor to create and edit web documents (rather than find and learn another program), or publish existing documents as web pages. Which some businesses did. This did actually make the world a better place insofar as the web got some HTML pages that would otherwise have been Word doc file downloads. MS Word also produces much smaller HTML pages if you save your web page as "filtered HTML", sacrificing some Word functionality in the process. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/about-using-filtered-html-HP003085278.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/about-using-filt... However, to do that, you would have to know the "filtered" option was there, and why you might want to use it. Which is probably not your average office drone.

goshx 13y ago
I lost count of how many times I had to open a Word generated HTML document (by a regular Word user that though copying from Word and posting it in the CMS was a good idea) and clean it up by hand so it wouldn't break the page for browsers other than IE (even in IE it would break sometimes... surprise, surprise). So yes, Sir. Yes, really. HTML generators like this (or MS Word, or Dreamweaver, you name it) unfortunately are not optimized to do just the job they are used for. A good example for that is the one gave by our fellow commenter above. It adds a lot of useless code because it is simpler to do it that way. In the times where every Kb/s used to count, load a HTML page with 3 times the size it should be was a real issue. Also, MS Word to HTML was the worst thing I have ever seen in terms of compatibility for other browsers. That to me does not sound like making the world a better place, sorry.