03
Jun
2008
Desktop publishing in the CMS
When we hand over a website to our clients we say that “its easy to publish content”. But we also say “All you need to know is headings, subheadings and paragraphs. Just add the odd image”.
Because with good typography that's all that is needed for creating good looking content, and you should be concentrating in the value of the words, not the eye candy.
But some of our clients are always looking to do more. They want to use the authoring tool as if it is a desktop publishing tool. I guess that's fair enough, and we do use the tool for that very purpose, albeit with a lot more knowledge.
The problem for our clients has been that the editor looks superficially like MS Word, but using it with those expectations often results in unexpected results – and frustration! Remember that the editor is creating HTML, not Word doc. Its not so simple, and we were starting to hear some cries for help!
However, on consulting with these clients we have found that there is a way to get at least some satisfaction when managing graphics and text and their relationship with each other.
Using tables to shape text and images.
Not so long ago web design started and ended with tables. However they got so complicated that now good web developers never touch the things (except when creating tables of data).
However we realised they still have a place. Many Word users use tables to group together text and images, and they can be similarly useful in web pages too. Adding tables and editing their cells is remarkably similar to Word (right click on a cell to edit its properties). You still have to be patient, but you can achieve the results that you want.
The secret is to lay down a grid with the columns set to the desired widths, and then to place the images and text that you want into the appropriate cells of the grid. Don't bother too much with setting heights, let the text and the images define that. You can fuse cells just like in Word, but often it is easier just to have several tables one below the other, all one row in height, ensuring that they don't confuse each other with their different column widths.
Advice for the brave
To publish complicated images and text in a web page you really need to understand HTML, the language of the web. Otherwise you will never understand why the page doesn't display the way you expect.
To avoid this perplexing frustration we strongly recommend that you take a web design course at a CAE or online provider. The more you know the more you can do, and we are very happy to support you.
A recent example
Here is a recent example of what can be achieved.
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