Text editing after html creation

[Annchy]

I have problem with text when I'm making update.
Everything looks fine in Xara preview, but when I publish it, everything become horrible. I'm using two types of font, but all become one type, become bigger, color is different... What should I do? :/

[Annchy]

Anybody can't help me? :/

[steve.ledger]

Sure

Can you give us the URL to your site?
Or better still, can you attach your .web file please?

[Annchy]

Thank you a lot...
Think that's better to give you url... is't large file

http://www.kuningas-von-kishko.com

Everything was great till I had to do first update. You will see that text is jpeg now. That was only thing I could do till solving the problem. :-(

thank you!

[steve.ledger]

Well, I can't tell much now except you probably aren't using web safe fonts.
Making everything an image isn't good practice

[Annchy]

I know that is bad choice, but at the moment don't know any other.

I'm using just two types of fonts... "arial" and "good times". When update is in text format, all arial become good times, color become white, larger...
If I upload web file and send it to you, will you may be be able to find where is the problem?

[jonazen]

Xara's publishing feature uses the standard File Transfer Protocol (FTP), nothing proprietary about it Jen. It works with the majority of hosts and server software out there by design. There should be no need to make any 'adjustments' for your server to accept an FTP connection provided you supply the correct and usual details..

The reasons you must use Xara's publishing feature has only relevance to the 'Re-publish changed files' feature only because the way it remembers what has already been published and what NEEDS to be RE-published because of CHANGES you have made.
How can any other software possibly know this?
As you say, 'Simplicity'

I have nowhere near Steve's experience with Xara, but for the few sites I maintain now with Designer Pro 6, I've found this option to be very quick and easy. A couple of sites I've been supporting had been changed a few times a week while the events they covered were transpiring (one was a musician / performance site, and one is for a Renaissance Faire). Incredibly easy to open the local copy do a quick update and republish changed files only -- and the live site is updated in less than a minute.

As Steve says, very easy to handle this in DP6 itself. I'd almost hate to steer my clients to it for fear of some of the "magic" going away

Std FTP by itself is "dumb" and can't distinguish old from new file versions. My old copy of Dreamweaver 8 has an option to compare local vs server copies of sites and upload newer files only. You can also install a Diff tool and configure Dreamweaver to use it, so that it actually compares old and new versions before deciding what to upload -- but I'm guessing that's slow...

Some kind of CMS feature would be great to be able to add in. Considering all that's been pointed out about the fact that Designer is a design tool, and that the exporting / publishing step is what generates HTML, this would certainly be some serious work.

I haven't tried this, but I imagine it would be possible to create a user editable site (let them use something like FrontPage to manage this -- keep the magic for yourself) with appropriately sized text blocks with a transparent background, and then have your Xara site include these in an iframe that you specify with a placeholder. Then any updates the client does to the "content site" text blocks would be picked up immediately by the iframes on your Xara-managed site. I really haven't thought this through, so maybe I'm missing some obvious limitations...

Typical issues with iframes, e.g., search engines would credit the remote site with the content, loading times could be off with delays in content appearing, you'd have less control over final appearance (while ostensibly being held responsible since YOU are the web designer), etc. But it might work.... Sounds like something I'd like to experiment with.

[steve.ledger]

Std FTP by itself is "dumb" and can't distinguish old from new file versions. My old copy of Dreamweaver 8 has an option to compare local vs server copies of sites and upload newer files only.

This isn't actually an FTP feature.
The ability to compare and determine which files are new or changed is controlled by xara directly via a couple of xara created files, xr_files.txt and an index.xhl which are checked at export/publish time.


Typical content of the *.xhl is:

index_htm_files\2.png 372992 3ba343cd45469856160eebe94f2e28b5
index_htm_files\15.png 1013 f0be23fe249d88768b76b63fe70692db
index_htm_files\3.png 983 1e06d781da7088a649883fe1c68c4dc7
index_htm_files\16.png 12565 9dd8cbc41767a4e44a32d080bc8b0b72
index_htm_files\4.png 2349 f44469318590d8152f8ec7eff1c9a2bb
index.htm 11368 71c01c86232c86bf00e8efd43db4c553

etc................

While the xr_files.txt looks similar to this:

index_htm_files
index.htm
tos.htm
index_htm_files/0.png
index_htm_files/27.png
index_htm_files/33.png
index_htm_files/44.png
index_htm_files/45.png
index_htm_files/47.png
index_htm_files/55.png
index_htm_files/59.png
index_htm_files/63.png
index_htm_files/64.png
index_htm_files/65.png
index_htm_files/69.png

This is why it is important to always export to the same folder as the before and not remove the old contents from your HDD before publishing. The 'difference' tracking will be lost which means all files will be re published rather than changed files.

[jonazen]

Yup -- I realize the Dreamweaver "diff" feature is not part of FTP -- just giving as an example of one approach I've seen. I generally find Xara's method works quite well, and at the moment, the most "complex" upload scenario I'm dealing with is having to 1) use Xara to upload the parts of a website that IT manages, while JAlbum uploads those parts for which it's responsible. Just have to make sure I set up the server directories and URL references correctly (so the iframes I put in Designer Pro refer properly to the JAlbum pages that load up the albums they manage). Finally, since I do some manual edits (via Dreamweaver) on some of the pages that JAlbum creates, I generally use FTP to upload those changes rather than configuring the upload feature in Dreamweaver for just one or two files.

Good to see some more detail about the innards of the Xara products -- I always like to learn more so I understand what's going on under the covers. Thanks!