Issues to keep in mind

When you publish your CuteSITE Builder file, CuteSITE Builder creates all of the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) necessary to display your pages on the World Wide Web. You don’t need to know HTML to use CuteSITE Builder, but there are HTML issues you can keep in mind to help make your site effective and attractive.

Use CuteSITE Builder designs with standard browsers

The Web designs included with CuteSITE Builder are designed to export well to HTML version 3.2. See Page Layouts and Web Designs Overview for more about Web designs and how to use them.

A note about other browser limitations

Although CuteSITE Builder HTML has been tested with Netscape Navigator 4 and 6 and Internet Explorer 4 and 5, each browser has its own display limitations. For example:

• Internet Explorer doesn't use the visited link color for any relative links, but displays it for absolute links.

• Vertical white space between paragraphs of different alignment is not consistent between browsers. For example, in Internet Explorer 3, an extra blank line appears after any paragraph that is not left-aligned.

Design your site so that it still looks good when you view it at different resolutions

Be sure to view your site at 800 x 600 as well as 1024 x 780. You can also choose File > Preview Web Site to check how your Web site looks as you work on it. See Preview and publish a Web site for the steps to follow.

Turn off or resize borders based on your content

Most CuteSITE Builder designs display a top and left border each in a standard size. You can use the Page Layout Editor to turn off a border or change a border’s size to better fit your content. See Work with the Page Layout Editor and Change border properties for the information you need.

Let your visitors know if there’s more content to come

If you have a number of pages that do not have content yet, let your visitors know by adding a message like “Content coming soon” to empty pages.

Use bold or italic for emphasis

When you publish, linked text appears with an underline. Avoid underlining text other than links since visitor of your site will try to click underlined text and may think that the link is broken.

Include a picture description

If you add a description for a picture in the Image Properties dialog box,CuteSITE Builder includes the image description as an ALT tag in the HTML output. Since some search engines review ALT tags as well as text, including a picture description can potentially increase the number of visitors for your Web site.

Note that the description you enter is shared among all uses of a picture in a Web site file, including images you crop or resize. Adding or changing a description in one occurrence of the image changes it for all other occurrences in the file.

Use transparency in images

You can designate that one color in any image appear as transparent using the Image Properties dialog box. This is useful if the image you add to the map or to a page area has a background and you want it to “blend” into the page.

Issues to keep In mind regarding HTML

HTML output from CuteSITE Builder maintains all links and navigational aids from the source file, keeping the output easy to browse and read. However, some formatting and other items are not supported by standard HTML or specific browsers and so are removed from CuteSITE Builder HTML output. Keep the following issues in mind as you create your Web site with CuteSITE Builder.

• Font sizes: During publish, CuteSITE Builder maps font characteristics to the closest available in HTML. Many browsers round font sizes to the nearest available size; in most cases published text appears somewhat smaller, and at very low point sizes, boldface text is not available. If you know exactly which browsers your visitors will be using, you may want to change font sizes in CuteSITE Builder in order to create the best-looking HTML output. However, if you’re not sure of your target browsers, it is strongly recommended that you use the fonts and styles included with the Web designs.

• Link colors: Each Web design has link colors already set up, but you can change them. To save time, modify the page layouts rather than individual pages. Choose Properties > Page Area > HTML Link Colors to set explicit link colors for each page area, either complementary and artistic colors or colors that match your visitors’ expectations. If you turn off the explicit settings, all links will be the same color as the page area’s default text.

• Bulleted text: HTML offers a limited set of bullet styles, which differ among browsers. CuteSITE Builder HTML output uses a uniform bullet style for any bulleted text, regardless of the bullet style in the original Web site file.

• Tabs: HTML version 3.2 doesn't support tab stops. If you publish a file to HTML format, any text that includes tab stops will appear differently in the HTML output than it did in your original file. For tabular data, tables are a better option. If you copy and paste text from another application into CuteSITE Builder, any tabs are converted to spaces, which can throw off the alignment of the text. To re-create the tabular alignment, place the text in a table.

• Anchors: Place anchors on a blank line above the paragraph to which they apply. Browsers reserve a small space for the anchor, and this will ensure that it is not noticeable.

• Special characters: The appearance of hidden characters when you publish to HTML depends on your browser settings. Latin 1 characters with codes greater than 125 are exported as separate HTML entities.

• Page area edges: Although you can add edges to borders using the Border Properties dialog box, the edges do not appear in HTML output and will not be displayed on your Web site.

• Scroll bars and content within borders: Keep content within borders short, so that most visitors will not require scroll bars to see it. (You can right-click and choose Properties > Page Area to disable scroll bars in a border.) For smoothest reading, only the page body should have scroll bars. Note that Netscape sometimes wraps paragraphs within frames more tightly than requested by CuteSITE Builder, and makes the border frames smaller.

• Paragraph spacing and alignment vs. blank lines between paragraphs: If you use either named styles or overrides to set paragraph properties such as indents, outdents, and before and after spacing, CuteSITE Builder constructs the complicated HTML necessary to achieve the same effects in your HTML output. (You and your visitors will not see this complexity unless they view the HTML source.) If you want CuteSITE Builder to produce somewhat simpler HTML, set paragraph indents and space above and below to zero, align paragraphs to the left, and use extra blank lines (carriage returns) to produce inter-paragraph spacing instead.

• Images and objects: Images such as pictures, clipart, and buttons are converted to .PNG format, unless they are already in .JPG format. HTML supports only top-left aligned background images.

• Map limitations: Only the main map, in a docked position, can be published, and it is always at the level of detail called 100%. Due to HTML limitations none of the following are published: the OverAll map, the outline, the fact that the main map was saved at 200% scale, or any map that is floating.

• Nested sequence limitations: When you publish a Web site file to HTML, subordinate sequences (connected by up level links to a first-level sequence) will be included up to twelve levels. Sequences below the twelfth level remain in the file, but are not exported.

• Tiling of background images: Most browsers automatically tile all background images provided for pages. CuteSITE Builder HTML output adds a trick whereby background images seem not to tile in high-resolution browsers: we automatically extend the bottom of the image. Some CuteSITE Builder designs contain background images that take this trick into account. The image extension does not affect file size (due to compression) but it may place a burden on page load times. When you create your own page layouts, we recommend:

• If your users will be creating mostly short pages, tile your background images both horizontally and vertically.

• If your users will be creating pages with large amounts of content, tile background images horizontally only.

In other words, tile both ways wherever possible; to avoid placing a burden on load times and users with high resolution monitors, choose non-tiling background images only if the lack of tiling is central to your design.