Welcome to Tips and Tricks. We hope that you'll find some valuable information that you can use as you create your web pages or on the use of your Web development software.

Dreamweaver

One of the most valuable resources for Dreamweaver users is the Macromedia Dreamweaver Exchange. There are literally hundreds of free "extensions" to choose from that will extend the functionality of Dreamweaver. Check it out, you will be amazed!

FrontPage 2003

One of the most valuable free tools available for FrontPage 2003 users is AccVerify's AccVerify SE for FrontPage This tool will check your pages to help ensure that they are Section 508 and W3C Accessibility Guidelines compliant.

General HTML

Avoid the use of "Under Construction" messages or graphics on your web site. It is best to avoid publishing any content that is not ready for viewing as it only frustrates the visitor. On the other hand, don't wait until you have the "perfect" web site to publish. Get your message out first, then tweak it as you go along. Just be sure your page meets or exceeds all of the requirements set forth in Eastern's Web Policy before you publish any page.

 

SSH Secure Shell

You can create individual profiles in SSH Secure Shell. Each profile can have it's own settings, such as Remote Home directory. This is useful for web publishers who are publishing to a departmental web site(s) and their personal web site. Complete information on Profile creation is available from the Help menu in SSH Secure Shell.

Make it easy to get to your Remote Home directory and to other directories you commonly work in within SSH Secure Shell File Transfer Client, by adding them to the drop-down box within the Remote pane (web server pane) and pointing the "Home" icon in the Remote toolbar to the proper directory. To add your favorite directories to the drop-down box, simply type the desired path into the remote page drop-down box and then click on the Add button to the right of the box. See Figure 1 below:

Web Publishing

The only supported method of publishing to the web server with the use of SSH Secure Shell for Windows or Linux or MacSFTP for Mac OS X. Built-in FTP clients in web authoring software such as Dreamweaver, FrontPage and Netscape Composer will not work. Mac users can use MacSFTP software which is available at no cost from the Software Distribution Center located in the Center for Instructional Technology, Library 420.
The University has a site license for SSH Secure Shell for Windows and Linux which includes "at-home use rights" for all faculty, staff and students. The application is installed on all recently imaged University PCs. If you need a copy for home use or your office computer does not have the software installed, contact the Software Distribution Center (SDC) in the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) for more information. You can reach the SDC by calling x5-5793.

 

 

Web Development

Microsoft Office suite products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher) all can save their output as web pages (html). The resultant files are overly large in size and may load unnecessarily slowly.

If you use Microsoft Office 2002 (Office XP) to author your web pages or are converting a Word document to a web page, we recommend that you use the "Save as Web Page, Filtered" rather than the Save as Web Page option.

If you are using Microsoft Office 2000, download the free Office 2000 HTML filter from Microsoft. Once the free HTML filter is downloaded and installed in Office 2000, a new selection on the File menu will be available. To save your Word document as a "filtered" page in Word 2000 click on the File menu, then the new selection, Export To, and then click Compact HTML. Saving as a "Filtered" web page or "Compact HTML" will decrease the size of your web pages resulting in faster download for visitors.

Microsoft says, "When you save a document as a Web page in Word 2000 by clicking Save as Web Page on the File menu, Office adds Office-specific markup to standard Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and cascading style sheet (CSS) markup. This additional markup fully preserves rich text formatting and page layout, and allows Word to "round-trip" documents between binary and HTML format. This means you can create documents in Word, save them as HTML, open them again in Word, and still use all the Word editing features you originally used to create the page.

The Office-specific markup increases HTML file size. If you know you won't need to edit the HTML version of a document, you can trade round-trip capability for smaller file size by using Microsoft Office 2000 HTML Filter version 2.0. The filter removes Office-specific markup from HTML files created in Word so that they take up less storage space on Web servers and take less time for users to download. This process does not affect the appearance of your Web pages." (Read more here)

Please explore your ECSU Web Developers web site. If you know of or discover a resource or tip that you would like to share with your fellow web publishers, please email webmaster and we will be happy to include it on the site.