Publishing Web Documents The Publish To The Web command is used to export your CorelDRAW document to web page file format. To access this command, choose File | Export HTML or click the Export HTML button in the Internet toolbar. Doing either opens the same Export HTML dialog, shown in Figure 28-6, which has options for you to set exactly how your web page content will be exported. The tabbed dialog looks like and is arranged similarly to CorelDRAW’s Print Options dialog. You’ll find everything you need to save your web page and images. You can also use options to upload your page and the image content to a web server. The dialog itself is divided into six option areas ranging from General to Issues. You can also view a detailed Summary of the exported content and any web export preflight issues that CorelDRAW detects. Use the Browser Preview button to check the appearance of your web page; by default, CorelDRAW launches Internet Explorer for previews. The sections that follow provide a close look at all the options available. Setting General Options Use the General tab to set options such as the destination folder for your exported files. You can specify a separate subfolder for your graphics, or remove the default subfolder name 904 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 28-6 You can use these options for total control over how your page content will be exported. (images\) to have the graphics saved in the same folder as your HTML document. To give the graphics subfolder the same name as the HTML document, select “Use HTML name for image sub-folder.” As for the HTML Layout Method area, the best choice for the majority of users is the HTML Table (Most Compatible) method. If you’re using the export filter to export the HTML code only for an image map (rather than for an entire web page), you should select Single Image With Image Map. Examining Web Page Details The Details tab, shown next, provides information regarding exactly what you selected for export and what the exported file(s) will be named. If you want, you can apply unique page titles and/or HTML filenames to your exported web pages by clicking the existing fields and typing in the current names. Ill 28-9 CHAPTER 28: Basic HTML Page Layout and Publishing 905 28 Reviewing Web Images The Images tab, shown in Figure 28-7, provides a detailed list of the images that will be exported and their default filenames. For a thumbnail preview of each image, click the Image Name. To change the type of format to which an image is exported, click the field adjacent to the Image Name under the Type heading. To change the settings used for each type of exported image, click and then choose from the Type drop-down list. This dialog is where you choose an export format for GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs. Setting Advanced HTML Options The Advanced tab provides options for maintaining links you may have made to external files, including JavaScript in your HTML output, and for adding cascading style sheets (CSS) information in your web page. If you’re using rollovers, be sure to choose the JavaScript option. 906 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 28-7 Use the Images tab to locate a bitmap and to change the type of file CorelDRAW exports. Browsing the Web Page Export Summary The Summary tab, shown in Figure 28-8, provides information on the total size of your web page and on how long it will take users to download your page at various modem speeds. The information is then itemized for each HTML page and image, so you can see if something in particular (such as a large image) might cause an unnecessarily long download time. Preflight Web Issues The Issues tab, shown in Figure 28-9—where an object that’s off the web page has been flagged—detects and displays potential HTML export problems by using a series of preflight conditions. Preflight issues are found and displayed according to the options set throughout the Publish to the Web dialog, most commonly regarding issues surrounding color model use, text compatibility issues, and image size and resolution. The top portion of the Issues tab lists any found issues, while the bottom portion offers suggestions for correcting the problems. Images should be RGB for web images. CHAPTER 28: Basic HTML Page Layout and Publishing 907 28 FIGURE 28-8 The information in this page helps you to measure download times against connection speeds for each of your web pages. To change the issues the preflight feature detects, click the Settings button to open the Preflight Settings dialog, and then click to expand the tree directory under Issues To Check For, shown here. You can also use options in this dialog to Add (+) saved preflight issue sets or to Delete (–) existing issue sets in the list. HTML preflight rules are a function only of the web document HTML that you are exporting. If you have, for example, more than three issues flagged, it’s often a good idea to make a mental note of the problems, cancel out of the Export HTML dialog, and then manually correct the issues in your drawing. Ill 28-10 908 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 28-9 Use this page to troubleshoot problems and to resolve them before exporting. Setting Web Publishing Preferences CorelDRAW gives you complete control over your web-publishing preferences by enabling you to set Export HTML options. These options let you predetermine many of the settings used when your documents are exported to HTML format, as described earlier. To access these options, open the Options dialog ( CTRL+J), click to expand the tree directory under Document, and click Export HTML, shown next. When this Options page is selected, you’ll see three options for setting conditions under which object position and white space are handled when your web page is exported: ● Position Tolerance Here you can specify the number of pixels that text objects can be nudged to avoid creating very short rows or narrow columns when the page is converted to HTML during export. Position Tolerance can be set within a range of 0 (the default) to 100. Increasing this value adds extra space. ● Image White Space Here you specify the number of pixels an empty cell may contain before being merged with an adjacent cell to avoid unnecessary splitting of graphic images. ● Position White Space This option controls the amount of white space to be added to simplify your exported HTML document. By default, the white space is set to 4 pixels. ● Image Map Type Choosing Client for the Image Map Type is best because client image maps provide faster interaction with your user than server image maps do. Only use Server if your provider specifically requests it. Ill 28-11 CHAPTER 28: Basic HTML Page Layout and Publishing 909 28 Exporting Images for the Web Although you can specify PNG, GIF, and JPEG file formats for images in your HTML page, you don’t have access to nearly the variety of compression types or transparency options unless you pass your images through File | Export for Web. This is a process separate from Export HTML, and to get images that feature transparency so they “float” against a page background, follow this procedure: 1. Export your HTML document and allow images to be exported to the Images folder CorelDRAW creates. 2. Export images you’d like to treat as special elements—such as PNGs and GIFs with transparent backgrounds—using File | Export for Web. 3. Save these files and then replace the ones in the Images folder with your new files, using the same filenames as the ones in the Images folder. Create a graphic you’d like to appear on a web page against a background, and follow these steps to learn how to export the graphic with transparency. Exporting a Graphic with Transparency 1. Select the graphic on the page with the Pick tool. If the graphic has a background, don’t select the background and you’ll save a step. 2. Choose File | Export for Web. 3. In the Export for Web dialog, choose GIF from the Format drop-down list. 4. Click the eyedropper tool to select it, and then click over the background in the GIF preview pane, not the one marked “Original” at its bottom. You can arrange the preview panes to top and bottom, left and right, or other multiple views by clicking the buttons in the upper left of this dialog. 5. Click the Makes The Selected Color Transparent button; in a moment, you’ll see the preview of the graphic with a checkerboard background indicating the transparent areas of your intended export. 6. Because GIF images can drop out only one color and not a range of colors, if the background of your document isn’t black, consider using one of the Matte colors, selected from the Matte mini-palette. If, for example, your web page is solid blue, choose solid blue. Doing this has nothing to do with the color you selected to drop out as the background color, but instead has to do with fringing. You choose a compatible background color from the Matte colors to disguise aliased edges around your graphic. 910 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide 7. Set the unique number of colors for the export. By default, it’s 256, but to save transfer time, many simple graphics can look fine using 128 or even 32 colors. You specify the number of colors from the Number Of Colors drop-down below the preview of the Color Palette, or you can type a value into the box. 8. If you need to resize the graphic, use the Percentage boxes in the Transformation field of this dialog. But think twice about this: your HTML page won’t display the image properly if you’re replacing, for example, a 400×300-pixel GIF that CorelDRAW just exported to the Images folder with a new graphic that’s 375×285 pixels. 9. Click Save As, and after you’re done, replace the original exported image with this one, renaming the file to match the original filename. See Figure 28-10 for the location of the features used in this tutorial. CHAPTER 28: Basic HTML Page Layout and Publishing 911 28 FIGURE 28-10 Export at the file size and with the options you need with the Export for Web dialog. Click color to be dropped out. Make the selected color transparent. Swapping graphics into an HTML page has to be done with precision. The filename, the file type, and image dimensions have to be identical, because the image dimensions are written into the HTML code. And very few artists want to backwards-correct an HTML document! Web Text Options Fonts that you use when designing a web page will not always show up on a visitor’s web browser: web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple’s Safari are almost completely dependent on which typefaces are installed on the visitor’s computer. There is no true “default” font for the Web, but over the years, Microsoft has quietly provided your system—and tens of millions of others—with system fonts that you basically can be assured reside on more than 90 percent of all computers used to surf the Web. Here are the current “web safe” typefaces: Ill 28-12 It’s considered discourteous on the Web to post long sections of text as bitmap graphics: visitors can’t copy or bookmark the text, and it violates the rules of accessibility—text-to- speech readers can’t decipher text-as-graphics, and indexing services will ignore what to you might be valuable information. Therefore, when you create paragraph text for a web page, use one of the typefaces listed in the previous illustration, for at least two more important reasons: ● Your web page will load more slowly with text displayed as a graphic instead of as editable text. ● Small text, such as 10 point, probably will not be legible. Consider that a screen pixel is approximately 1/72 inch, and a typographic point is approximately equal in size to one pixel. Therefore, 10-point text has to be rendered to screen using only 10 pixels in height. That’s the size of the font previews on CorelDRAW’s Fonts drop- down list, and many of the fancier fonts are not legible at this size as bitmap renders. 912 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Figure 28-11 is an example of a web page layout, and as you can see, the text for the business hours is small and formatted as paragraph text. This text needs to be exported as text and not as a bitmap. On the other hand, the name of the fictitious spa, and the elegant headlines above business hours can be exported as bitmap graphics, especially if the designer wants to retain the style of the typeface. Follow these steps with any web page layout you have that contains text, to learn how to make the document conform to web standards for text. Formatting Text for the Web 1. Format any text you want to be editable text on the web page using the fonts enumerated earlier. 2. The first thing to do is to check to see that any text you want displayed as text on the web page is paragraph text. Select any text in question with the Pick tool, and then choose Text from the menu. If the command Convert To Paragraph Text is available, choose this command. If it’s not available, the text is already paragraph text, and it’s easy to spot on the page because a nonprinting frame is around paragraph text. CHAPTER 28: Basic HTML Page Layout and Publishing 913 28 FIGURE 28-11 Text that uses distinctive typefaces has to be exported as bitmaps to retain its look on the Web. Needs to be a bitmap graphic Needs to be a bitmap graphic Needs to be a bitmap graphic Paragraph text can be Tahoma. . sure to choose the JavaScript option. 906 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 28-7 Use the Images tab to locate a bitmap and to change the type of file CorelDRAW exports. Browsing the Web Page. make a mental note of the problems, cancel out of the Export HTML dialog, and then manually correct the issues in your drawing. Ill 28-10 908 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 28-9 Use this. remove the default subfolder name 904 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 28-6 You can use these options for total control over how your page content will be exported. (images) to have the graphics