Help untangling a website written in NetObjects Fusion

Ed_Jogg

Hi all
Simple question:
Can anyone recommend a suitable website that can help explain the proprietary extensions/attributes added to HTML code by NetObjects Fusion?

I am trying to modify a website built using the package, but without a copy of the package available to me.

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Techy version of same question!
I have taken over looking after my railway society's website, which was written using NetObjects Fusion MX. This package is not an HTML editor as such, but it does generate HTML - as a page full of convoluted nested tables full of invisible objects (in an attempt to get the page looking "pixel perfect"). It is a complete nightmare to edit at an HTML level (as it was not intended to be!)

Now, Fusion is not free, and I don't have a copy, so I am using Nvu / Kompozer as an editor (which is free and does the job nicely).

The first problem I have is that Nvu/Kompozer is having great difficulty adjusting the page layout. Often when I attempt a drag adjustment of a table row/column, the package will crash. (So I have stopped doing that!) I have discovered that there is a 'layer' facility which helps convert sections to 'div' blocks, which I have done on one page so far (takes a long time!)

The second problem I have is that there are various non-standard attributes being used and I don't understand what they are. I am trying to convert the pages to be style-sheet based, but this would be much easier of I could understand the proprietary 'nof' extensions.

Can anyone tell me of a site that provides advice for an editor trying to modify a Fusion-built website without access to Fusion?

Cheers
Ed Jogg

[Deleted User]

Would it not be easier to start from nothing and write the site in standard HTML rather than trying to untangle the mess it's in at the moment?

Reggie_Rebel

You can get a free version of Net Objects here

http://www.netobjects.com/html/essentials.html

Ed_Jogg

anewhope wrote: »

Would it not be easier to start from nothing and write the site in standard HTML rather than trying to untangle the mess it's in at the moment?

In an ideal world I would indeed start again from scratch, however that would require greater knowledge of web design and HTML than I am currently blessed with, and certainly more time than I can spare (roughly one evening a week).

Since it is a 'live' website (with some other existing faults) the plan was to gradually evolve it to something rather better, with me gaining HTML experience as I go. (As a software engineer by trade, it's just another language, although there are many intricacies 'beyond', such as browser differences, which I am discovering on the way.)

I have made some good progress with the pages I have converted to styles so far, and this table-to-div migration was the next obvious step.

Fortunately, we have a third-party designing a new website for us - so I shouldn't have to cope with this for too long. However, it was due soon after Christmas and it's unclear when it will be delivered!

Two particular things I have learned so far:
(i) It is nowhere near as easy as it looks, if you're going to do a proper job (and by 'proper' I mean produce a website that will support all browsers (and 'all' versions?), display without graphics (if the user has selected this), display without resorting to scripts (if the user has selected this), cope with screen resizing (text-only or whole page), handle mobile/WAP browsers, handle screen-reading (audio) user agents, etc, etc

(ii) There's no such thing as a WYSIWYG editor. If you want it to look right you need to get your hands dirty and tweak the HTML/styles underneath

Fun, eh?

Ed_Jogg

Reggie_Rebel wrote: »

You can get a free version of Net Objects here

http://www.netobjects.com/html/essentials.html

Thank you for this. Not quite what I was after, but probably very useful, so I'll download it and see if I can import the site.

Ed_Jogg

anewhope wrote: »

Would it not be easier to start from nothing and write the site in standard HTML rather than trying to untangle the mess it's in at the moment?

Er, most definitely YES!! (with the benefit of hindsight, and much more experience of writing (X)HTML). Although it is harder when you have to split your little available time maintain the existing site and creating a new one in parallel.

Ultimately it's been lack of editing time that has meant I've had to persevere with the hacked version for so long. But I've just had a week's sick leave and taken the opportunity to create a new, pure-CSS design. Even with the knowledge I've gained in the meantime, it still took many hours... but the result is most definitely worth it and I am now looking forward to being able to spend more time on content than structure.

bingo_bango

Sorry to hear about the sickness, but glad to hear that you've had the satisfaction of building a cross-compliant site from scratch.
There really is no substitute for knowing how to code the site yourself (although I did recently use NOF Essentials to knock up a site for someone in a hurry but the content will be static, so no tweaking required).

We should pull these site design threads to gether and sticky them. Would save a lot of heartache trying to get some of these matters resolved.

Ed_Jogg

My knowledge of XHTML design has expanded considerably in the past two weeks, but I'm all too aware how limited it is still.

I was really pleased when my all-new CSS code passed W3C validation first time, and my all-new XHTML would have passed first time too if I hadn't forgotten to replace an '&' with '&' -- but that was within the test data, not the code!

The next fun is modifying the beautifully-simple non-script CSS-only drop-down menu to work with versions of IE prior to 8 -- a path trod by many before me it would seem! (It's soooo frustrating. Such simple code to create a fully-working drop-down menu system, and IEx/5/6/7 don't support it. Argh!) Various solutions (eg "suckerfish") are documented on other sites, but I had hoped to find a solution that avoided JavaScript entirely. (BTW I'm not expecting to discuss a solution here as it's heading way of-topic!).


And in case anyone else is interested, the code was developed in the Notepad++ editor -- not a special "HTML editor" or web design package -- but I was considerably helped by the "Web Developer Toolbar" add-on for Firefox which allows you to add/adjust CSS code on-the-fly.

timbim_2

For dropdown menus, look here, the drop down menus in that template are fairly easy to extract and use elsewhere.

Ed_Jogg

This seems the main alternative if you want to avoid a part-JavaScript solution, using anchors and tables inside conditional comments (sooo ugly). This site certainly does look easy to extract the code though.

Owain_Moneysaver

Ed_Jogg wrote: »

The next fun is modifying the beautifully-simple non-script CSS-only drop-down menu to work with versions of IE prior to 8

If it's purely a CSS based menu based on ordinary <UL> items then a browser that ignores the CSS should simply display the list.

See this discussion on news:uk.d-i-y