Untidy HTML code and strange usage of Tags.

[Nick27]

RH8 HTML

I've been noticing over pretty much all of my topics that the HTML is quite messy, and various types of tags are being used.

Best example is the use of both the    <span style="font-weight: bold;"> and the very standard <b> tag being used to both achieve bold text, the same is occuring for italic text.

sometimes this is happening at the same time, example:  <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Form Builder</span></b>

I'm using either CTRL+B or the Bold icon in RH to set off the bold text, and it seems to pick whichever tag it wants at random.

does this happen for everyone....is there anyway to lcean this up automatically somehow....I'm not looking to edit this all manually, and if its not broken I'm not going to try, but I like things to be clean, and this is not clean at all.

Thanks,

Nick

[ermphd]

Nick,

I agree that the use of tags for bold, itlaics and underline is strange.

Suggestion, if you are comfortable editing html and need more power than the design editor provide, may I suggest you take a look at Ultra Edit. Very powerful editor, 45 day trial and inexpensive. I use it to edit topics outside of RH. For example, you can find all instances of <b span style ect> across ALL topics and simply make them <b>s .

It is my understanding the 3Wc has "depecated" the <b><i> and <u> tags thus encouraging develpers to use more elaborate tags for produce font effects.

Hope this suggestion helps your efforts!

Ciao

Ed

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

<b>,<i>,<small>, etc are not (yet) decaprated in HTML and XHTML F,T,S. See http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_font_style.asp, although I think that it's sensible to avoid these tags altogeher.

My solution to this untide HTML is avoid inline styling and above mentiond tags altogeher. Personally, I use span classes for every use, even though separate uses have the same styling, such as field names, page names, paramaters, etc. By creating a separate class for every use, you insure that you can easily change the style of a specific type.

This means ofcourse a rather large style sheet and you cannot use the styling options in RoboHelp itself. But once you're used to that, it actually saves you a lot of time. I've had to change some specific styles more than once and it's much easier to to change a style sheet, than change hundreds of topics with a Find and Replace or by hand.

Greet,

Willam