No More Microsoft Word Headaches
Web designers:
Have you ever had a client copy and paste content directly from Word into your CMS’ editor… only to have a whole bunch of Microsoft garbage html markup ruin your otherwise beautiful site?
I’ve come to the conclusion that clients do what they do… and it’s not their job to learn the “ways of the web”. It’s my job to make things work regardless of whether my clients follow my precise instructions.
Besides…
Not only is this your dream… but your clients’ dream too.
After all, they don’t enjoy calling you up to “fix” a problem that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place. They already feel like a nincompoop (sp?) for having to call you for help and now they have to listen to you tell them that they did something “wrong” by pasting from Word.
You hang up the phone thinking the client is too lazy to follow simple directions… while they hang up the phone thinking that maybe they hired the wrong “web guy”.
I think I’ve got a solution for you…
My code fixes 99% of the issues you’ll get with “copy and paste from Word nightmares” so that you get a great result even when the client does everything “wrong”.
Check it out…
Video: Word Nightmares Be Gone
Adam says:
July 12th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
That’s awesome! It’s truly the coolest thing I’ve seen today - well in a couple days at least. I’m looking forward to the product.
BTW, if you run your FLV through the FLV metadata injector, your timeline scrollbar should work.
The program is here: http://www.buraks.com/flvmdi/
Funzy says:
July 19th, 2006 at 10:47 am
In the FCKeditor you use, you can also turn
FCKConfig.ForcePasteAsPlainText = false ;
or
FCKConfig.AutoDetectPasteFromWord = true ;
to true and then it happens live!
jackborn says:
July 19th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Funzy,
Great suggestion… I did not know about that one.
However… I still think the server side cleaning of the garbage is useful.
Travis Phipps says:
July 25th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
So the obvious question is: Will this MS Word cleanup code be kept private? Or is this something that you might consider discussing publicly? I’ve got another system that I’d LOVE to implement this on, but it’s not a good fit for the entire CMS.
jackborn says:
July 25th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
I don’t think it will be kept private.
Marcus Derencius says:
August 29th, 2006 at 8:12 am
your project is nice, but I’d recommend you take look on TYPO3 CMS, all features I’ve saw here in your blog you can get easly with TYPO3. It’s a worth look.
jackborn says:
August 29th, 2006 at 8:25 am
I’ve tried TYPO3. Problem is its complexity. That said, you’ve obviously found it to be very useful so nothing on this blog should (or would) deter you from using it. No doubt, it’s very powerful. But for the typical designer/entrepreneur I think it’s got too steep a learning curve. It took me a solid afternoon to start to comprehend how to create a template.
The other problem I had was that there is a strict prohibition against changing the login screen so that Typo3 doesn’t appear.
Yet another issue is handing this kind of complex system over to a business owner that you’ve designed the site for. Whether it’s Drupal, or Typo3, if it takes web-geeks a while to figure out, just imagine how long it takes to train a non-techie.
As I said, Typo3 is mature and loved by many. For some it’s perfect. I found it limiting for the reasons I stated above.
But for those that master it and don’t need to hand it over to a client, it is a powerful tool.
wcardinal says:
November 9th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
It would be great if you could share this cleanup code. I would love to see what you have done.
Colyn says:
December 28th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
“Clients do what they do….”
You are correct, but where do you draw the line on usability? At some point you have to say to yourself, if my client can spend time and/or money on learning to use Microsoft Word, then they can spend a day figuring out how to use my CMS.
When I’ve approached clients with the idea of building them a CMS so that they can save money in the long run on maintenance costs, the usual reply is that they don’t have the time or inclination to learn another application. My usual response is that if they can use Word, they can use my CMS. Somehow that’s usually never a persuasive enough argument for them.