Cuckoo, a Web Authoring with Word VBA

You don't need to know HTML to use Cuckoo.

If you are more skilled and already know an Authoring tool such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver, you still can find Cuckoo useful because:

1. Word is very effective when you have large amounts of textual data to enter

2. You can use Cuckoo to create textual parts of your documents

3. You can customize it

You simply need to have Word 97 or Word 2000 installed on your PC.

Cuckoo is not limited to static pages. You can also use Cuckoo to create ASP, JSP or PHP pages. Just read the customisation guide to learn about its advanced functions.

Cuckoo analyses Word documents to generate HTML equivalents. Obviously it is not the first tool to do that.

There are three free Microsoft tools that you can use:

• Word 97 Save As HTML. Though it has been used to author more HTML pages than many HTML authoring tools, a lot of users hate it. OK, it generates nasty old-fashioned HTML and it is buggy.

• Word 2000 Save As HTML. It has much less bugs and generates fairly advanced code. It is criticized for the size and the number of files that it generates.

• Microsoft Office HTML Filter 2. It generates more compact (and easier to read) files than Word 2000 Save As HTML.

The major drawback of Microsoft Office HTML Filter 2 is that it generates embedded Cascaded Style Sheets based on your Word document. Therefore you cannot apply a consistent look and feel to your site or easily embed your Word-generated pages in bigger documents.

There are other tools that you can buy. Most of them convert RTF files to HTML. They are not as good as Microsoft tools for image processing.

There is also a shareware, W2CSS by Lewis Gartenberg.

Cuckoo has three advantages:

1. It is Open Source under GNU Lesser General Public License. You have the sources, you are free to change and redistribute them.

2. It is a Site design tool. It allows you to merge the document with your site framework (header, navigation bar, footer...) and to customize its layout.

3. It allows form design

Cuckoo converts Word embedded styles to their closest HTML equivalent.

Cuckoo also supports forms, using defined styles:

1. A form is described by a table

2. Form elements are identified by defined styles:

Describing a form element requires more than one style. In that case only, Cuckoo defines a simple syntax:

The form will use GET mode if a button has GET specified:

<form method="GET" action="URL">

The form will use POST mode if a button has POST specified:

<form method="POST" action="URL">

The form will call a script if a button has script specified:

<form method="POST" onSubmit="script (this)">

Cuckoo doesn't support bold and italics because we consider that as a bad practice. Create your own Cascading Style Sheets instead. Cuckoo doesn't create CSS for you. You can use the Microsoft Office HTML Filter 2 to generate appropriate CSSs.

Strictly speaking Cuckoo doesn't create HTML but well-formed XHTML.

It merges the document converted from Word with a Site file that you provide and applies an XSL transformation on the merge to create the HTML page:

Cuckoo is designed with accessibility in mind:

• Use of CSS

• Generation of ALT attribute on images to set the text to be displayed (or read) as a tool tip or in place of the image. To specify an ALT attribute, simply set a Comment on the image.

• Generation of TITLE attribute on links to set the text to be displayed (or read) as a tool tip on the link. To specify a TITLE, simply set a Comment on the link.

Cuckoo can help you if you want your pages to be indexed on search engines:

1. Set your page title with the Title style

2. Set the description of your page with the Description style

3. Set the keywords of your page with the Keywords style

4. Set ALT and TITLE attributes: many search engines give a premium to the content of ALT and TITLE attributes

Your can use a WordCount macro included in the Cuckoo package to compute the frequency of your keywords. WordCount can also help you to enhance your style.

Contact:support@pagebox.net
©2001 Alexis Grandemange. Last modified .

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