FTP question

Mad Mike

I have been uploading pages to a website for some time using smartftp without really thinking about how it works. Today I discovered that these pages are only viewable with Internet explorer because of confusion with forward slashes and backslashes. Can anyone with more ftp knowledge than I have give me some pointers to a better way to do this?

I have an image of my webpage stored on my hard disk with linked pages stored in multiple subdirectories. All of the links point to my hard disk (the files link to c:\etc etc). I use MS Word to create the files and I love the fact that I can test the whole thing on my hard disk before uploading it.

When I upload (using smartftp) it appears to intelligently translate the links from links on my hard disk to links on the server. I never thought about how it does this - it just works (or so I thought).


Today I discovered that the resulting webpages are only usable with Internet Explorer. The problem arises because although Smartftp translates the links from c:\ etc to links on the server it does not change the backslashes into forward slashes in the addresses. The reason I never spotted this is because Internet Explorer translates backslashes into forward slashes but other browsers (eg Mozilla) do not. Therefore my page can only be viewed with Internet Explorer.

henbane

Stop using Word to write your pages. Get familiar with html and edit the links yourself. You can use any browser to view the site on your hard disk. Just use the same directory structure on your hard disk as you use on the website.

ftp commands would go as follows..

Start, run type ftp myserver.server.com

Connected to myserver.server.com.
220 myserver.server.com FTP server (Version 6.00LS) ready.
User (myserver.server.com:(none)): username
331 Password required for username.
Password:
230 User username logged in.
ftp> ascii
200 Type set to A.
ftp> lcd c:\temp
Local directory now C:\temp.
ftp> cd www
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> mput *.html
200 Type set to A.
mput a.html? y
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for 'a.html' (47926 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 48026 bytes received in 0.41Seconds 118.00Kbytes/sec.
ftp>bye

If there is more than one .html file in the directory it will ask you if you want to transfer that next and so on and so on. y if you do, n if you don't.

If you're transferring images it's a good idea to change type to binary. Type binary and press enter. 'as' will do for ascii and 'bi' for binary if you're in a hurry.

No ftp program that I know of will translate links for you (though I will probly be corrected in about two minutes) so it's more likely a word issue than the ftp programs problem as all ftp is meant to do is transfer files up/down from a server.

Mad Mike

Didn't realise that windows has built in ftp program. Useful to know - will try this out.

I have edited the odd page direct in HTML but that is extremely tedious. I use Word every day so I would really love to stick with it if possible.

The problem seems to arise in the translation from links on my hard disk to links on the server. Not sure how Word is the problem. It correctly inserts the links to pages on my hard disk. I amn't asking it to do anything else.

I will play around with windows ftp and see what happens.

Mad Mike

OK - I've found a work around.

I still use MSWORD to create the pages and insert hyperlinks as before.

Then I manually edit the Hyperlinks in Word to change from "\" to "/". This doesn't upset Word and the links the links still work on my local hard disk. Now when I smartftp the links (with forward slashes) work correctly when uploaded to the WEB.

Without fully understanding what is going on it appears that WORD is incorrectly using backslash rather than forward slash when it creates hyper links. Microsoft software doesn't care and still recognises the links. Other browsers choke because the HTML standard is forward slash.

Winters

Thats Word for you. Stop creating webpages with word. Learn some HTML [it will take no more then a couple of weeks] and get to grips. Word puts in way too much unneccory code that will make the page load slower etc. and also create the problems as you have.

Or get a differant editor such as Dreamweaver. Google should also turn up some easy and simple free ones which will do the job [possibly better] then Word.

seamus

Microsoft a while back went with back slashes for directory listings, while the rest of the world went with forward slashes.

While the internet boomed and adopted forward slashes as its standard, MS refused to budge. So although backslashes may work in IE, other browsers like to be mostly correct and so don't interpret backslashes to be conducive to directory listings.

Mad Mike

I know Word is not a serious option for web page deign but I only need something quick and dity to bang some pages up so they can be accessed over the web by a group of people. Word is what I've got and Word is what I know. Now that I have a work around it does the job.

I would consider trying something else to knock up a quick html page but it would have to have a learning curve of no more than 10 minutes. Any suggestions?

Owenw

If you know how to hand-code basic HTML use Notepad.
Otherwise there's loads of freebies available on the Interweb such as Netscape 7.1 Composer which must surely be better than Word. (I've never used it though.)

Or have a look on www.download.com for other freebies / shareware

For more serious editing I recommend Dreamweaver MX (it does have a pretty steep learning curve and doesn't come cheap).

sceptre

Originally posted by Mad Mike
I would consider trying something else to knock up a quick html page but it would have to have a learning curve of no more than 10 minutes. Any suggestions?

Frontpage? Or Netscape Communicator (the Composer part)?

Either would be better than Word to be honest.

[SIZE=1you could always cheat and set \ to autocorrect to / in word (turning off the autocorrect after you're done) but frankly pages written in Word (or frequently, Frontpage) can be anything up to 10 times as large as hand coded pages. Which makes a big difference to both your impatient viitors, who won't wait and your bandwidth costs[/SIZE]

Mac daddy

learn html and use notepad that is a goodway to start of instead of using poxy ms word nothing but problems with it, If you have a bit of cash and still do not want to learn html get dreamweaver:p