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When Black Is Not Really Black - Pages Versus RapidWeaver

3K views 29 replies 9 participants last post by  tdu 
#1 ·
When composing my web site each day, all files containing text are are produced using Pages. I Use Arial bold for the most part, although letters are run in Arial regular.

When I copy and paste the Pages text into RapidWeaver and publish it to the web, I do not get a solid black. In each case I get a washed-out looking version of black when viewed in Safari. That is, unless I take the extra step of selecting all type in each item and using the RapidWeaver colour panel control to switch the text to solid black.

I'm sure it isn't just me, but just in case it is, please take a look for yourself in this item:

Life's Funny Experiences | St. Albert's Place On The Web

The first paragraph, "I was in the 15 item express lane at the store quietly fuming." is a direct copy and past from Pages without using the black colour panel in RW. The following three paragraphs have been converted to RW black. I did this to see if the lead paragraph appears washed-out to others, or if I am seeing things?

Now for my question. If you agree the Pages text is less than solid black, how do I get Pages to make it solid black to avoid that extra step with RW on everything I publish?

Any and all comments welcome.
 
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#4 ·
Don. On my eMac running Camino the difference is just barely visible. I probably would not have noticed it with out your que. It is more noticeable in Safari but more like a dark grey than washed out.

I would guess the template was created back when most high end monitors were still CRTs.
 
#7 ·
you're far better off, writing in a plain text. Or, somehow copy the copy, as plain text as possible.

What is likely happening is your copy is also bringing along the formatting in pages. I forget how to copy as plain text.

Then, do your formatting, in rapidweaver.
 
#8 ·
It's not the case here - the theme he is using has the body text colour default set to gray - to change the default in this case, he will need to overwrite the CSS.

RapidWeaver has an option to paste any text as plain text (Edit menu) but this will not give him the black text he wants...
 
#10 ·
Don, you want to add a line after "sans serif;" to specify the font color.

Add:

"color: #000;" - without the quotes, of course, and do make sure you have the final semi-colon in there before the closing bracket. That should do it. :)

Please note - this will only change the sidebar. If you want to change all the type to black, then I'll go looking in the CSS for that for you. Back in a moment...
 
#11 · (Edited)
Ok - if you want to change all the text to black, this is the line you need to edit (in the stylesheet that controls the text styles, found at http://mybirdie.ca/rw_common/themes/baukraft/css/text.css)

Current CSS:
body {
color: #444;
font: 13px/1.5 LiberationSerifRegular;
}
What you want to have to change all text to black (unless otherwise specified elsewhere):

body {
color: #000;
font: 13px/1.5 LiberationSerifRegular;
}
Note: there is an awful lot of font specifying going on within that page - stuff that shouldn't be there if you've got a properly written stylesheet. You shouldn't see stuff like this:
"Wouldn't it be great if that happened more often? </span><span style="font:19px Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; "> <br /></span><span style="font:19px Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight:bold; color:#000000;font-weight:bold; ">__________________________________________________________________</span><span style="font:19px Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span>"
For one thing, you've got a whole lot of code around things like <br> tags, which don't need any code at all. And if you want specific fonts, you should write a CSS rule for them and do it that way. The whole point of CSS is to separate the markup from the content. You've got a boatload of unnecessary markup in there - is this because you're pasting from Pages or because you're going in and adding all that styling manually? I don't use Rapidweaver, so am not sure what's causing it, but it sure creates a mess. I've just looked up some info about Rapidweaver, and apparently you cannot edit code directly, but somehow I don't think it normally creates a whole lot of excess markup without considerable help. ;)

On your home page, for instance, in the code I see this:

<span style="font:19px Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#000000;"><br />Alberta's new premier Redford is certainly looking like a "new broom".<br /><br />And I think that a great many citizens were startled by her stated intention to impose zero-based budgeting on Alberta's civil service.<br /><br />What's important about zero-based budgeting?
Why do you have to go in and specify font sizes and styles (and color) when it should all be in the CSS? If this is the normal text style, then you should have all that markup in the CSS, like this:

p {font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 19px;
}

As you've already specified the color in the body (color: 000;) so that's all you'd need. BTW - there seem to be a whole lot of extra stylesheets that control font sizes - did you add those? I suspect that you're actually overriding them manually and I'm not sure why.

I'd also humbly suggest that you NOT use bold text for anything other than headings - it really is harder to read than a normal weight font.
 
#12 ·
Ok - if you want to change all the text to black, this is the line you need to edit (in the stylesheet that controls the text styles, found at http://mybirdie.ca/rw_common/themes/baukraft/css/text.css)

Current CSS:


What you want to have to change all text to black (unless otherwise specified elsewhere):



Note: there is an awful lot of font specifying going on within that page - stuff that shouldn't be there if you've got a properly written stylesheet. You shouldn't see stuff like this:


For one thing, you've got a whole lot of code around things like <br> tags, which don't need any code at all. And if you want specific fonts, you should write a CSS rule for them and do it that way. The whole point of CSS is to separate the markup from the content. You've got a boatload of unnecessary markup in there - is this because you're pasting from Pages or because you're going in and adding all that styling manually? I don't use Rapidweaver, so am not sure what's causing it, but it sure creates a mess. I've just looked up some info about Rapidweaver, and apparently you cannot edit code directly, but somehow I don't think it normally creates a whole lot of excess markup without considerable help. ;)

I'd also humbly suggest that you NOT use bold text for anything other than headings - it really is harder to read than a normal weight font.
Thanks Paddy, and no, I am not adding anything manually. I just copy and paste the text from Mail or somewhere on the web into pages, alter the font and size, then copy and paste it into RW. I guess all that code you refer too just gets dragged along. I know nothing about code at all, that's why I use RW.
 
#13 ·
I actually do own Rapidweaver (came with various bundles I've bought over the years) so I had a go with a bit of text I created in Pages. And therein lies the problem!

I typed:

Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....

Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....

Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....

Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....
...with a bunch of formatting applied. And lo and behold, pasting from Pages into RW gets me this horror show:

<div id="content"><!-- Start content -->
<div class="contentSpacer"></div><!-- this makes sure the content is long enough for the design -->
Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....<br /><br /><strong>Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....<br /></strong><br /><span style="font-size:14px; color:#a40800;"><em>Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....<br /></em></span><br /><span style="font:24px Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight:bold; ">Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....</span>
In order to get rid of all that mess, what you need to do is hit Format->Clear formatting after you paste from Pages. THEN apply your formatting, and usually the only things you should be applying are bold, italic and HTML->header - you shouldn't need anything else, as the "content" tag should specify font style, font size and font color.

This is what the same bit of text looks like in the code if I clear the formatting, then use RapidWeaver to format:

Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....<br /><br /><strong>Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....</strong><br /><br /><span style="color:#a40800;"><em>Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....</em></span><br /><br /><h2>Let’s type a bunch of stuff and see what happens....</h2>
As you can see, both bits of code create the same result (or would if I changed the H1 specification to "bold" for font weight and made the reds match) - here's a screen shot from RW's preview window:
 

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#15 ·
I actually do own Rapidweaver (came with various bundles I've bought over the years) so I had a go with a bit of text I created in Pages. And therein lies the problem!

I typed:



...with a bunch of formatting applied. And lo and behold, pasting from Pages into RW gets me this horror show:



In order to get rid of all that mess, what you need to do is hit Format->Clear formatting after you paste from Pages. THEN apply your formatting, and usually the only things you should be applying are bold, italic and HTML->header - you shouldn't need anything else, as the "content" tag should specify font style, font size and font color.

This is what the same bit of text looks like in the code if I clear the formatting, then use RapidWeaver to format:



As you can see, both bits of code create the same result (or would if I changed the H1 specification to "bold" for font weight and made the reds match) - here's a screen shot from RW's preview window:
this is precisely what I have been suggesting.

But, I only do this for a livin, ;)
 
#22 · (Edited)
Yes - I was surprised not to find it in RW 3.5, but as I've noted, they added it in RW 4. The version of 4 that I had on my Mac was a beta that offered an update (still demo) to 4.6.2, Jef - so that's as far as I went. ;) As you note, it's now up to 5.

Like Groovetube, I don't actually use RW, though I've certainly looked at it a few times over the years. I'd go nuts having no direct & complete access to the underlying code!! ;) That said, as WYSIWYG apps go, it's not bad and has some nice features via the plugins and addons (like PageLime - the CMS addon). Of course, if you're going to go that route, you'd probably be better to go with WordPress...

Speaking of which, ever considered using WordPress for your site, Don? It would be ideal for what you're doing - and there are a lot of lovely themes out there that are geared towards "news" type sites.
 
#25 ·
Speaking of which, ever considered using WordPress for your site, Don? It would be ideal for what you're doing - and there are a lot of lovely themes out there that are geared towards "news" type sites.
No, I haven't Paddy, but now that you mention it, I should go take a look at it when I get some time.
 
#27 ·
I would second (or third?) the Wordpress suggestion. For a site like yours, it makes a lot of sense. So easy to post (including text, photos, video, etc.), great search and archives, easy implementation of social media as well as statistics, the list goes on.

Try out a free hosted version at wordpress.com. If you like it, the software itself is a one-click install on most web servers, and it's free.
 
#30 ·
I agree.

RapidWeaver is a nice program, but with almost any site you get to the point where you need plug-ins not included with the program I found. Most of the plug-ins like Stacks should really be part of the program because they are kind of essential. But, you have to pay extra.

Wordpress takes no more time to learn than Rapidweaver, and can do a whole lot more. And it's free and all you need is a web browser to update/work on the site.
 
#28 ·
Don, you appear to be using Hostgator for your hosting - and it's an excellent host for Wordpress. You can try it out AT Hostgator - just create a folder inside your public_html folder WHEN you install WordPress (don't create the folder before - let the WP installation process do it, but don't forget to do this or it will install by default at the root level, which you don't want until you're sure that's the route you'd like to take!)

From there, you can play around to your heart's content, and nobody will know it's there unless you point them to it by giving them the URL. :)
 
#29 ·
I dunno. The black in the first paragraph and the black in the second paragraph look close enough for rock 'n' roll for me. ;)
 
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