[WEB4LIB] What I hate about IE5

[Thomas Dowling]

----- Original Message -----
From: jay <jay at ccpl.ci.corpus-christi.tx.us>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at sunsite.Berkeley.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 1999 6:55 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] What I hate about IE5


> When you save a web page, IE 5 assumes or makes up a directory to put
the images in. Netscape doesn't do this.
> It's a royale pain in the pern. I had a rather large document and every
one of the references to the images
> were wrong and had to be redone.
>
> Sooooo typical of Microsoft products...they ASSume.
>

My copy of IE5 has "Save As..." options for "Web Page, complete", "Web
Archive for email", "Web Page, HTML only", and "Text File".  You are
describing only the first option.  "Web Page, HTML only" saves a file that
is identical to NC4.5's "Save As...HTML Files" option.  Perhaps
Microsoft's assumption is that people will explore some menu options
before getting too het up about something like this.

In some contexts, inline images are one of HTML's greatest advantages over
other document formats, but in other contexts its a major hassle.  They
effectively destroy the "1 document = 1 file" relationship that you either
have or can have with PDF, RTF, Word, etc.  To top it off, inline files
can be referenced with pathnames that are relative to the HTML document
(src="images/foo.png"), relative to document root on the server
(src="/images/foo.png"), or absolute, possibly calling a file from halfway
around the world (src="http://...").  It seems to me that any "Save As..."
or "Send This Page To..." operation must necessarily either drop the
inline images entirely, save them all locally and rewrite the HTML to
reference the local copies, or write a BASE element into the HTML and
force you to view it only when you have a network connection.

If you're trying to edit an HTML document from within IE5, may I suggest
the "File/Edit" rather than "File/Save As"?


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu