re: Question: Excel HTML docs

Subject: re: Question: Excel HTML docs
From: "Christensen, Kent" <lkchris -at- sandia -dot- gov>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 13:06:39 -0700

re: There is some information I need to retain at the top of each sheet
(filename, which is the document number) when updates occur.

Well, the filename when converted to html won't be "something.xls" but
rather "something.htm," and you could make the "something" the same as it
was in EXCEL format and this url would always be displayed in the "address"
line of the users' browsers.

I'd like to add a little discussion to this. I applaud the notion of
converting the spreadsheets to html and making them available on your
intranet, as it's much more user friendly than just making a web page with a
link to the EXCEL file. It should be considered, however, that web browser
software and spreadsheet software are like apples and oranges and you should
consider optimizing your document for the software that will be used to
display it, i.e., a browser. Generally, spreadsheets are best used for
creating calculations, etc., and, most importantly, then printing out the
results. EXCEL has really neat features for "fitting to page," and other
print related things, but it is seldom much of a visual experience to look
at a spreadsheet on your monitor. Browsers, on the other hand, have pretty
bad print capabilities, and the very nature of the word "browse" suggests
that it's optimized for screen viewing. And, folks have come to have a set
of expectations for what they view with Web browsers that are pretty
different from what's available when viewing a spreadsheet. First of all,
for Web browsing, it's considered a fatal error to present something that
requires left-right scrolling, and everything you read suggests minimizing
vertical scrolling as well. It could very likely be these considerations
were not included in the original layout of your spreadsheets, but I'd
suggest that browser expectations be addressed when presenting this material
with a browser. Your desire to have a filename at the top of each "page"
sounds a lot like page headers, which is a "does not compute" notion in web
browsing. If you really are putting this material on the Web (intranet)
just for printing, I'd suggest Adobe acrobat instead of html.


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