Apple and some web basics

While most of the world is surprised at Steve Job's quick price cut on the iPhone, I have been trying to understand why Apple left out a key feature from the new iWork package.

The reason I haven't been worried about the iPhone price cut is that I didn't buy one, and I knew something was up when Steve decided to send an iPhone to every employee.  Steve is not exactly an employer who gives away stuff that he can sell at high prices to customers.

So here is my question about Pages & Numbers. Why can't the programs save their files as HTML for easy posting on the web?

That would seem like a basic requirement in today's world of the web.

Pages gives me a choice of creating a PDF or sending the document to iWeb. At this point in iWeb's life, I'm not fond of sending documents that I like in iWeb's direction. 

I just sent a document done in an early version of Pages to iWeb.  iWeb appeared to be clueless in preparing it for the web.  It desperately wanted to turn it into a blog.

Of course there is a third option which is to save the document as a Word document and then let Word save it as HTML.

I took a Pages document and exported it as a PDF, Download dls_bluewater_gmac.pdf .  I was pleased that my links stayed active but I really would prefer HTML.

At least when I sent the same document to Word I got HTML even if the formatting is messed up a little.

Even the selections for saving on Google Docs are more robust than Pages.  This was a very simple document and it converted over to HTML without any problems.  I would be happy if Pages could do that. Of course it looks a little better done in Rapidweaver.

I didn't have any luck taking something from Numbers and getting HTML. I do that all the time for spreadsheets and charts in Excel that I want someone to easily access.

Perhaps this is why there is a rudimentary manual included with iWork. There is a secret way of getting this stuff on the web.  I may have to crack the manual open tomorrow.

Of course I haven't launched Keynote yet, but I bet it has no option of exporting to HTML.  The earlier versions certainly did not.

Maybe someone knows a good reason why Apple is doing this (other than forcing folks to use Apple programs), but it seems to me Apple is creating a closed system when other vendors are working to make documents more portable.

I would like some web options besides sending my document to iWeb.  Passing through a Microsoft program to get on the web isn't really acceptable.

Comments

[Joshua Ochs]

Well, you already found your solution - PDF. If you want to post a document so people can read it and your formatting stays intact, you use PDF. It's what it was created for. I'm not sure why you really want to avoid it.

Converting to HTML is at best spotty, and tends to break under lots of browsers. Sadly, even doing things by hand it's hard to make things work properly under Safari, Firefox, and IE - getting a program to accomplish the same thing with arbitrarily formatted documents (and Pages' formatting is WAY beyond the web) is nearly impossible.

(Oh, and Word's output to HTML - some of the worst stuff that has ever been spewed onto the web.)

[George]

Steve Jobs told all Apple Employees they would get a free iPhone at a meeting the day before the iPhone went on sale to the public... So it was never an issue of the sales not being there.

[running]

You know what is the strangest thing? That Apple's "super-low-cost" text editor - TextEdit - can save as HTML. So maybe saving to RTF and then opening in TextEdit and saving to HTML is a good temporary solution.

I don't know about Numbers, because it constanty crashes on my Mac (luckily I still have only the trial version).

[ocracokewaves]

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually tried that and discovered some hidden intelligence in TextEdit.

If I do a very simple document with no links, TextEdit will let me save it as HTML.

http://coastalnc.org/plaintext

If I open my Pages document which already has links in it, I don't get the HTML option. I have to use "web archive" which of course creates a file that has to be downloaded.

http://coastalnc.org/links

I can't help but thinking that the whole philosophy behind iWeb being tied to one computer goes back to the whole Jobs' paranoia about information leaking to the web.

ON second thought that actually doesn't make much sense because the word processor of choice in Apple is Word.

That will be an interesting transition to watch. Will Apple convert its internal users to Pages and Numbers or will they stay with Word and Excel?

Keynote has been the presentation standard for ages. I can't remember anyone still using PowerPoint even before I left in 2004.

[PGE]

Searching Versiontracker, I found a program that will convert from PDF to HTML. I have no idea if it is any good, as I have no possibility to right now test it. Here is the link:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/31003

Another way around the problem is to use NeoOffice for example, and if you want a more lightweight wordprocessor, then look at AbiWord found here:

http://www.abisource.com/download/

If you need a lightweight spreadsheet program, then maybe the Darwinport version of Gnumeric would work which is found here:

http://gnumeric.darwinports.com/

I used them both on a regular basis because of their lightweigtht resource requirements when I used Gentoo Linux before I did the switch to a Mac and OSX. Both are solid programs, and they are quite good. Not as good or integrated as NeoOffice though, which I recommend.

[Scott Waters]

Isn't there a "Save as HTML" option under Export? I've saved docuemnts to HTML from Pages. Word screws up the formatting and code so bad that it's practically unusable.

[ocracokewaves]

These are the options you get under export.

http://coastalnc.org/pagesoptions.html

Even worse this is what you get it you try to send the pages document to iWeb.

http://coastalnc.org/iwebexportresult.html

It appears to lose the all of the content. It creates a blank entry in the blog with nothing there.

I would say pages has zero use as tool for the web unless I am missing something.