Techniques in making site easily copyable to MS Word - asp.net

This is kind of an odd question and I didnt know where to post it, but here it is.
I have an ASP .Net website used by internal company employees. The site pages are pretty basic and has various tables, divs, css and some sprinkles of javascript/jQuery.
Some of the site pages are often used for presentations. And sometimes, the users need to copy the content offline.
I got a request that when trying to copy certain pages off IE/Firefox and onto Word/PowerPoint, it does not carry the layout over correctly. Well, I know obviously why this is a problem but the users dont and are asking to make it possible.
I'm assuming that the easiest way to do this is have a "printable" view. But as some of these pages are still being developed, are there some techniques we could follow that would make these pages somewhat copyable to word/ppt?

There are online guides to doing this like this one.

Related

Corporate Intranet on IIS 7: Looking to Enhance Directory Listing

I am looking for the ability to enhance the appearance of the directory listing pages of a very basic corporate intranet I developed for use by our employees. I am using Windows Server 2012 R2, and the site is deployed in Internet Information Services.
I did not use anything like Visual Studio to create this, and I have already handwritten all of the CSS and HTML for the index page that serves as a jump-off point for the rest of the site so that users can get to the content they need; however, the directory listings pages where the users land leave quite a bit to be desired to say the least.
I just want to be able to add some quick styles to these directories, such as modifying the font family and perhaps the link styles. Nothing major, really. The site already functions perfectly for what it was designed to do, and has been for years. This is just something that's always kind of bugged me but I never devoted any time to it. I'd like to do that now. Ideally I'd be able to just add something in the web.config file like inline CSS, or perhaps link it to a .css file that will house the styles. The latter is probably preferred, actually, but any way is fine.
Any help is greatly appreciated. To get this out of the way early: yes, I have done lots and lots and lots of searching on this topic — I'm talking hours. I have not been able to find a solution that seems to meet my needs. I consider posting here as somewhat of a last resort because I understand that it's a free resource and users here are usually quick to let other users know when they didn't find a particular article that seems to offer the solution they're seeking — which is usually a result of not knowing exactly what keywords to use — and I don't want to waste anyone's time. Just know that I have tried everything I know to find the solution, and that I'm genuinely stumped and looking for help from some pros.
Thank you!
Since the directory page is not HTML, you can't directly style it with CSS. However, there are a few options for changing the way it looks.
Write a script to point to your own, custom-styled, directory page. See this forum thread for tips on how to do that and a sample script.
Create a custom page using this module that you can further customize yourself.
Use the DirectoryListing open source app, which allows for customization of the directory page.
Either one of those solutions should give you more control over how the directory page looks.

Simple search on dynamic web app content

I'm looking to implement search functionality in an ASP.NET MVC site.
The site is driven by a CMS. The users can add widgets to the page with meetings, documents, etc.
So the whole site is fully dynamic.
As I see it, there are 2 options:
Search all possible content directly, and then figure out what results are coupled to pages. Or the other way around, figure out what the content of a page is.
Load or construct all available pages, and make sure the content can be searched. So, basically crawling and indexing my own content.
Maybe other?
I'm not sure what the best implementation would be, all experiences and directions are welcome!
I'm not really looking for Solr or Lucene based solutions. This needs to be a simple implementation, just running a LIKE on the correct rows of the DB is suffictient.

The future of iFrames

I am about to develop a web site for data entry. It will have hundreds of data entry pages. Previously i have made extensive use of iFrames from the menuing system.
Is this now best practice, i number of developers i have mentioned this to have questioned the use of iFrames saying there are better techniques now. However no one could give me a reason not to use the iFrame.
Does anyone have some opinions on the use of iFrames and the reason i should not use them? If not an iFrame then what?
An iFrame is to embed foreign content, another site or another page of your site. Web is not only about what you see but about semantic meanings.
Using iFrames is the most effective way to kill your ranking in search engines and also to difficult web browsing since a browser cannot tell what part of the content represents what or how they are related to each other.
For instance, navigate into an iFrame based page and bookmark an internal page, then come back through the bookmark and see the results.
Do a search in Internet and there are many more explanations about this.

Ways to share a "Top X" list between two Drupal websites?

I'm trying to come up with some easy methods to share data between two Drupal websites. Here's my situation: Two websites both want a Top X Music listing with images, audio and data. One website is already creating and updating this list, and since they both use the same list the other website wants to straight up "steal" the first list, content, style and all. They want to take advantage of the work done to create the list on the other website. Their websites are structurally similar, and we control both sites. Audio is made playable using SWF tools.
Domain isn't really an appropriate solution here as the two sites share nothing besides the Top X Music list. I am able to create a view on the original site to feed the data in any format I want.
Some solutions I've been considering are:
Feed the data from one site to the other, hard link back to the other
site for audio/images.
iFrame the data on the site that is "stealing"
the list. (easy but seems too crude!)
jQuery AJAX load the data on the "stealing" site.
Basically I'm looking for suggestions of how you might handle this if they were your Drupal websites. I am familiar with Feeds, but would need to write a parser specifically for this feed, which seems like overkill for something so simple. Thanks! :)
You don't mention what version of Drupal you're using on the two sites. Assuming it's Drupal 6, you may want to check out the Web Widgets module and/or the Embed widgets module.
If you're just after a list of content from SiteA you could add a display to a given view and get RSS output. The ViewsRSS module gives you more control over what is returned.
If you're looking for more of a widget approach then I'd start looking at the Web widgets or Embed widgets modules. They're ok for basic functionality, but if you're looking to want more functionality I'd consider either embedding the content in an iframe (quick and dirty) or reviewing the services module(s) - although this may be overkill for your needs.
HTH.

How to Build WP Site with Hierarchical Content and Using Custom Design?

A client asked me to redesign her web site, built several years ago in WP by another developer. Although I've never worked with WP before, I'm pretty comfortable with html, css, and php, and I more or less understand how WP stores content and dynamically builds pages. But I'm wondering how to approach these challenges:
My client's site has about 75 pages. There are about 25 that are static (i.e. the content changes infrequently if at all; things like "about us" and "faqs") and there are about 50 pages that are more "blog-like", except that instead of posts, the content contains directory-type info (e.g. 12 DJs in the area) or event-related info (e.g. upcoming shows at local theaters). Both of these categories contain many sub (and sometimes sub-sub) categories (e.g. medical services > pediatric > kid allergy specialists) and the content updates fairly frequently.
I understand the difference in WP between "pages" and "posts". But I need to find out the best way to structure the static content. Should I just set up a parent/child hierarchy of pages, changing the permalinks to something that makes sense? Or is it better / easier to just build the static pages outside WP and somehow link to them from the common navigation?
As a web designer, I want to "wow" my client with a great design. While there are loads of wonderful WP themes available, I really need to create something unique. But I'm wary of breaking something, so what's the best way to take an existing theme and just tweak it enough to make it look a little different?
Finally, other than mounting a massive "copy and paste" effort when the new site is built, is there a way to transfer content from the original site to the new one?
By reading your question, it seems to me that choosing WP for this kind of website was a bad choice.
Redesigning it, though, won't be that hard if it's using page templates for pages.
And yes, there's a import/export tool in WP to tranfer content. (see administration panel)
I, really, advise you to read this great tutorial about creating WP themes.
I've a blog-like WP site myself (contains RPG development articles). Here's what I did. Nested static pages simply have parent-child hierarchy: /about/mingos - that's easy to understand and i value this kind of content organisation (personal opinion).
As for themes, there's a no-brainer tool that, while not exactly apt for real business, has the capability of letting you see how stuff will look in seconds, and can sometimes give you great ideas. It's called Artisteer and there's a demo on its site that you can have a look at. Try your design ideas with it, see how stuff will look like. I'm sure you can come up with some great ideas for a "wow" design :).
Exporting content, as Soufiane Hassou remarked, is possible from within the admin panel.
Don't rule out using categories to create your hierarchy. That way you'd get the benefit of cross categorization of DJs and venues by location to create a robust cross reference system. Pages don't get this benefit without extra work.
To make this in to a directory, though, is gonna either be heavy work on managing the pages or heavy work on creating a solution that will cross reference everything and bring the content together in a usable way on the front end.

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