
                            Microsoft Does HTML


                    Creating HTML with Internet Assistant
                          Copyright 1995 by Jim Plumb

 If you use MS Word 6 and you want to create HTML documents you might be
 interested in picking up a copy of Internet Assistant, a free add-on
 template for Word 6.0a available from Microsofts Web server at
 http://www.microsoft.com/msword/ia.

 I've used this product from time to time since it was in beta test and
 Ive found it a handy tool for creating HTML docs from scratch and also
 for converting other Word documents to the HTML format. And of course you
 cant beat the price. However, you do need some power to run Internet
 Assistant. Microsoft  recommends a 386 with 8 mgs of ram.  I soon
 discovered, you will need those 8 mgs.

 Internet Assistant (IA) comes as a self-extracting archive, which
 should be extracted into a temporary directory. Use the File/Run menu to
 run setup which puts IA in a sub-directory of Winword. It also asks if
 you want to install the internet browser capability. You need to have an
 internet connection to run the IA browser.  IA is a Winword template,
 which in this case means a set of styles, macros, dialogs, buttons, and
 must be run under Winword.

 There are two modes of running IA, Edit and Browse Mode, which can be
 reached from the File menu or by a button with a pair of eye-glasses for
 Browse and a pencil for Edit. Browse mode lets you cruise the net or
 cruise your interoffice network, whichever way you hyper-links direct
 you. IA comes with an very adequate help file which will be all youll
 need to get up and running. I did find that one of the URLs listed in
 one of Help FAQs was out of date and directed me to another one.

 Browse is where your 8 mgs of ram come in handy. My home computer has 4
 mgs and it took a long time for the browser to down-load HTML files and
 display them to the screen. Ill stick with Netscape thanks. Edit mode is
 where you create HTML documents. You can create the doc as you would in
 Word. HTML attributes can be applied to your document as you would apply
 styles. This version of IA only supports HTML 2 and didnt see any
 mention of support for HTML 3 on the Internet Assistant Web page.

 When you finish your document save it as HTML and voila you are a Web
 publisher. What I like about this is that while you are editing the HTML
 file you can switch to browse mode and check the links to see if they
 actually go anywhere. If you are browsing you can push a button to copy
 the present URL to the clipboard, switch back to edit mode and paste it
 in to your document.

 One thing you need to watch out for when browsing, especially if you are
 low on ram, is that IA opens each hyperlinked document in its own window
 and keeps them on the desktop They can build up fast and use up your free
 resources in quite a hurry.

 IA can convert many kinds of documents to HTML, basically anything that
 can be opened by or pasted into Winword can be saved as an HTML document.
 It's my opinion that this one of its strong points. However you are
 creating your HTML document, you now have a good head start on your work.
 If you want to try this out, make sure your MS Word is 6.0a or greater.
 If it is 6.0, you can download the upgrade from the IA Web page.

 Jim Plumb is the WindoWatch homepage editor and our resident Acrobat
 expert. He can be reached at jplumb.user1.channel1.com



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