Before this topic is closed or pronounced "dead," I thought I should post a progress update for those who have been either contributing to this thread or just following it out of curiosity because of some things I discovered and learned since I opened a support ticket for my spacing problem.
First, I need to correct something I said in a previous post. When I started this topic, I thought that the problem I described had only begun to occur after I upgraded to VSD 7. I was wrong. During my interaction with Scott and Technical Support, I re-checked an older version of my web site and found that this problem also exists in VSD 6. I then realized that this problem must have occurred when I upgraded from IE6 to IE7, but I didn't notice it at the time because by then I had finished working on the textual layout of my web site and had begun to focus my attention on other aspects of my web site. So, I must apologize to Scott and to the developers of VSD at Coffee Cup for making a false claim about VSD 7.
Second, I need to mention that the problem I've been having involves more than just the difference between the amount of space that exists between successive paragraphs in the same text frame when viewed in VSD vs. IE, Chrome, and other browsers. It also involves the difference in the way VSD and IE, Chrome, etc. format each paragraph of text. In other words, the width and length of every paragraph (the number of words on each line of text and the number of lines in each paragraph) in a multi-paragraph text frame are not always the same in IE, Chrome, etc. as they are in VSD. Plus, the width and length of every paragraph in a multi-paragraph text frame are not always the same in every browser either. Fortunately, every browser that I previewed my website in (IE 7, Chrome 8.05, Firefox 3.5.9, Safari 5.03, and Opera 9.64) increased the number of words in some lines of text and occasionally even decreased the number of lines in some paragraphs rather than the other way around. On some of my pages, this resulted in a 1/2" to 1" increase in the amount of space between the bottom of some of my text columns and a short row of menu buttons that I had placed just below each of those text columns in VSD. If all of these browsers had decreased the number of words in each line and increased the number of lines in some paragraphs, the bottom of each of these text columns would have ended up overlapping their corresponding short row of menu buttons! So, even though VSD's text formatting doesn't match the text formatting of any browser, VSD "erred" in the right direction. I was pleased to discover, however, that the number of words in most of the lines of text and the number of lines in most of the paragraphs in my multi-paragraph text frames were identical in both VSD and every browser I checked. This means that, overall, this problem is not nearly as serious as I had originally thought it might be.
Third, I have to say that I only found 6 of my 35 pages that ended up with an extra 1/2" to 1" of space between the bottom of their text columns and the short row of menu buttons that I had placed below the text columns. For some reason, two of these pages ended up being the first two pages in my web site. Originally, this had caused me to be very concerned because I was afraid that most if not all of my pages were going to be similarly affected by this problem, and that I was going to have to spend several days at the least redoing the layout of nearly all the text on my web site. Fortunately, this is not the case. I really only need to redo the layout of the text on 6 pages, which I should be able to do in a few hours at the most.
Finally, I must confess that I've learned from this ordeal that putting no more than one paragraph of text in each text frame is indeed the proper thing to do if one wants to precisely control how each paragraph will be formatted when viewed in a browser and if one wants to precisely control how much space will exist below the last paragraph in every column of text that comprises multiple paragraphs. (Of course, as Eric pointed out above, there's also the option of typing paragraphs of text into an HTML editor and placing the resulting code into an HTML box in VSD.) If one doesn't need this much control over the formatting and layout of the text on a website, then placing more than one paragraph of text in a text frame won't cause any serious problems and can save a lot of time. The resulting HTML code might not be as clean, and it might not please everyone who works with HTML code, but who cares if the web site is easy for the site designer to maintain and looks good to its visitors. That's how I see it, anyway. Thanks to everyone for all your help.
Tom
It works.
