Tom,

I don't know what CoffeeCup plans to do concerning VSD. I will be happy to pass this information on the them and if there is enough requests for this, they may be able to add it to a future update.

When you enter text, you can click on allow advanced text in the text object window. That allows you to use things like shadows and creates an image of the text.

I really don't use VSD all that much, preferring to use the HTML Editor.

Hello Tom,

I'm sorry for all the confusion here. Your first instinct was the correct one. Visual Site Designer will NOT convert any special characters such as em dash or curly quotes to the proper HTML entities for you. Anytime you want to use these characters, you'll need to add them using the HTML tool by typing out the character's entity into the Body HTML tab.

You can find a list of HTML entities at http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp

Since the characters will usually be in the middle of a paragraph, it doesn't make much sense to have a block for each single character. Instead, you can type out the entire paragraph into the Body HTML tab and just type out the HTML entities where necessary.

You'll only see the HTML box when designing the page, but if you preview or upload the files all the text will appear in place of the HTML box.

Hi Cesar,

Finally, a straightforward answer!! Thanks for replying to my question and putting an end to all the confusion it has generated! I have never used the HTML tool because I don't understand how it works and because I don't know HTML (and don't really want to). But now that I may be forced to use it (or at least to try it), I have another question for you:

Is it possible to insert all of my text blocks into an HTML object and then format it using HTML tags? If so, is the object's position on the page retained when VSD outputs the page to a .html file? I know this is beyond the scope of my original question, but I'd like to know whether or not I should even bother experimenting with your suggestion. I may just be better off getting rid of the special characters and leaving it at that.

Tom

Cesar,

I guess you don't have time to answer my last two questions, so I'll answer them myself in order to close this thread.

I've done some experimenting with the HTML Tool and discovered that the position of HTML objects is retained in VSD's .html file output, and that the left and top borders are the main factors that affect the position of text. While it may be possible to specify the exact location of text and/or graphics on a page in the HTML object's code, how to do this is beyond me. So, for me, this means creating HTML objects to print just the text on my pages is not a desirable option, despite the benefit of properly displaying curly quotes, em dashes, and other special characters across computer platforms. Consequently, I've decided to replace all my special characters with standard ones---until this capability is added to VSD.

Tom