Reason #1 to use MS Word for publishing web content – Smart Art and Graphs | Wibeck on Web - About Web Publishing, User Experience and Software

Reason #1 to use MS Word for publishing web content – Smart Art and Graphs

OK, this is a post I've been thinking of for a long time, more than 18 months actually ;-) (and I've determined not to care at all about the aspect of valid XHTML).

Most of you know that Live Writer or MS Word works very well for publishing basic content to a website or blog engine as long as it supports this API feature.

I got to admit that I really love writing in a tool that is so helpful to me when I'm working with text and basic graphics. And you have a great milti-lingial spel cheker (just kidding, multi-lingual spell checker that is).
But how many have really considered the use-cases where Word can be so very smooth and supportive to the whole publishing process?

I was thinking about the assistants at finance that publishes a periodical turnover diagram on the "Investor Realations" page for their company.

  1. Firsts they have to get their figures from their finance app and into Excel
  2. Then create a nice graph that's easy to digest
  3. "Print Screen" the graph and paste into an Image Editor + export as web graphic.
  4. Upload the file to their online repository / Media section
  5. Paste the text from Word into web page
  6. And finally place the turn over graph in the page and publish…

Let's face it, they'll never do it that way…
Unless they buys a nice web app that generates the graphs - they will continue to upload PDF or Word docs for the vistor to download or "read online" as some prefer to call it ; ).

Let's make a little test and place a MS Office graph into this page using Insert >> Graph in Word:

OK, there it is. It took me 1 minute to add the categories, if I had an existing Excel file with the figures it would take about the same time. OK.

Now when I hit publish word converts the Graph to a png file and uploads it to the web server in a snap.
Next time the graph needs an update, all I do is to edit the graph and import the updated figures from my Excel file.

The same goes for Smart Art like the hierarchy chart below, just reorganize and hit publish (why not fire the brat son and put a Real worker on top?)

Could it be any simpler? What marketing department wouldn't realize this in five seconds and go for your CMS solution?

// Kalle