? about html entries in Book Browser

[Gregg Bell]

Hey,

I've got two books done (via Sigil) (eg. See Screenshot "OneOfMyTwoBooks") and proofread and ready to upload. Now I just transferred an html file for a third book onto Sigil and saw that the html files in the Book Browser were being opened with Internet Explorer icons.

At that point I vaguely remembered somebody in MR saying something negative about using Internet Explorer files for Sigil (and accordingly an epub and accordingly an e-book) and tracked down (I think) what was said. (I was asking about adding links and I'm assuming Dion saw my IE icons in my screenshot in my OP.) Here are my post and the response. What spooked me in the response I have emboldened. (you don't have to read the whole thing. I'm just posting the whole thing to give you the context):

still can't figure the links to blog etc.(subject heading)
________________________________________
I was trying to add links for my blog, FB etc to my novel which I finished in sigil.

I tried to follow Meme's advice

(Just use Insert Link as normal and paste the URL (http://yadayada/) you want the link to go to in the text box at the bottom of the Insert Link dialog.--btw, thanks meme)

and everything seemed to work just fine, but the links don't show up in the "book view" screen. And I couldn't figure out (I want to add it to the bottom of the TOC) how to add the "About the Author" file to the TOC. I noticed that the icon in the book browser was different for the About the Author from the others (all IE). And that it was xhtml and not html like the others. So 3 questions:

#1) How do I get the links to show up in book view (and work)?
#2) How do I add the About the Author file to the TOC ?
#3) Will I have to do the 'generate html Toc' to have the About the Author added to the html TOC? (I would assume so.)
I've attached a screenshot if that helps.
Thanks.
Attached Files

sigilscreenshot.doc (128.0 KB, 13 views)

__________________
Gregg Bell - Novelist, short story writer
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"No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday." Ralph Waldo Emerson



03-19-2013, 08:26 PM (this is the response)
#2

Turtle91
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You need to actually have the words between the <a> tags that you want to show up...the href element just tells the computer where you want to go.

e.g.

<a href="http://yadayada">Put Words Here</a>

Then your link will show up as Put Words Here


2)
Sigil uses heading tags <h1, h2, h3 etc> to determine what to put in the TOC. You need to put a header at the beginning of the About the Author file.
e.g.
<h2>About the Author</h2>

or, if you don't want a header to be at the beginning, this will still show up in the TOC:

<h2 title="About the Author"></h2>


3)
Once you have heading tags on all the files you want in the TOC, just generate the TOC again and it will show up! It doesn't matter if it is an html or xhtml file - sigil plays well with both.

Also, IE is just a browser that can read html files (and not a very good one if you want my opinion ). HTML can be read by many browsers - IE, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.

Cheers,
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________________________________________
Last edited by Turtle91; 03-19-2013 at 08:30 PM.


So, being a little spooked by what I heard from Dion, I Googled the IE question and came up with: (see Screenshot "Potential Problem").

Now, guys, I'm just a writer who really enjoys Sigil and doing this formatting on my own. I don't know if this is a problem or not. (I'm of course hoping it isn't.) These two books are completely done. If it is a problem, I don't know if I could somehow switch the IE files into something else or if I would have to start all over from scratch.

I have no great liking for Internet Explorer. I guess since it's my default browser (I really use Chrome all the time), the files in the Book Browser got opened as Internet Explorer files. (I went MS Word-->Save As Webpage Filtered-->Sigil.)

So I suppose I have four questions:

#1) Am I okay with my two completed books as is?
#2) If I need to switch, is there a relatively easy way to do it?
#3)If there is such a relatively easy way, what is it?
#3) Again, if this IE thing is a problem--or if there is a better way to go--how do I avoid it with this third book I'm about to enter into Sigil.

I know this is a really long post and I probably included too much stuff, but this situation just spooked me big-time. Thanks so much for your help.

[theducks]

HTML or HTM just has the IE Icon assigned on your System. My system shows Firefox for HTML. Don't give it a worry.
here is an example of an external Link

<a href="http://www.webscription.net">http://www.webscription.net</a></b>

The Blue part is the visible TEXT. The text does not have to match the URL, but it is nice to supply the comfort factor that you are not hidinf somethig dastardly

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

So, being a little spooked by what I heard from Dion, I Googled the IE question and came up with: (see Screenshot "Potential Problem").

That looks to me to be a completely unrelated issue. That has to do with the server serving an .epub file, but Internet Explorer is thinking it is a .zip file. (Most likely a mimetype error on the server, just ignore that Microsoft post).

As a side note, next time you can just link directly to the site instead of an image:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/i...6-aeddf3718e1e

As another side note, my eyeballs are hurting from that JPG! PNG please!

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Now I just transferred an html file for a third book onto Sigil and saw that the html files in the Book Browser were being opened with Internet Explorer icons.

The "icons" that the computer shows for certain extensions is called "file associations". The icon just shows the program which will open up that file type by default when you double click on it or tell it to "Open".

Somewhere along the line, you must have set .xhtml files to open with Internet Explorer. (Maybe it was an Internet Explorer upgrade?)

I know many of the more "techie" people dislike Internet Explorer, and use Firefox or Chrome instead.

If you right click on a XHTML file and say "Open With", you should get a screen along these lines:



As you can see, my default is Firefox Aurora. (And Chrome + Internet Explorer is in the list to choose from).

You could then change from IE to Chrome if you wanted (if it is not in that initial list, you can click the "Other Programs" to see a bigger list of programs to choose from).

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

#1) How do I get the links to show up in book view (and work)?

theducks answered that. (And I see Turtle91 answered that in your main post as well?) (You really should have used the good old QUOTE tags to simplify your post!) And do not be afraid to get rid of useless information (such as the user's karma and post count).

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

#2) How do I add the About the Author file to the TOC ?

Stick a new HTML file and rename it (I would stick with "AbouttheAuthor.xhtml"). Stick whatever information you want into this About the Author page:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title/>
</head>
<body>
<h1>About The Author</h1>
<p>Gregg Bell was born in the year 1, he likes to post questions on a little known forum called <a href="https://www.mobileread.com/">MobileRead</a>.</p>
<p>Please check out the latest news at his site: <a href="http://www.sample.com">http://www.sample.com/</a></p>
</body>
</html>

Then regenerate the TOC using Sigil (Tools - Table of Contents - Generate Table of Contents).

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

#3) Will I have to do the 'generate html Toc' to have the About the Author added to the html TOC? (I would assume so.)

IF you want the "About the Author" section to be in the HTML TOC, you can use Sigil's automatic tool. BUT BE AWARE, that it will regenerate the TOC from scratch, and all of that CSS that I did will disappear.

Here is how to do it manually:



Look at the filename of your "About The Author" HTML file. In the case of mine, the file is called "AbouttheAuthor.xhtml".

Put this into your HTML TOC:

<p><a href="../Text/AbouttheAuthor.xhtml">About the Author</a></p>

Red = filename, Green = Text you want to show up.

THEN, make sure that your classes match the others (for example, if your HTML TOC has the classes "tocone" "toctwo" "tocthree"). You would add the orange part to match the rest of the entries:

<p class="tocone"><a href="../Text/AbouttheAuthor.xhtml">About the Author</a></p>

Then be sure to double check it in Book View to make sure that it looks correct, AND be sure to click on the link to make sure it actually works.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by theducks

HTML or HTM just has the IE Icon assigned on your System. My system shows Firefox for HTML. Don't give it a worry.
here is an example of an external Link

<a href="http://www.webscription.net">http://www.webscription.net</a></b>

The Blue part is the visible TEXT. The text does not have to match the URL, but it is nice to supply the comfort factor that you are not hidinf somethig dastardly

That's a GREAT relief really. And thanks for the external link eg. It's all GREATLY appreciated.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

That looks to me to be a completely unrelated issue. That has to do with the server serving an .epub file, but Internet Explorer is thinking it is a .zip file. (Most likely a mimetype error on the server, just ignore that Microsoft post).

As a side note, next time you can just link directly to the site instead of an image:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/i...6-aeddf3718e1e

As another side note, my eyeballs are hurting from that JPG! PNG please!



The "icons" that the computer shows for certain extensions is called "file associations". The icon just shows the program which will open up that file type by default when you double click on it or tell it to "Open".

Somewhere along the line, you must have set .xhtml files to open with Internet Explorer. (Maybe it was an Internet Explorer upgrade?)

I know many of the more "techie" people dislike Internet Explorer, and use Firefox or Chrome instead.

If you right click on a XHTML file and say "Open With", you should get a screen along these lines:

Attachment 105602

As you can see, my default is Firefox Aurora. (And Chrome + Internet Explorer is in the list to choose from).

You could then change from IE to Chrome if you wanted (if it is not in that initial list, you can click the "Other Programs" to see a bigger list of programs to choose from).



theducks answered that. (And I see Turtle91 answered that in your main post as well?) (You really should have used the good old QUOTE tags to simplify your post!) And do not be afraid to get rid of useless information (such as the user's karma and post count).



Stick a new HTML file and rename it (I would stick with "AbouttheAuthor.xhtml"). Stick whatever information you want into this About the Author page:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title/>
</head>
<body>
<h1>About The Author</h1>
<p>Gregg Bell was born in the year 1, he likes to post questions on a little known forum called <a href="https://www.mobileread.com/">MobileRead</a>.</p>
<p>Please check out the latest news at his site: <a href="http://www.sample.com">http://www.sample.com/</a></p>
</body>
</html>

Then regenerate the TOC using Sigil (Tools - Table of Contents - Generate Table of Contents).



IF you want the "About the Author" section to be in the HTML TOC, you can use Sigil's automatic tool. BUT BE AWARE, that it will regenerate the TOC from scratch, and all of that CSS that I did will disappear.

Here is how to do it manually:

Attachment 105604

Look at the filename of your "About The Author" HTML file. In the case of mine, the file is called "AbouttheAuthor.xhtml".

Put this into your HTML TOC:

<p><a href="../Text/AbouttheAuthor.xhtml">About the Author</a></p>

Red = filename, Green = Text you want to show up.

THEN, make sure that your classes match the others (for example, if your HTML TOC has the classes "tocone" "toctwo" "tocthree"). You would add the orange part to match the rest of the entries:

<p class="tocone"><a href="../Text/AbouttheAuthor.xhtml">About the Author</a></p>

Then be sure to double check it in Book View to make sure that it looks correct, AND be sure to click on the link to make sure it actually works.

Thanks a lot, Tex. I really do need to learn how to make my posts more clear on this forum. Those two middle posts were just to show the IE problem. I'm sorry about that. And sorry about the JPEG! (I'll get you some Visine.) I did the "open with" on a file in Sigil and it gave me the whole Program Files to choose from, but I'm not messing with it. (Since I'm not a techie I'm embracing IE! lol And I am so relieved that this thing is not a problem!) And I AM NOT TOUCHING anything else in there (to screw up your great stuff). Thanks!!

[Turtle91]

My reference to not liking IE was just a general dislike because of lots of issues.

I was mostly making the point that you keep referring to html files as IE files - they are not the same. An HTML file is just a file that uses html coding to tell a browser how to display the page. Any browser can display an html file - IE, firefox, Chrome, etc. Some browsers display them better - stick more to the standard - than others.

So, it is more proper to say "I opened the html file in Internet Explorer" instead of "I opened the IE file."

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

My reference to not liking IE was just a general dislike because of lots of issues.

I was mostly making the point that you keep referring to html files as IE files - they are not the same. An HTML file is just a file that uses html coding to tell a browser how to display the page. Any browser can display an html file - IE, firefox, Chrome, etc. Some browsers display them better - stick more to the standard - than others.

So, it is more proper to say "I opened the html file in Internet Explorer" instead of "I opened the IE file."

That makes a lot of sense. I just need to keep learning about this stuff. Thanks for clarifying things. (And I'm sorry I misinterpreted your stuff. Totally my bad.) (I know you're always so helpful and I appreciate it.)
Thanks!