By Eddy R.
7-10-00

As you may already know, Microsoft Word 2000 gives you the ability to create Web pages in pretty much the same way you would with a HTML editor. Unfortunately, the code generated by Word is not what professional Web developers would consider to be "clean code". To see what I mean, take a look at the two examples below.

First, take a look at the end-product: Web Document

Now, take a look at the source code of the document you just saw created by both, Word and Dreamweaver.

As you can see, the code generated by Word is not only unnecessary but difficult to work with. So, what can you do if you must work with Web documents created by Word?

Clean Up Word HTML

Dreamweaver 3 has a new neat feature called Clean Up Word HTML, that allows you to clean HTML generated by Word. The results of using this command are quite satisfactory as you will see in the example below.

This is the same Word document you saw above after the Clean Up Word HTML command was used.

Clean Up Word HTML

Now, take a look at a screen shot of all the code that was removed by the command.

Code removed

Being able to create web documents with Word is not as bad as having to hand-code web documents, however if you are able to get a hold of a true HTML editor it is definitely best to use the HTML editor instead of Word.