building a web site with html

[Roy Schestowitz]

Hi Richard,



Hi,

What would be a good editor?

Thanks,

Richard

Many people have given you good answers by now. You will save time if you
use an editor that colours tags. It means less slip-ups for you.

If you are not entirely fluent with HTML, then you must have the following
right by your side:

http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.txt

Roy

 

[altheim]

Here's brucie's list...

Free HTML editors:
jedit: http://www.jedit.org/
nedit: http://www.nedit.org/
ewisoft: http://www.ewisoft.com/
netpadd: http://www.netpadd.com/
araneae: http://www.araneae.com/
1st page: http://www.evrsoft.com/
crimson: http://crimsoneditor.com/
ezpad: http://www.mmedia.is/ezpad/
acehtml: http://freeware.acehtml.com/
notetab light: http://www.notetab.com/
html-kit: http://www.chami.com/html-kit/
context: http://www.fixedsys.com/context/
pspad: http://www.pspad.com/en/index.html
websmill: http://www.xtreeme.com/websmill/
metapad: http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
quanta (linux): http://quanta.sourceforge.net/
tswebeditor: http://thaler.ennstal.at/tswebeditor/
notespad: http://www.newbie.net/NotesPad/index.html
grey matter pro: http://www.pagetutor.com/misc/grey.html
editpad lite: http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadlite.html
stones webwrite: http://www.webwriter.dk/english/index.htm
matizha sublime: http://www.matizha.com/en/products/sublime/

Recommendation? For a guy without broadband,
and a dislike of patronizing Frontpage.

 

[nice.guy.nige]

While the city slept, WebcastMaker ([email protected]) feverishly typed...

So, please answer this. Why is it wrong to cater to a group of people
that want to see flash?

Does anyone else in here remember the term "Flashturbation"? I think it sums
up quite well what we are discussing here. I personally think Flash is great
for some content, but like any other multimedia content it should not be the
be-all and end-all of a site.

To sum up, Flash is a useful tool for the presentation of some content
(games, animations, etc). I agree with you on that respect. The problem is
we seem to have gone into an argument of flash v html for presentation of an
entire site, which wasn't even what the OP was asking about! ;-)

Cheers,
Nige

 

[nice.guy.nige]

While the city slept, The Doormouse ([email protected]) feverishly typed...

That's true, and also many people design in front of their keyboard.

Agreed! Probably the best and most efficient design tool as a big pad of
paper and some coloured pens. I remember from my software development
training (so long ago...... nearly 20 years ago in fact! Eek!!!) that
programs should be designed on paper long before you ever reach for the
keyboard. This is even more true for websites.

Cheers,
Nige

 

[nice.guy.nige]

While the city slept, The Doormouse ([email protected]) feverishly typed...

What would be a good editor?

Well, there are several and it varies by personal preference: [other editors]
Notepad (Free, effective and simple - but no features)

I'll meet your Notepad, and raise you Textpad: http://www.textpad.com/
Free, effective, simple, and plenty of features! ;-)

Cheers,
Nige

 

[nice.guy.nige]

While the city slept, Richard ([email protected]) feverishly typed...

I am very impressed by the friendly advices you gave me.

Hey! How come nobody flamed the new guy??? Tsk... I don't know... standards
are slipping in this group! ;-)

Cheers,
Nige

 

[WebcastMaker]

To sum up, Flash is a useful tool for the presentation of some content
(games, animations, etc). I agree with you on that respect. The problem is
we seem to have gone into an argument of flash v html for presentation of an
entire site, which wasn't even what the OP was asking about! ;-)

I completely agree an all flash site (in most cases) is the wrong way to
go. Flash has been abused for years. But with the recent MX version.
It is so much more than just "games, animations, etc..."

Flash is on it's way to becoming the WEB application development tool of
choice. With the recent enhancements of it's component sets, ability to
stream media across platforms, and true write code one time and not have
to port it from OS to OS, is opening the eyes of a lot of the old Java
crowd.

Can flash do animations? Sure, but its real strength is in web based
business application development. And put into that mind set, the fact
that someone does not have it turned on, or doesn't want to use it, is
irrelevant.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Once the very basics are mastered in Notepad, they'll want a wysiwyg tool.

Why ?

Assuming that the developer has already mastered HTML, then WYSIWYG
tools are used through some desire for improved development speed.
There are two categories of site where you might wish to do this;
complex pages and large sites (many pages).

For complex pages, a WYSIWYG tool can indeed improve coding speed.
However it only does this for one view of the page, typically just
IE4's view of it. All the WYSIWYG tools and versions I'm aware of
_still_ make a poor job of this, if you care about a layout that is
preserved across a wide range of devices and circumstances. Building
_reliable_ pages from the output of current WYSIWYG tools still isn't
a trivial or rapid prospect.

For large many-page sites, WYSIWYG barely helps. A quick per-page
operation is still unworkable because it's a _per_page_ operation.
You need some form of templating and content merging that allows
totally automatic per-page work. Use CSS and a good semantically-rich
set of content descriptors (i.e. a large set of classes and their
appropriate styling) and you can do this by minimal semantic mark-up
on the content and leave the rest to automatic processing.

I see no use whatsoever for a WYSIWYG tool, for competent developers.
If WYSIWYG tools were better, this might be different (although not
essentially so) but the current generation still don't solve many
problems.

 

[Andy Dingley]

So, please answer this. Why is it wrong to cater to a group of people
that want to see flash?

It isn't -- there are several circumstances where I favour the use of
Flash. Nice attempt to dodge the question, but this is irrelevant to
the point I was asking about, and trying to get me to say "Flash is
bad anyway, so who cares how to do it" is mere sophistry (especially
when I don't even think that).

There are plenty of cases where Flash is appropriate. Cartoons - this
is a major entertainment channel, so why should we look down on them
at all ? Eye-candy banner ads - you want pretty and small content,
then Flash is perfect.

A year ago I even worked on my first Flash MX / web services project -
this was "VB for the web", and for the intranet app we were working
on, it was a superb fit. That one changed my view of Flash
substantially.

As I posted in another thread just a day ago, the great feature of the
HTML web is that it is device agnostic, in contrast to the DTP
approach. Because of this, the web delivers _content_ to _any_ device
and will compromise the _presentation_ as necessary to achieve this.
Flash takes the opposing view, and that's why Flash is inappropriate
for core use throughout the web. In Flash the presentation is king
over content. Show me Flash on my mobile phone screen and the window
will be either trimmed or zoomed and compressed to fit (I'm assuming
that the platform already supports, or will soon support Flash). This
compressed view might work fine for the eye-candy, but what if it
renders the text unreadable (as it will inevitably do, according to
all that I know about Flash). Flash preserves the overall look and
loses the detail -- the guideline for "Should I use Flash?" is whether
this behaviour is right or wrong for your particular circumstance.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Hey! How come nobody flamed the new guy???

Because he's called "Richard" ? Many of us still have Richard in our
killfiles, from that last utter moron who used to post under the same
name.

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

Recommendation? For a guy without broadband,
and a dislike of patronizing Frontpage.

If you are a Linux user, use Quanta which is free. Take advantage of what I
wish I had been using from the start.

 

[Neal]

Because he's called "Richard" ? Many of us still have Richard in our
killfiles, from that last utter moron who used to post under the same
name.

FWIW I never put just a proper name in the killfile, too many possible
matches. Email address works better.

 

[Neal]

If you are not entirely fluent with HTML, then you must have the
following
right by your side:

http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.txt

Ew. Not terribly useful, I'm afraid. Way too involved and busy. Why even
MENTION NN3 layer markup??

Can't share the recommendation, sorry.

 

[The Doormouse]

For complex pages, a WYSIWYG tool can indeed improve coding speed.
However it only does this for one view of the page, typically just
IE4's view of it.

Ever since GoLive 5, users have had the option of previewing pages in one
or more browsers loaded on their machine. I have IE6 and Firefox, for
example. Plus, there is nothing to stop a user from doing this the old
way - i.e. firing up a browser and checking the work.

Once I am assured that "one view" works across browsers, it is much
easier to break it up.

Building
_reliable_ pages from the output of current WYSIWYG tools still isn't
a trivial or rapid prospect.

It is much faster than pure coding by hand, and a general user with a
good grasp of basic HTML can always "clean house".

For large many-page sites, WYSIWYG barely helps.

Yeah, I know. The largest sites use server side scripting like
ASP/PHP/whatever out of code pieces. WYSIWYG is a typing and prototyping
aid that cannot be ignored.

You need some form of templating and content merging that allows
totally automatic per-page work.

Static brochureware does not necessarily require anything more than basic
HTML. Even brochureware attached to a third party shopping cart still
will use only basic HTML and some minor scripting. Brochureware tied to
an XML-based catalog solution is still based on a WYSIWYG front.

I see no use whatsoever for a WYSIWYG tool, for competent developers.

I think of it as a typing and QC aid. I can throw most of my page up off
the paper and onto the screen for tweaking. Then again, I consider
different browsers as WYSIWYG tools, too.

The Doormouse

 

[The Doormouse]

Does anyone else in here remember the term "Flashturbation"?

*snerk!*

ROFL and dying from laughter

The Doormouse

 

[kchayka]

See I think your wrong, you think I am. oh well. Lets move on...

Hmmm, before moving on, I'd really like a response to this:

you said:
I said:

Saying it doesn't make it so,
So where is your proof?

You know, you've been challenged on this many, many times, but always
manage to evade this issue. Why is that? Because Flash can't really do
what you say it can? I know you don't care, but that's not the point.

The point is you keep making what appears to be a false claim.
Either prove it, or quit lying.

Show me where it says that the user can control text size in Flash like
they can with plain old HTML. Lack of user control, especially over text
size, is my biggest beef against Flash. Seems to me the medium isn't
designed to allow such things, but you are claiming it can. So prove it.
Provide a link to either a site that has implemented such a thing, or
even to some page at Macromedia - anything that specifically shows it
can be done.

Just don't bring up Flash's zoom feature because that is not the answer.
The user has no control over the zoom factor or the area of zoom, which
disqualifies it as a valid means of user control. Besides, the result is
most often no more usable than it was before. Sometimes it's even worse.

 

[kchayka]

If you are not entirely fluent with HTML, then you must have the following
right by your side:

http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.txt

Maybe, but I suggest you strip out all the deprecated and proprietary
markup first. Dump:

align=
<center>
<font>
<layer>
<marquee>
<blink>

etc., etc., etc.

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

Maybe, but I suggest you strip out all the deprecated and proprietary
markup first. Dump:

align=
<center>
<font>
<layer>
<marquee>
<blink>

etc., etc., etc.

Ew. Not terribly useful, I'm afraid. Way too involved and busy. Why even
MENTION NN3 layer markup??

Can't share the recommendation, sorry.

I guess it's outdated. I used it about 2-4 years ago when I needed a quick
tag look-up.

 

[Andy Dingley]

users have had the option of previewing pages in one
or more browsers loaded on their machine.

You don't understand the difference between seeing one example run
once on one platform, and in testing something properly.

Who cares if it _looks_ right ? That tells me very little - there are
any number of coding problems where it will look right in one
particular set of circumstances. To validate it for the whole web, I
need to either look at it in every possible context (which just isn't
practical, given the great number of devices out there) or to
_validate_ that the code is _correct_ against some objective standard
and then hope that the devices catch up to somewhere near that
standard.

Web design is in a similar position to steam engine building in 1830,
or petrol car engines in 1900. Look at the approaches taken by
Maudslay or Cadillac to improve interoperability. The early Cadillac
wasn't as good a car as the competing Daimler Benz, but it had one
major advantage - in a famous test the RAC (Royal Auto Club)
dismantled two Cadillacs, mixed the parts and re-assembled them - they
then ran. The Daimler Benz was a better built car (the work of the
"fitter" in engineering terms) and the engine ran better - but this
was achieved by fitting each piston to each cylinder individually. In
their own context, they worked fine. Cadillac's approach was to make
each part ot a standard size and _not_ to fit them individually. They
didn't run quite so well, but they would run equally well no matter
which car you atatched that part to -- the "gold standard" for a
part's dimension wasn't its mating part, it was the objective standard
set by the blueprint.


Even the "look at it in all the browsers" approach requires 5 desktop
machines and a boxful of phones. You need a Mac, at least one flavour
of Unix, and three PCs (I don't know any way to get all versions of
IE live on a single machine, and hardware is cheaper than
multi-booting).

 

[Toby Inkster]

If you are a Linux user, use Quanta which is free.

Pah! Nedit is the One True Editor[tm].