HTML-generating software

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I have some colleagues who want to bring the web site of their research
group up to date (not before time, I might add). They are not going to
learn to write their own HTML, as they made clear when I said it wasn't
difficult to do, and were talking about using FrontPage. I said that I
had never used this or any other HTML-generating program (apart from
one of the very first ones, which I tried back in 1996 and didn't
like), but from what I had heard FrontPage was probably the worst
possible option, and that saving a Word file as HTML was not much
better.

From what I've read here, Dreamweaver seems to be the best option for
people who don't want to hand-code. However, as I haven't wanted to use
it myself I haven't tried to keep up with the latest thoughts on this
subject.

Any suggestions?

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

From what I've read here, Dreamweaver seems to be the best option for
people who don't want to hand-code.

That is going to cost you bundles of money, if everyone is to have a
licensed working copy. And, requires a rather thick skill-set.

Get them to try the KompoZer. It's free.
http://kompozer.net/

No matter what you use, skills are required.

 

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

That is going to cost you bundles of money,

Itr's not going to cost me any money, as I'm not going to use (I'm
quite content to stick with hand-coding), and the people who asked me
about it have enough money. However, ...

if everyone is to have a
licensed working copy. And, requires a rather thick skill-set.

that's more serious. I think they want something as easy to use as FrontPage.

Get them to try the KompoZer. It's free.
http://kompozer.net/

I'll look into that.

No matter what you use, skills are required.

Very true!

 

[Helpful person]

that's more serious. I think they want something as easy to use as FrontPage.

Except FrontPage is not easy to use once you work round the bugs,
limitations and IE only code.

Good luck, youi need it!

www.richardfisher.com

 

[Doug Miller]

I think they want something as easy to use as FrontPage.[/QUOTE]

If "easy to use" includes being able to configure your navigation menus and
submenus the way *you* think they should be organized, instead of the way
*Microsoft* thinks they should be organized... then FrontPage is not "easy to
use". It provides only a small, fixed set of possibilities.

 

[Doug Miller]

Except FrontPage is not easy to use once you work round the bugs,
limitations and IE only code.

Yes, that's another issue with FP: the code it generates looks fine in IE,
maybe not so fine in any standards-compliant browser.

Q: How many Microsoft developers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. They simply redefine "darkness" as the new standard.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty" said:

Itr's not going to cost me any money, as I'm not going to use (I'm
quite content to stick with hand-coding), and the people who asked me
about it have enough money. However, ...

So, the organization is going to fork over $400US for every person who
wants to edit pages?

that's more serious. I think they want something as easy to use as
FrontPage.

FrontPage has been discontinued by Microsoft <praise &deity;!>. The
replacement is called Expression Web, I think, and might be better than
FP, though I have never used it. MS Publisher is the absolute worst
product anyone could use.

I'll look into that.

Very true!

Another thought: how are these many people going to maintain "current
source code integrity?" There should be only one master copy of the
source.

And: they would all need to know how to do FTP, all have the passwords
to the web server, and other considerations. Best advice I can think of
is to assign just one person to do the updating, and have the others
submit content to that person.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Any suggestions?

Their problem isn't to write web pages, it's to write a web site.
This is a different problem. Of course it involves the problem of page
authoring too, but that's relatively easy compared to the much more
onerous task of building and maintaining a _site_, with all the cross-
page linking that entails.

They ought to look at some sort of CMS (content management system).
This takes content described in some format that might be HTML, might
be something else, but is probably some ultra-simiplified markup, and
stores it in a live database, then exposes this database as HTML
through the web server. An obvious example of such a thing is a wiki.

I'd strongly suggest looking at MediaWiki (the engine behind
Wikipedia) and a decent book on wiki setup. Using a wiki doesn't have
to mean "public access", they're also a good way to develop sites with
a closed group of users. The virtue of wikis like MediaWiki is that
you can quite easily work on an emerging schema where you weren't able
to fully define the site structure beforehand.

 

[Helpful person]

Windows isn't that bad. However, FrontPage is!

www.richardfisher.com