I
iwach
Commercial or... free?
Front Page drives me mad!
Front Page drives me mad!
R
richard
try acehtml free.
http://software.visicommedia.com/en/products/acehtmlfreeware/
It will install a "toolbar" in your browser which is easily removed.
C
Chaddy2222
Crimson editor from: http://crimsoneditor.com
C
Chris F.A. Johnson
GNU emacs.
C
C A Upsdell
iwach said:
No wonder. FrontPage was killed off two years ago, replaced by
Expression Web.
B
Blinky the Shark
iwach said:
vi, vim, gvim. Free. Cross platform.
D
David Segall
If you are looking for a WYSIWYG HTML editor then Dreamweaveriwach said:
<http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/> is probably "the most
popular". It is expensive but has several significant advantages over
KompoZer <http://kompozer.net/> which is free.
H
houghi
Blinky said:
For the first basic layout I use is http://www.kompozer.net/
After that I split things up in parts and use 'include' in php and have
a local webserver running. That way a refresh will show what the rest of
the world would see, including database content.
I will have several browsers do the refresh. Firefox is the standard.
After larger changes I will check also with Konqueror, Opera and IE 6
and 7.
After that is is vim or gvim on my Linux and Notepad++ on my Windows.
houghi
R
richard
I have dreamweaver and don't see where it's any better than any other
decent editor.
Yeah it has some frills not found elsewhere, but so what?
Kompozer ain't all that great either.
D
DLU
iwach said:
At the risk of getting hammered by the professionals, I have Expression
Web. I am just a real beginner but I can understand the setup for making
pages, and there are templates. I would like to have Dream Weaver, but
can not justify the price as my efforts are voluntary for a committee
that I am on. Some of the people on the NG seem to be able construct a
web page from memory using a text editor so they do not have to deal
with these issues.
As I have discovered it is the CSS that is the hard part and I do not
know what Dream Weaver does with that. Expression Web is pretty easy to
use but it does not help with the CSS. Someday, someone will write a
concise explanation of CSS and how each element works. I tried to learn
Latin once and I think it might have been easier. I learned DEC
assembly language, PL1, Compass (Cyber Assembly language),Fortran,
Basic, Pascal, C, and application programs like SPSS, but figuring out
how to make layouts with CSS is making me bonkers. Maybe it it just age
catching up.
http://home.surewest.net/bikesac/bikesac/
--
***************************************
* This is the Spammish Inquisition *
* Not Lumber Cartel Unit 75 [TINLC] *
* I am not SPEWS.ORG *
***************************************
I
iwach
DLU said:
Trying to use EW and I have to agree, there is a problem with css. I'm
looking for a program, which will let mi work in a simple manner. I can
select a text, div,table or whichever object, than select a class, id,
apply to it in a matter of flash and I can see immediately, how it will
look in a browser.
Front Page was not bad so far but latest xhtml making it difficult and
it's further than ever from being WYSIWYG.
IMHO typing all by hand is like walking instead of driving. In age of
computers , where we have programs like PTOOLS, Adobe Photoshop or
AutoCad, typing by hand all commands makes it Flinstone' kind of
progress in web page design.
It's sux!
R
rf
There are no elements in CSS. There are rules and property/value pairs.
The specification details exactly how each of these work.
Therein lies the way to CSS bloat, applying the same style to each and every
div on a page where it would be far better to apply that style to the body
and let the divs inherit. Have a look at some of the pages these so called
"WYSIWYG" editors spit out. Better yet, look at something that has been
"saved as web page" by something like word or excel or, &deity forbid,
powerpoint. Dreadfull stuff. Every single CSS property is specified for
every single html element. No inheritance anywhere.
That is exactly how I do it. Type in the html or CSS in crimson editor,
save, refresh the two or three browsers I have pointing to the page. Relying
on some "WYSIWYG" tool to display how a page might look will not work. You
*must* view it in the various browsers.
Front page in particular uses the IE engine to display a page. It is sheer
folly to use anything related to IE for web development. Use a *real*
browser and then just before beta check it with IE (several versions) to
make sure IE does not break something that is perfectly valid according to
the spec and real browsers.
Don't use xhtml. Use html 4.01.
That is not how the web works. You will never get a page to look the same in
every browser so why try?
No. It works.
The specification details exactly how each of these work.
Therein lies the way to CSS bloat, applying the same style to each and every
div on a page where it would be far better to apply that style to the body
and let the divs inherit. Have a look at some of the pages these so called
"WYSIWYG" editors spit out. Better yet, look at something that has been
"saved as web page" by something like word or excel or, &deity forbid,
powerpoint. Dreadfull stuff. Every single CSS property is specified for
every single html element. No inheritance anywhere.
That is exactly how I do it. Type in the html or CSS in crimson editor,
save, refresh the two or three browsers I have pointing to the page. Relying
on some "WYSIWYG" tool to display how a page might look will not work. You
*must* view it in the various browsers.
Front page in particular uses the IE engine to display a page. It is sheer
folly to use anything related to IE for web development. Use a *real*
browser and then just before beta check it with IE (several versions) to
make sure IE does not break something that is perfectly valid according to
the spec and real browsers.
Don't use xhtml. Use html 4.01.
That is not how the web works. You will never get a page to look the same in
every browser so why try?
No. It works.
D
DLU
Actually as I look over the menus in Expression Web, there are severalrf said:
options that allow CSS construction. Looking through the Task Panes I
gives you several options. You can make these selections in EW. It
takes awhile to learn to use EW, but I know a couple of people who took
classes for a year to learn Dream Weaver. I did not go through the
program step by step as I had a site to get up. Once it was up and
running I started to work to improve it. I could see that there was
work to be done so subjected myself to the slings an arrows of this NG.
Fortunately I got some really good help along the way. It had not
occurred to me to put the different sections in their own boxes. Then
it took me a lot of examination to see how it was actually done.
--
***************************************
* This is the Spammish Inquisition *
* Not Lumber Cartel Unit 75 [TINLC] *
* I am not SPEWS.ORG *
***************************************
D
dorayme
iwach said:
Except that this is a misleading description of what many of us, who do
not use prgms like DW and Frontpage and EW, do. After a while we can
always find something we or someone has done and modify it more or less.
B
Bergamot
iwach said:
Funny, I can hand code a lot faster than using one of those so-called
WYSIWYG things. I never know exactly what code is being generated and
have to switch to code view to repair/optimize things anyway. It's just
easier to do it by hand from the start.
There's your problem - designing and coding are 2 separate things. The
design should be all worked out before you start coding.
That's what I think of WYSIWYG tools.
I
iwach
Bergamot said:That's what I think of WYSIWYG tools.
You mean no one is able to make a good tool for designing web pages.
Because there is no one great program for web using WYSIWYG.
We have WYSIWYG word processors, graphics tools, printing tools and
nothing good quality for a simple web page.
To make a simple web page you have to learn for years all these tricks
with typing coding and working with all different bugs in different
browsers.
One day someone will show a brilliant idea how web should work and all
this madness hopefully will be gone because this is crazy!
To make box in the middle of page, put some text and couple pics anyone
can make in Photoshop in 3 minute, in Word in 2 minutes, in Excel in 3
minutes, in Adobe Reader 2 minute without any learning.
But to do it in web you have to study few months!
That sux!
D
dorayme
iwach said:
Just exactly what, in your opinion, would be the key features of a good
WYSIWYG? Would it be to be able to put a box into the middle of page,
some text and couple pics in all visual browsers at all the different
text size settings that users use and still be usable? Would the page
mean anything to a blind person? Would it be easy to update for someone
with a different program or no program? Would a thousand things be true?
The fact is that you probably would need to study for a few months
before you could assess whether your efforts with the fancy WYSWIG are
paying off (beyond looking great on your own machine with your eyesight
and settings).
C
Chris F.A. Johnson
I don't know of a good WYSIWYG program for anything.
I find a text editor faster than any WYSIWYG program.
I am currently writing a book, and I find it far faster to write it
in a text editor *as HTML* and import that into OpenOffice.org to
convert it to the format the publisher requires (.doc; YECCHH!!).
Using a word processor is like wallowing in molasses compared to a
text editor, even if my text editor wasn't customized so that I
rarely have to type a full pair of HTML tags.
HTML is simple. Valid HTML will work in all browsers. CSS is the
tricky part, and that is far better done in a text editor.
A
asdf
Chris F.A. Johnson said:
hehehe... how many examples do you need of valid HTML not working in IE6?
H
houghi
Bergamot said:
Give this person a cigar. This is something almost everybody forgets all
the time. I always start with a design on paper. The one I based my
website houghi.org on is http://houghi.org/images/design02.jpg
That is only the layput as I am a lousy designer (and not a very good
coder) so I just stole a wallpaper, turned that and made it into a
background. More on http://houghi.org/making/
Too many times I see that people who do the design also do the coding
and end up with nothing what they wanted. Sometimes I also see coders
doing the design and it also ends up with nothing they wanted.
The best way I have worked with others in the comapny was that one group
of people came up with papers of how they see the site. This both in
colour and what goes where. Also this is after we made a list of what
everybody wanted.
Then when the colours and so are selected for the different types of
pages, we already have talked about usage and funtionality. When that
part is over, we will see how updates and so on are done.
When everything has been decided, we will start coding. Obviously the
main coder will be invcolved in the whole process to call back the
designers if things get unrealistic.
To me there are three basic things
1) Web design (including usage)
2) Coding
3) Content and content updating
And all should work together.
houghi