Long ago, when the web was but a young pup in the world (way back in the early 1990s!), all web pages were done the old fashion way: simple and reliable ascii text with the tags in brackets (just like what you did with lesson 1). It was tedious and time consuming and a little confusing to novice users, but that's the way it was and we liked it. And really, that's the way it still is with a lot of web designers: many folks still don't have any faith in the various editing software products now available.But pretty soon, HTML Editing Software packages appeared. They came with the promise of being "WYSIWYG," and they have broken that promise time and time again...
Let's back up a step. "WYSIWYG" (pronounced "wiz-e-wig") is "What You See is What You Get." The easiest example of this is word processors. In the old OLD days of computers and word processing (back in the 80s!), it wasn't easy to get your text to show up as bold or in a different font or what-have-you. You had to insert strange little markers, and these little markers would do certain things, but you couldn't really see what you page would look like until you printed it out-- which, by the way, is sort of what HTML is now.
Nowadays, when you want to make text bold with even the most basic of word processors, you highlight the text and select an option in a menu that makes it "bold." Then it shows up on the screen as bold text. Furthermore, when you print the document out, it shows up as bold text on the paper. That's WYSIWYG: what you see on the screen (be it issues of fonts, layout, size, graphics, you name it) is what you will see on the page when you print it out.
So that's the promise of HTML editing software: making it as easy to create a web page as it is to create a document with a word processor. But, as we will discover as our story continues, it's a hard promise to keep.
HTML Editing software basically breaks down into two categories: not free and free.Not Free
Here are a few examples that cost some money (between $100-300):
- Adobe Go Live
- Dreamweaver
- MS FrontPage (which I personally don't like to use at all...)
There are lots of other examples I could mention here, but these are softwares I'm sort of familiar with and that seem to be getting the most attention nowadays. Incidentally, the EMU Computer Store has considerable discounts on this software-- check there before buying.
I would strongly recommend that you download and try out Dreamweaver. Besides being what I think is the best of these products, you can download a fully functional version of the software for a 30 day trial period for free.
Now, if you end up getting serious about making truly professional web sites in the longer term, you'll want to invest some money and get familiar with one of the software packages I mention above, along with a lot of "helper" applications to handle graphics and the like. In fact, Macromedia (the makers of Dreamweaver) offer an excellent product that pretty much does it all, though it's more expensive than just the HTML editing software.
Free
The free software tends not to be as good as the "not free," but the price is right, and if you only want to use the web to make some fairly simple web sites (some text, graphics, and links that might take advantage of some things like tables) and you don't want to mess with web sites that access databases or what-have-you, you probably only need the free stuff.
There are a couple of different free HTML editing software tools out there (and it might be worthwhile checking out Yahoo's directory of HTML Editing Software page), but the two that I recommend are the "Mozilla Suite" and "NVU." Again, neither is the best HTML editing software available, but the price is certainly right and they are easy to use.
To use Mozilla to make web pages, you need to access the Composer function. The easiest way to do this is look under file, select "new" and then "blank page." This will open up a window where you can start making a web page. Composer works a lot like most word processors, and while there are a few somewhat difficult things about using it, it is pretty easy to figure out. Plus there's a reasonably helpful "help" file that comes with the software-- simply look under the menu "help" to use it.
At this point, you might be asking yourself "So, what's the catch?"Well, for a lot (maybe even most) web pages, there really isn't a catch: it works, especially if your page is relatively simple.
But there are a few problems with this that you should be aware of. First, there's the WYSIWYG problem. If you're trying to do something with an HTML document using HTML editing software that is a little more complicated or if you some very particular layout demands for your web site (this word has to go here, this picture must go there), you might be disappointed and even a bit confused with just the editors themselves. That's because the HTML WYSIWYG isn't quite there for HTML editors, at least not yet. It's probably better to think of HTML as "What You See Is What You Get Most But Not All Of the Time, and Even Then, It Has a Bunch of Junk HTML Tags In It." In other words, the way your web page looks while you are using an HTML editor might be quite a bit different than how it looks on the web. This can be quite frustrating and annoying.
Second, HTML editing software tries to do a lot of things to make putting a web page together "easier," but that also gives you less control. For example, I've had students who made web pages without any knowledge of HTML who were often confused why some graphics didn't work, why files were saved in strange places, and so forth. This "confusion" arises out of the software trying to do all the thinking for the user. In other words, I think in an effort to be "helpful," a lot of HTML editing software ends up being more trouble than it's worth.
And of course, HTML editing software isn't always available. Working with HTML (as I described it in the first three lessons) is as available on any computer, PC or Mac, brand new or (kind of) old.
These are all reasons why a little knowledge of HTML goes a long, long way. My experience has been that if you know a bit about how HTML basically works, you can usually avoid these problems. So with a little bit of knowledge, HTML editors can be a useful tool instead of a dependent (and not always workable) crutch.Ý
Heck no! I use HTML editing software for all of the web pages I make and I think there are great reasons for using HTML editing software:
- They're as easy to use as a word processor. Start typing and play around with the arrangement of things and you've got yourself a web page. Just that easy. Sure, it helps to read the instructions too, but if you're pretty comfortable with using a word processor, you'll have no problems picking up how to use an HTML editing software.
- The better software packages have a lot of neat features. For example, even the most recent freebie ones have a spell-check feature. For a bad speller like me, that's a good thing. Plus all of these softwares make it a lot easier to control colors, to place graphics, etc.
- They allow you to include more sophisticated features in your Web site. For example, most HTML editors make it easy to include tables, frames, and other features that can be kind of tricky to do with "raw HTML." Plus it is a lot easier to manipulate graphics with HTML Editing software.
- HTML editing software (like "raw HTML") are cross-platform. What I mean by this is you can work on a web page on your PC with Mozilla Composer, bring to school and use an HTML editing software like "GoLive" on a Mac to make further changes and edits, and then take it to a computer lab of PC computers and open the file in NotePad and make changes to the "raw HTML." And it will still work everywhere!
So like a good word processing software can make writing all sorts of things a lot easier, HTML editing software makes writing web pages a lot easier. Just keep in mind (especially those of you who skipped lessons 1, 2, and 3) a little understanding about how HTML actually works to effectively use HTML editors.
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