Need Free HTML Editor
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Cthulhudrew
First Post
Evrsoft's 1st Page is good. Has varying levels of complexity for your skill level, as well as wysiwyg ability, or pure html coding. 1st page 2006 has more options- including a lot of support for CSS and javascript- but it has these annoying pop ups for purchase of a fully supported retail version that come up when you close the program (plus, it does take a lot of memory to run). 1st Page 2000 is still a very useful alternative.
Thanee
First Post
drothgery said:
I actually build office documents by creating Word ML with Perl sometimes.
It does. Because HTML has so much intricacy, a WYSIWYG editor can only fail to do it right.
Send your WYSIWYG HTML pages through a HTML validator and you will see a lot of alarm bells ringing, most likely. Also, HTML works differently for various browsers. Do WYSIWYG editors actually keep that in mind and create robust code that works the same in IE 6, IE 7, FF 2, etc? Or try to put up a barrier-free website with a WYSIWYG editor. I actually do not know whether they can do these things, but I definitely doubt it.
Word DOC, Acrobat PDF and the likes do not have problems like this and thus WYSIWYG editors work much better for them.
Still WYSIWYG editors are a great tool to create websites fast and/or without much knowledge of the underlying code. It allows you to focus on the design and not the code.
Bye
Thanee
azhrei_fje
First Post
My wife has recently built a web site for her bicycle club. She chose to use MS Publisher because she knows the tool. She chose a template off the File menu and went to town with it.
She now has a (somewhat) pretty 3-4 page site, but knows nothing about good site design, such as building header and footer pages and including them, separating content from presentation, building a page that resizes cleanly, and so on.
For 3-4 pages, that works fine. But for anything more complex, better tools are required. The WYSIWYG editors provide some of that support, so I can understand using them. She could spend hours/days/weeks learning a tool, or she could focus on the web site and learn HTML/CSS/JS. And which pays off better in the end? To answer the question, "which tool is the right one for this project," requires that the carpenter be familiar with all of the tools or the result will be, "everything looks like a nail."
(And I don't use emacs, I use vi. And I don't generate latex with it, but *roff.
I absolutely love how I can build macros in roff and not have to worry about any formatting issues ... I just type. And for me, an important aspect is the ability to dynamically suck a file full of source code into the document and format it automatically, and to execute shell commands and grab their stdout and stderr for use in the document. I mostly write Unix/Linux training manuals.)
She now has a (somewhat) pretty 3-4 page site, but knows nothing about good site design, such as building header and footer pages and including them, separating content from presentation, building a page that resizes cleanly, and so on.
For 3-4 pages, that works fine. But for anything more complex, better tools are required. The WYSIWYG editors provide some of that support, so I can understand using them. She could spend hours/days/weeks learning a tool, or she could focus on the web site and learn HTML/CSS/JS. And which pays off better in the end? To answer the question, "which tool is the right one for this project," requires that the carpenter be familiar with all of the tools or the result will be, "everything looks like a nail."
(And I don't use emacs, I use vi. And I don't generate latex with it, but *roff.
I absolutely love how I can build macros in roff and not have to worry about any formatting issues ... I just type. And for me, an important aspect is the ability to dynamically suck a file full of source code into the document and format it automatically, and to execute shell commands and grab their stdout and stderr for use in the document. I mostly write Unix/Linux training manuals.)I'm with Thanee all the way here. I use notepad or the editor of DevStudio (as a text editor only) if its handy. But theres no problem with notepad at all. Honestly all this need for a WYSIWYG nonsense is pulp. Ultimately its got to look right in all the browsers so use the browser.
Also, most of my web pages are done in Perl cgi now anyways. I would flag wave PHP though I have never used it.
My websites aren't all that especially great and people have slated them - naturally - but they are still one of the few that give you a correct full screen view of the page.
Tables are a PITA. Just learn 'Div' and 'position' and tell me you still think they are better. Theres the odd occasion where they are useful but in general use a CSS region.
Honestly as I get older and wiser I am going more luddite and command line. And do I write Word files in notepad.... are you crazy ! Word ??!!!
I just don't know how I would cope without Perl, Make, ImageMagick and the old DOS prompt.
Edit -- Oh yes and if I had to write manuals Id use LaTeX too. PDF's suck like anything. Isn't there a post here today about keeping various versions compatible ? Exactly my point made right there. Knew a chap who did the whole of his company documents with a makefile + perl to format up LaTeX docs. I reckon he pretty much converted me to the "dark side + caret".
Also, most of my web pages are done in Perl cgi now anyways. I would flag wave PHP though I have never used it.
My websites aren't all that especially great and people have slated them - naturally - but they are still one of the few that give you a correct full screen view of the page.
Tables are a PITA. Just learn 'Div' and 'position' and tell me you still think they are better. Theres the odd occasion where they are useful but in general use a CSS region.
Honestly as I get older and wiser I am going more luddite and command line. And do I write Word files in notepad.... are you crazy ! Word ??!!!
I just don't know how I would cope without Perl, Make, ImageMagick and the old DOS prompt.
Edit -- Oh yes and if I had to write manuals Id use LaTeX too. PDF's suck like anything. Isn't there a post here today about keeping various versions compatible ? Exactly my point made right there. Knew a chap who did the whole of his company documents with a makefile + perl to format up LaTeX docs. I reckon he pretty much converted me to the "dark side + caret".
Last edited:
Redrobes said:
Grasshopper, every web developer goes through the 'pure CSS layouts are ideal' phase. But when you have to deal with layouts designed by marketing people who come from print backgrounds, not web backgrounds, and build content management systems where formatted content will be entered by people who don't know HTML, and keep things working on three browsers on two platforms, then you end up falling back to table-based layouts pretty quickly. At least you do unless you've got a lot more time than I do.
Relique du Madde
Adventurer
drothgery said:
Which is why Html5 is going to have a <banner> <sidebar> <navigation> <content> and <footer> tags.
I am sure that drothgery's needs are much more advanced than mine and must do this for a day job and must know what he is talking about so I will accept that must be the way it is. I checked on a number of big sites to see what they did just for my curiosity.
Most use both, some use just div, none use tables exclusively. Of those who use both the majority use a lot more divs. In some cases like cnn there were two references to tables and hundreds of divs though on the whole the majority were many sections, each of a table with many divs in each.
Code:
DIV Table
www.ebay.co.uk x x
www.facebook.com x x
www.youtube.com x x
news.bbc.co.uk x x
www.myspace.com x x
www.microsoft.com x
www.amazon.co.uk x x
www.wikipedia.org x
www.msn.com x x
www.yahoo.com x x
www.cnn.com x x
www.boingboing.net xMost use both, some use just div, none use tables exclusively. Of those who use both the majority use a lot more divs. In some cases like cnn there were two references to tables and hundreds of divs though on the whole the majority were many sections, each of a table with many divs in each.
Relique du Madde
Adventurer
Redrobes said:
Apple.com uses all divs... and lists but thats because they did almost everything with Javascript.
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