At 09:39 PM 09/23/1999 , you wrote:
>Good evening,
>Does anyone have any comments on the CoffeeCup 7.0, Hot Dog
>Professional, or FrontPage 2000 html editors? I need to buy an html
>editor and am seriously considering these editors. I have limited
>experience with html and web sites and need something that will help me
>learn to actually code html. I have breifly used FrontPage 2000 before
>but I am not sure I like it. Are there any other html editors I should
>be considering? Thanks in advance!
You have received a lot of advice about HTML editing programs. These
programs are like any program to write code, they are no better or worse
then the actual knowledge of the language the user possesses.
Can you build a nice web page with these editors? But, of course. You
can create a basic and dramatic web page by following the directions. This
is not really authoring a web page... as you really do not know what code
went into building the page.
Years ago, purists always claimed they only used text editors, like notepad...
that includes myself. That is how we learned HTML, that and reading books,
online documents, some took classes and even downloaded pages we found
interesting on the web to dissect them to understand what was done.
The best thing to do is buy a good book for reference: HTML4 Unleased,
Using HTML by Que or HTML for Dummies will get you started. Do not
expect to read these tomes... they are dry as dust. But, they are excellent
for reference. They can explain how HTML tags function, about inline images,
tables, hyperlinks and more... if you are sincere about learning the craft of
HTML, download good web pages and dissect them to understand what is
happening, modify them and learn what was done. Learn the basics and
add to your knowledge.
Of course today with the advent of Dynamic HTML and style sheets, a great deal
of the code is not on the page... so some pages on the web will not have the code
you want to understand available. But, there are hundreds of great articles out
there to explain how these items function... including plugins, multimedia addons
and java.
The important issue is that HTML editors are not going to teach you HTML. They
only allow web authors to speed up the process of design and publishing. If you
open any editor and start moving things around, you will quickly understand that
due to the lapses between Netscape and Internet Explorer, you must be able to
solve issues manually that occur, which means learning HTML. I have yet to find
an editor that solves issues for both... so you are required to manually clean up
issues or rewrite the code.
Just remember your audience when creating web pages. Building a page that
looks great in 800x600 or greater will leave most of the people in the world out...
often people forget that the largest group of web visitors still have monitors set
to 640x480. Design so that the page works in 640x480... and 1024x764. Get the
basics down... then move on to other things. I built my first web page back in
1994 and I thought it was great... it was pretty bad by today's standards.
I personally write all the pages that appear on our web site: http://nospin.com
and anyone who has been using our services for awhile will tell you that the
site has seen a lot of revisions over the years... and some of it rather awful.
You just need to get started... make mistakes along the way and learn from
them. Also, learn from what you find on the web... the great part is most
of the pages you will find are easy to view the code... the editors will not teach
you HTML, they will only speed up using it.
Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group, Inc
http://nospin.com - http://nospin.org
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