Yeeeears ago everyone used a program called WordStar. It was THE word
processor.
It has a system of embedding format codes directly into the text using what
we all "lovingly" called dot and double-dot commands. These were strange
and cryptic combinations of letters and numbers that represented the
commands for how we wanted the printed output to look.
And life was grand.....
Then along came an upstart called WordPerfect. It challenged the king by
using an interface that <gasp> HID the formatting code. Many of the pundits
of the time said it would NEVER catch on! Why, how in the world could you
ever tell what formatting was assigned to the words or the sentences? No
dot or double dot? Pshaw! It will never catch on.
But it did. WordPerfect became the new king.
And life was good again....
Then along came an upstart called WORD. It challenged the king by not
having ANY codes, hidden or visible. And again, the pundits said it would
NEVER catch on! Why, how in the world could you ever figure out what
formatting was assigned to which words or sentences. And THAT argument
still rages on..... for a time, Word dominated the market, but now that the
robber barons of ms have become totally enamored with greed, I suspect the
tide will swing back.
The point is (as if you haven't guessed already <grin>) that in a couple
more years, people will probably say H-T-M-what?
I tell my students, that it is not necessary to understand the theory of the
internal combustion engine in order to drive a car, but it IS handy to know
what's under the hood (bonnet for those of you across the pond <grin>), how
to check the oil, and water, and other fluids. And I beleive the same holds
true for HTML. It is good to have a basic understanding, but with the high
level of sophistication of today's graphic based tools.... well... how
deeply you get involved in learning HTML is a subjective decision.
And as Bob pointed out, there are many new technologies that are easier
to deal with by using the graphical page design tools.
Bob, I think your statistics on the "typical surfer" are out of date. Early
last year, one of the e-zines (websitejournal.com) I subscribe to, published
the results of some college's survey (I could search their archives for the
college name if it is important). There were over 6 million replies from
domains all over the world and the greatest marjority of the respondents
were using 800 x 600 -- by more than three to one. I don't remember the
exact
percentages, but 800 x 600 was up in the mid-60 percents while 640 x 480 was
in the low 20's and 1024 x 768 was in the very low teens. The interesting
counter point to this is, that many (most?) of those running 1024 x 768 and
lower were only using 256 colors
Jim Meagher
=====
Micro Solutions Consulting Member of The HTML Writers Guild
http://www.ezy.net/~microsol International Webmasters Association
410-543-8996 MS Site Builder Network - Level 2 member
=====
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Wright <[log in to unmask]>
> 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
> 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.
>
Do you want to signoff PCSOFT or just change to
Digest mode - visit our web site:
http://nospin.com/pc/pcsoft.html
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