Do You Use A Wysiwyg Environment For Simple Html Pages?

[yordan 10]

If you are in a hurry, what do you use in order to write a very simple html page, with standard font and maybe a couple of pictures or a backgournd image?

Of course, nearly anything works. Some years ago I used the things coming with the Microsoft Office environment, mainly FrontPage, but even Microsoft Word was able to save my text as a html file.

Also KompoZerPortable seems very useful in such simple cases, It has everything needed (text size, background coulour and background images) for simple cases, and it's a portable version so no installation needed. And I love the "source" tab, which helps me learning html..

Of course, for more complex cases, Notepad++ is still there...

And you, how do you do this kind of things? Do you use a tool? Or do you directly start with a plain text editer like Notepad?

[mastercomputers 0]

WYSIWYG editors were designed for the purpose of quickly getting your web page up. For that purpose they are excellent but the amount of effort they put into making it appear correctly, usually means they go overboard with adding additional tag soup to the mix and can be hard for someone who does not use your editor to clean the mess up. This however is aiming for less bytes so page loading can be quicker, but we are only talking a few additional bytes that can barely go unnoticed with the speed of internet these days, however, you wanted to make them efficient later on so that those who use mobile data do not chew up their MBs.

 

I prefer hand coding. You could simply have a set of simple skeleton templates in place that you can quickly throw up a web page in a matter of minutes. The reason I do it this way, is I work mainly with a lot of frameworks and web languages, which are sometimes not pluggable into or understood by your editor. Then again, I'm more a developer than a designer, so the backend is usually my main concern than what goes on in the front. If I want to use existing software for my site, then I usually opt for open source, so that I can rework it to fit my needs.

 

If you are interested in using an editor to help you get a site out quickly, then use software that's main purpose is designed for that. I would not recommend using any office suite program to do it, as it seems to come out a lot more messier than editors made for that purpose. People may tell you to hand code, because it's better but I think the important thing is getting it up and serving as quickly as possible, and then fix the mess later. Just don't create a 100 page site with an editor, that would be too much effort to clean up.

 

What do you mean how do you do this kind of thing? I would use a plain text editor, but not notepad. It would be an editor that supports UTF-8 and does Unix/Linux line endings. Other features that make it easier to work with is line numbering, tag/bracket matching, line highlighting, auto indenting, auto close tags, auto tag completion/suggestions, preview and color code syntax. Again, these features are not necessary, terminal editors suit me fine as well but these aides do help detect errors and give you reminders.

 

So what are you thinking of doing Yordan? I would not mind helping others get their sites underway, usually easier working on other peoples sites than your own because you're following what the person wants than trying to tackle your own ideas of what you want.

 

Cheers,

 

MC

[yordan 10]

 

So what are you thinking of doing Yordan?

I would like to tell some friends/parents/cousins that creating a web page is something easy.

You do prefer hand coding, this is not an easy startpoint for non-developers.

It's easy to tell a friend "write down your nice text page, and when you like it's look and feel, save it in html format and that's all".

Some years ago I told people "use Microsoft Word for creating your page and modify it using FrontPage", this allowed them to create their own pages and quickly modify them.

Today I have to use other words. But I definitely cannot tell my neighbours to type "vi index.html" and don't forget ":wq!"

So I have to find a new way to show how accessible the open world is. And I'm pretty much convinced that saying "learn Wordpress" or "learn Dreamweaver" is not the best approach. Moreover, "lean html5" is far worse!

[mastercomputers 0]

When I was first interested in learning HTML, I read the source code of websites to understand it. I modified them to see the changes. I now no longer need to view the sources of sites to understand how they work. I can just look at a site and can just write it to how I feel it is displayed and quite possibly write it more efficiently.

 

With the numerous display sizes of devices that access the web now, designing sites involves a lot more. You could start at either end of the spectrum, start with small displays and work your way up to larger displays, that's my preferred method or start with larger displays and work your way down. Armed with a pen and a pad, draw what you would like your site to look like, with smaller displays this is quite easy, you basically just need to work out the order you want information to appear and a suitable size for images. Then when you start working on larger displays, you just move your information around to fill up the area you have and also maybe increase image sizes. Once you have a layout you want to do, work on achieving it.

 

With an editor, you could possibly achieve what you want a lot quicker, but I would not know which editor to opt for. There are many editors that run in your browser now, that can understand HTML 5, which is where I would point people to because you want to keep up to date and be sure that your site will be supported in the long run. KompoZer maybe a bit stale in development and seems to lack HTML 5 support. I am not sure if it has been forked, but it does need a bit of love to reach a more modern age.

 

There is really nothing wrong with suggesting WordPress if they are wanted a blog, or telling them to use Dreamweaver. These are programs that were designed to make it easier for them. Their learning curve would not be the mark up language but more understanding how to work with the program instead. I still recommend they learn a little basic HTML so that they do understand what is happening though and I believe this is what puts a lot of people off. Learning languages is not an easy feat. There are many programs out there, designed for particular purposes and I'm sure they could find one that fits their needs.

 

Cheers,

 

MC

[rejected 0]

I used notepad for about 13 years to do all of my HTML coding. I learned about notepad++ in a c++ course. Notepad++ is now my go-to editor for all coding. I don't like editors like frontpage or dreamweaver because of the extra mark-up. I don't need a program to code for me - I can write it out myself quickly and easily.

[yordan 10]

 

I can write it out myself quickly and easily.

You lucky man! I code hardly and slowly

[mastercomputers 0]

I use to be against WYSIWYG editors, but I have changed my views on them. Hand coding will always be my preferred method but for those who don't have countless hours to learn and want to get their site up quickly then by all means, use the tools that are developed for those cases. It's more important to get what you want out there as quickly as possible than to delay it till you've learnt the markup. As I see it now, many sites fail to conform to recommendations, yet they still work how they should with maybe a few inconsistencies in browsers but people will probably not even notice these things.

 

You also have options of hiring a freelancer/web designer for those who do not wish for the hassle. Again, nothing wrong with that but if money is an issue, then opting for DIY and learning HTML and getting yourself a free editor should be the way to go, many great tools out there do exist and even have less Markup Soup (lots of unnecessary code tags).

 

If you are into hand coding, then you should create yourself some skeleton/boilerplate templates available, as I find with HTML, I usually stick to quite a consistent style of coding and a lot of the head information rarely changes and the body usually follows similar suit, unless I decide on change the overall look.

 

So what are some of the free, open source editors out there? I will trial them out and give my views on them if I have time and see which one I would work with if I were to use one. The only requirement I ask for is that they are cross platform/browser, needs to work on Windows, Mac and Linux, I only run Linux these days.

 

Cheers,

MC.

[yordan 10]

 

The only requirement I ask for is that they are cross platform/browser, needs to work on Windows, Mac and Linux

Cross-browser is a very strong key point.

So often I have seen some professional sites warning "firefox only", or other ones which cannot be seen on android tablets.

The problem is that, in real life, a lot of browsers are used. IE6 is still there because some old personal computers don't have a lot of memory and cannot (and should not) be upgraded.

And when people buy an android device today, the default browser is usually chrome. So quite a wide panel of browsers, and each of them should work (my grand-mother should be able to see my children's pictures, as fluently as my cousins!

[Iniyila 2]

I usually use notepad++ for writing html pages, but when i stuck then i get some help from browsers they are very good for real time processing of the html code and you see the results just as you change it. I've never used any other software for writing html pages.

[yordan 10]

Nice. notepad++ for writing the code, and checking with the browser if it really gives the predicted result. I agree, it's probably the best way, having a clean code and checking it as final check or slight adjust.