Re: Web authoring tools
Re: Web authoring tools
- Subject: Re: Web authoring tools
- From: Richard 23 <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 15:00:38 -0800
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I am now beginning to think about using AppleScript to create a small
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web page, which I hope to develop over time. More than anything,
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this is a learning exercise. So I'm now looking for a web authoring
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tool that is scriptable, easy to use, and inexpensive. My goal is to
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create a web page that is updated automatically with text and a few
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simple pictures. No fancy animations or anything like that, for now
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;-).
I probably should shut up soon because this is not my forum exclusively
but it's a slow day... 8)
In my opinion you're better off getting a good book, checking out the
html spec at <
http://www.w3.com/> and start out crafting your pages
by hand.
You'd think the wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) html editors if
nothing else would be a good learning tool and that they'd save you a
lot of time in the long run. I started out thinking that way.
But those things tend to spit out a lot of extra empty tags and garbage
that slow down page loading, often use little tricks which aren't
compliant
and aren't cross-browser. The pages are harder to edit and you end up
spending a lot of time cleaning them up. Often if you open up a page
you've finetuned they reformat and add a lot of garbage again.
I know my site's not the "bomb" but it was all written by hand although
I have written some AppleScripts to help me write clean compliant code
and I'll put some of that kind of info on my site (someday).
One strong point of the last version of Adobe GoLive (4.0) was the very
capable JavaScript editor but I tend to use BBEdit or Alpha now.
Also if you do it yourself you'll learn a lot more and will actually
understand your pages which is important if you want to support them
over time.
One tool I would recommend is HtmlTidy by Dave Raggett (one of the big
boys, he's the principal editor of the latest HTML spec
<
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224>
HtmlTidy is available at:
<
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/>
It can help filter out the garbage created by one of those loud and
lousy editors as well as tell you where you went wrong (element
not closed, incorrect tag name, etc) and a lot of little things that
can be useful.
Whatever you do, don't be suckered into writing pages that cater to a
specific browser. Both of the big ones are pretty awful when it comes
to standards but falling into the trap that led to those "Best when
viewed with" or "optimized for" labels. Try to make your pages as
accessible as you can. The Mac and PC are not the only computers on
the web. Far from it.
That's my general advice for anyone who would like to start up a
little homebrew site. But I'm one to talk. I've got ugliest site
this side of the pecos. But it keeps me off the street.
Let me know if you would like some general help.