Tools for Creating Web Pages

Basic tools for creating web pages fall into three categories:

Text editors can be used to create web pages. A text editor can be as simple as Microsoft Notepad or as complicated as Macromedia Dreamweaver. The browser doesn't look at anything except the file type (htm or html) and the contents of the file as text items. In other words, fonts, color, size, doesn't matter to the browser. It gathers all the information needed about how to display a page from the tags that are embedded in the page. Usually when a person is using a simple text editor, a browser window is kept open to display the file as the browser sees it. We will use a text editor (notepad) for most of the projects in this class.

ProCon
  • Almost all systems have some type of notepad or word processor.
  • Learning the tool is easy.
  • Low cost.
  • Code is "tight"
  • Other???
  • No advanced tools are provided
  • All coding is done by hand so you have to know HTML.
  • Other???

HTML generators allow you to create a page using a WYSIWYG product such as Dreamweaver, Netscape Composer, or Microsoft FrontPage. As you add elements to the document, html code is generated behind the scenes.

ProCon
  • Advanced tools are provided that make complicated tasks easier.
  • No need to learn HTML.
  • Products come in various levels to suit the needs of the user.
  • Other???
  • Not on every machine
  • You still have to know HTML.
  • Code is sloppy.
  • Pages end up looking the same if templates are used.
  • Other???

Depending on how you learned to do html pages, one method is pretty much as good as another. Many of us "old timers" write native html code while others prefer to use html generators. The truth is that at some point you are going to have to get into the native code. You have to know it.

Back to the outline.