Re: Making web pages.

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines WOrking Group has a list of Tools
available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/tools (but it is not complete - if your
favourite tool is not on it, please write and tell us!)

There are a number of free tools which will let you do this, but as David
wrote, most of them do not produce particularly good quality HTML, so knowing
it is still an advantage. Almost any of them will do what you have described,
but it sounds like you are looking for a WYSIWYG - What You See Is(n't
really) What You Get - type tool, that looks and feels like a regular word
processor.

The key is to remember that while you may not want to do the boring job of
writing well-structured code, it is important that your tool does it
properly, and to a certain extent that relies on you using it carefully.

It is worth learning how style sheets work (in general - they have been
avialable in word processors for many years, and lots of those applications
have very good help and tutorial information), since they are a key way to
provide the structure that is desirable for people to use your pages in any
environment, without sacrificing the creative presentation that will make
people enjoy your pages.

The W3C has a tool which is free, and was designed to prodce structured
documents - Amaya. There are many other tools available for free or for
relatively low cost. A number of them are listed on the page noted above, and
many of the ones that are not free have an evaluation version you can use for
free for a certain period of time.

Regards

Charles McCathieNevile



On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, David Poehlman wrote:

  I thought I'd bring some heads to bear on this topic.  I'll start with
  answering your last question.  Learning html is essential for good
  html writing.  If you look at many pages out there, you'll not see a
  lot of nesting.  Much of what is neded as code is provided as
  containers which you can have on hand and just fill in.  I use wordpad
  myself.  There is not a tool that is streightforward as we might like
  one to be.
  Kevin Minor wrote:
  > 
  > Hi listers.
  > 
  > As usual, the topic was discussed, but I don't have the information on it.
  > 
  > I'm wanting to create web pages for work as well as at home, and I'm looking
  > for a good web building tool.
  > 
  > I'd like this tool to be powerful enough for future use, but for now here is
  > what I'm looking for.
  > 
  > A tool that lets you specify the displayed text for a link, and then prompts
  > you for the address of the link.
  > 
  > I also need to build forms with check boxes, combo boxes and an area for
  > comments.
  > 
  > At present, I'm not looking to add graphics to the page, but I'd like the
  > flexibility to do so.  I have looked at HTML code, and it's fairly straight
  > forward until you think of all the nesting required.  It's tedious, and I'd
  > like to find something that automates much of the HTML coding.  I have
  > looked at Aracnofilia, but it still requires some knowledge of HTML coding.
  > 
  > Thanks in advance for any information.  One other thing.  I want to know the
  > good web building tools, as well as how much they cost.
  > 
  > Kevin Minor
  > kminor1@prodigy.net
  > 
  > -
  > Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net
  
  -- 
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  ---sig off---
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Thursday, 14 October 1999 19:40:16 UTC