- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 19:40:00 -0400 (EDT)
- To: David Poehlman <poehlman@clark.net>
- cc: jfw@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au, andrew.treloar@its.monash.edu.au, WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, h t m l designers <htmldesigners@onelist.com>
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 -- Hands-On Technolog(eye)s Touching The Internet: mailto:poehlman@clark.net Voice: 301.949.7599 ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/poehlman http://poehlman.clark.net Dynamic Solutions Inc. Best of service for your small business network needs! http://www.dnsolutions.com ---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