Re: html and dreamweaver

Hi.

My name is Phillip Lyford, I'm am new to list, and I have recently completed 
certification in 'Web Site Production' and "Web Site Management" at a 
college in Australia.

I’m also on other HTML lists (outside W3C) and frequent the Web Design room 
at yahoo chat to offer help.

For the past year I have used Edit Pad (similar to Notepad but can handle 
multiple open files) for web pages and 1st Page 2000 for web sites.

I have used authoring tools such as DW, HM, HS, FrontPage, etc, but I have 
found that they do not always display what you see in the browser.

Today I throw a page into DW4, (I don’t know why I did this) and made some 
minor changes. I tested the page in IE and it was fine. However, it crashed 
NS.  The problem was due to JavaScript.

After debugging the piece of JavaScript code, I foundnd that DW decided to 
move the form closing tag (without my authorisation or consent). This change 
wouldn’t allow 5 input tags to be shown in Netscape.

This is a common problem I’ve had with DW, So I rarely use it or any other 
authoring tool.

However, re the topic I can surmise this,
1. Generally, those that use editors are conversant with HTML, and a 
percentage of these people know another language or languages.
2. Generally those that use authoring tools are either,
   a) New to HTML.
   b) Are designers, ie graphic artists.
   c) Using the tool for layout.
   d) Using the tool for the applications inbuilt tools.
   e) Lazy.
   d) A combination of the above.

Companies have realised this and have produced authoring tools to cater for 
the market’s needs for these groups of people.

There will never be a perfect HTML tool, because the web’s technology is 
changing at a fast rate and additional features are always being added to 
keep up with the changes.

So my opinion is learn HTML and then move onto an authoring tool of your 
choice.

Phil



>From: Frank Tobin <ftobin@uiuc.edu>
>To: www-html@w3.org
>Subject: Re: html and dreamweaver
>Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 17:20:23 -0600 (CST)
>
>Tony Hedges, at 22:06 -0000 on Sun, 10 Dec 2000, wrote:
>
>     I have to say the best editor anyone could use to write HTML is
>     either notepad or wordpad. Editors are ok, but why put yourself
>     through the bother of learning how to use an editor in the first
>     place?
>
>I'd have to strongly disgree with this statement.  Using an editor to
>generate HTML could, in many instances, produce much better documentation
>than writing by hand.  When I'm referring to editors, I'm referring to any
>sort of interface or language that provides a higher method of entering
>documentation than by simply entering plain text.
>
>For instance, an editor could automatically prompt you to exand an acronym
>if you enter a word which suspiciously looks like an acronym, and then
>automatically put in the <acronym title="expansion"> tags.  Also, an
>editor can help you generate the correct CSS for the look you want.
>Editors can also help make sure that.  Of course, editors can provide good
>indentation.
>
>Whether or not good editors exist or not is irrevelant; the point is that
>they could exist, and produce better documentation, learning HTML is not a
>goal in itself; the goal is to produce better documentation.  If an editor
>lets you produce better documentation with more ease, then the editor is
>the way to go.
>
>Lastly, of course, who would use soemthing as simple as notepad or wordpad
>when they could be using a powerful "editor" such as X/Emacs :)
>
>--
>Frank Tobin		http://www.uiuc.edu/~ftobin/
>

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Received on Monday, 11 December 2000 09:20:35 UTC