Re: html editors

At 8:09 am -0500 1/2/02, Damon Vaudrey wrote:
>[ snip ]
>
>Does this mean that all these editors are making the code incorrectly? As
>this is a little disturbing.

Yes. At one level it does mean that.

However, if the convenience of a visual editor is important
to you, get Dreamweaver.
<URL: http://www.unleash.com/oneuser/part008-dreamweaverultradev.html >
<URL: http://www.sla.org/chapter/cwcn/wwest/v3n4/pcweb.htm >
<URL: http://ioxy.com/htmlcode.html >
<URL: http://www.britishexpat.com/techbuildbeg/beg5.htm >
	Macromedia's Dreamweaver is generally recognised as the
	professionals' choice, although I've heard of geeky kids who
	use it too. It is a hybrid of wysiwyg and text editors. I
	had a go with a free trial version and I'm sorry to say that
	it was way too complex for me yet. Maybe one day... If you
	are an astrophysicist, a neurosurgeon or a masochist you
	might like to give it a try. I don't think it's for
	beginners but there's nothing stopping you from having a go.
	You can get a thirty day free trial from CNET downloads
	(surprise) and if you like it, and you've got about £200 to
	spare, it's all yours.

	update [June 2000]: This article was written in April 2000
	using FrontPage 98. We've now upgraded to FrontPage 2000
	which is a whole lot better.

	update [August 2000]: I've now started using DreamWeaver and
	can't understand why it was so difficult before!

<URL: 
http://www.ansteorra.org/pipermail/haunted-trails/1998-December/003538.html >
<URL: http://www.noax.it/secured/webtowin/Magazine/Business/TOOLS.HTM >


If your budget reaches that far, try a few days with BBEdit
<URL: http://www.graphic-design.com/Web/rollover/results.html >
which does have a validator built-in, and is the best web page
editor, emacs excluded.

The only validation error that you are likely to see in
Dreamweaver is missing ALT attributes. So it is not really
that disturbing.

>I might add however, that my site appears to view correctly wherever I have
>tested it ...

Make sure that your main test testing browser is a validating, or
error-detecting browser such as Amaya <URL: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/ >
or more reasonably iCAB <URL: http://www.icab.de/ >.

There are one or two cheesy browsers out there which are error
concealing and do not let you know that the markup in your files
is faulty, opening a route for you to upload faulty pages to
the web. (Most browsers are merely error agnostic).

>- which leads me to think that your site is just catering for the
>elitist, ...

This is a mailing list rather than a site, and it is concerned
with development of the W3C Committee's Validator. I cannot find
a pointer to the charter of this list, and given the 'bot's response
to <URL: mailto:html-tidy-request@w3.org?subject=unsubscribe>, I
suspect that there isn't one.

There are excellent reasons for the W3C to provide a validation
service, irrespective of the need for valid level on the web
See <URL: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ >.

I already put my hand up to the charge of being a 'purist', so
do I have to admit that anyone who like me believe that the
web should be available to all is also 'elist'?

>and is not crucial for a site to look fine to the rest of the
>world...?

The best way of ascertaining the steps that a site need undertake
to 'look fine for the world' is to scrutinise the code that
the busiest sites (Google, Netscape, Altavista, Excite. Lycos)
use. Whilst they may do things that you and I should not do,
they are probably also doing some, indeed, many things right.

Also, ST.W for page that give reasons for validating one's
HTML. You will be able to determine how important valid HTML
is for you and your information.

Ben.

Received on Thursday, 7 February 2002 06:26:19 UTC