[WEB4LIB] Column on HTML Editors

[Beth Mazin]

OK, I'm going to be honest here and get slammed but here goes ...

We use FrontPage2000. No one is forcing us to. We're just using it. It's 
bundled with the Office2000 Professional Suite/Academic which costs us $55 
-- can't beat that.  At that price, it's on everyone's desktop.  We're a 
small to medium sized public library (about 30 FTEs) that is trying to 
produce a web site with a lot of info -- if the page displays OK in 
Netscape and IE, that's what we care about... if the coding is kludgy, so 
be it. I try not to look at the code unless something is wrong with the 
display; then I'll look at the code, figure out what's wrong and change it. 
Please don't go to my site and look at the code and tell me it sucks -- I'm 
sure it does.  But I just don't have the time or personality to hand code 
everything, or use a validator, or spend time looking for missing end 
tags.  I prefer to spend what time I have putting up good content that is 
decently organized, clearly presented,  and useful to my patrons.

With this devil-may-care, cheap attitude we are preparing to have several 
of our librarians take over parts of the page, so we can put up even more 
content.  It will be easy to teach the librarians FrontPage.  FrontPage 
site management features are impressive and intuitive.  The built in 
components (form handlers, date stamp, search, reports) are great for 
novices.  I know most we4libbers hate FrontPage, but it meets our needs and 
I would recommend it highly to smaller libraries that need an inexpensive 
and relatively easy way to maintain a web site and create web pages.


Beth Mazin
Assistant Director
Memorial Hall Library
Elm Square
Andover, MA  01810
p. 978-623-8401 x33
f.  978-623-8407
bmazin at mhl.org
www.mhl.org