Web-site Development Tools

[Wright, Sue]

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From: Wright, Sue
To: (Slak)
Subject: RE: Web-site Development Tools
Date: Wednesday, July 22, 1998 9:18AM

Luisa,
I use MacOS at home and Win95 at work. I tend to favor tools (and software 
in general) that are available for both platforms. This allows me to focus 
on the software and my work, without being overly aware of differences in 
the operating environment. There are lots of programs out there that are 
cross-platform.

I design with Claris Home Page and Netscape Composer (part of Navigator 
4.0). Home Page handles tables a bit better than Composer, but Composer is 
still pretty darn impressive for a free program. If I want to accomplish 
something those programs do not accomodate, then I consult a big fat HTML 
book and look for the appropriate coding to enter manually. I know people's 
brains work differently, but I find entering code gets in the way of design 
 - you're so happy to see the garbage-like code actually turn into something 
in the browser that you don't always look at it from a design standpoint.

For the design-challenged I highly recommend "The Non-designers Design Book" 
and "The Non-designers Web Book" by Robin Williams.  She has a real talent 
for condensing design principles into very readable books.

Other tools that I like to use are PhotoshopLE and Freehand (for graphics 
and typography) and PageMaker and Freehand for exporting in PDF. I also use 
Claris FileMaker Pro 4.0 for instantly converting large spreadsheets of 
historical data into HTML tables to add to our website.

Good luck in your course next fall.

Sue Wright
Maine State Law and Legislative Reference Library
http://www.state.me.us/legis/lawlib/homepage.htm
sue.wright at state.me.us



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From: (Slak)
To: web4lib at library.berkeley.edu
Subject: Web-site Development Tools
Date: Tuesday, July 21, 1998 12:22PM

I was wondering if any web librarians on this list could recommend any web
development tools that they use.  I would especially appreciate hearing if
anybody is still just hand coding, and their justification for doing so.

I will be taking a course next semester for my MLS called "Applied
Technology Applications."  Part of that course includes an introduction to
html and website design.

I am in the planning stages (content developement) of a personal website
and am working on a Macintosh, a platform that I don't believe is overly
utilized in library land.  However I am interested how other librarians
compose their sites.

Thanks
Luisa Sabin-Kildiss

Aigars Kildiss
Luisa Sabin-Kildiss
110 Suffolk Street
New York, New York 10002