[WEB4LIB] Re: Future of HTML

[Andrew Mutch]

Kathy,

The archive is full of suggestions for the good, the bad, and the ugly of HTML editors.  Probably the first question you need to answer is:

"Do you know the code?"

HTML that is...if you aren't familiar with HTML, you should probably stick to one of the graphical editors.  On the other hand, if you are familiar with HTML, you probably will find you can get better control with one of the many text-editors.

Also, will you be working on many pages or just a few?  If you will be managing an large site, you might want to look at one of the editors that can be integrated with site management software.  On the other hand, if you are just planning on doing a few pages, you can get away with something as simple as Notepad.

Finally, which ever way you go, make sure that your editor creates HTML code that properly validates.  If you hand-code your pages, make sure that you run them through a validator to double-check your work.  This will ensure the fewest problems down the road with pages being rendered differently by different browsers.  Netscape Composer and Microsoft Word are notorius
for creating "junk" code but there are plenty of offenders out there.

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI


Kathleen Furukawa wrote:

>  Based on the paragraph below I'm sure folks have strong opinions about  html editors and the like. I'm sure the topic of html editors has been  discussed at great length and I will search the archives as soon  as....  But I'm a newby (please be gentle) and would like sage  suggestions for the best/easiest way to produce html.  I work in a  primarily MS environment.
>   Thanks, Kathy
>   Stimson Library, Academy of Health Sciences Fort Sam Houston, Texas
>  kathleen.furukawa at cs.amedd.army.mil
>
>
> ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
> Author:  tdowling at ohiolink.edu at SMTPMAIL
>   Even worse (correction, "much worse") than the browsers are the current  crop of popular authoring tools.  It's hard to talk about structured  tagging--in any language--trees, groves, or DOMs, when so many of the  pages out there consist of gobbledygook spit up by Word, FrontPage,  Composer, Homepage, et al.
>    Thomas Dowling
>  OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network  tdowling at ohiolink.edu
>