Using a Web Page Editor at Ricci Street's Gizmos, Inc.Toolkit: PC Workshop

Just a couple of years ago, you made a web page with a text editor like Notepad. You started typing code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Using a Web Page Editor at Gizmos, Inc: Toolkit: PC Workshop</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFCC99">

That's the beginning of the page you're reading now. Notice how the text between the <title> tags appears at the top of your browser window. Not twenty years ago, this is how you did word processing, too, by typing in the formatting codes. Word processors didn't completely replace typewriters until they matured into the WYSIWYG editors, such as Word and WordPerfect, that we have today.

Just as the word processors matured, so have the tools to make web pages. By 1995, the software industry had produced HTML editors to hide the code. In late 1996, Netscape introduced Navigator 3.01, which let you use the browser as a near-WYSIWYG editor yet gave you easy access to the code to tweak it. Microsoft had to play catch-up in a hurry, so they bought FrontPage from Vermeer Technologies. See History below.

After you know enough HTML to be literate, to read and write web pages, you can use web editing software discussed here to greatly reduce your clicks and keystrokes. You can think about the content of your pages instead of the tool.

Take a look at the classic adoption categories in the process by which innovations spread through a society. I used to think the the p-word was pornography. Instead, it seems to be programming. People won't even look at HTML lest they sully their imaginations or commit some grievous sin. If the innovators were willing to code with a text editor, only the very early adopters are willing to use tools like FrontPage.

Whole industries are built on this gap and vigorous marketing campaigns exploit this fear. "No special languages to learn." "Easy-as-pie web-page builder." At my place of employment the backlash would be humorous if it weren't so sad. When I hear other teachers sniff about programming, I hear my grandmother who never learned to drive a car sniff about traffic fatalities well into the 1970's. When I got my driver's license, it was the end of the world as she'd known it. Indeed, it was.

This particular technology gap will last only as long as this generation of clueless adults is in charge. As they retire and die off and today's teens take charge, many things will stay the same. But irrational fear of computer programming won't be one of them.

The Rise Of The 15-Year-Olds
by JonKatz
Slashdot, August 7, 2001

Meanwhile, I encourage you to see opportunity to excel. Become literate. Learn to read and write HTML.

Skills

Tools

This utility strips proprietary Microsoft tags and artefacts from Word HTML documents, leaving basic formatting and typographic entities intact. Curled quotes and em and en dashes should come through fine, as long as they existed in the original Word document.

How-to ...

FrontPage lets you customize many features, options and settings. If you want to know what I recommend after using FrontPage for almost five years, this Tips for FrontPage Users page has a lot of screenshots and explanations. The screenshots are full size, so they'll take a while to load.

When you're looking for FrontPage resources, remember that FrontPage 2002 is such an upgrade from FrontPage 2000, FrontPage 98 and FrontPage 97 that resources for them may be very misleading.

Tip | When you're learning FrontPage as your first HTML page editor, avoid the Themes and Shared Borders features. Learn more

Beginner's tutorial at Actden.com - designed for 6th graders, which is about the level you want to be working on while you learn bloatware like FrontPage.

Click on the top right of the home page. I recommend that you omit these sections:

4. More Images
9. Style
11. Data
12. Reports
13. Publish

FrontPage World - "Everything about Microsoft FrontPage in One Simple Place on the Web"

What Else?

FrontPage isn't the best, but it is popular and it does keep you from getting your hands dirty with HTML. It is best used when you are publishing to a broadband intranet standardized on Microsoft's browser, server, operating system, etc. A total Microsoft environment. Otherwise, FrontPage is best used as a prototyping tool.

For anything else, you want to move into a content management system. They can be out of the box. Or they can be custom-designed, for which I would recommend Linux, PHP, and mySQL, all free. Either way, you will need a database administrator.

uptown

While Microsoft has a large share of the casual and corporate market, Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Adobe's GoLive have most of the old-time print designer market.

Personal Note | Having used Dreamweaver, I see its main advantage being that it's not a Microsoft product. It appeals to the nose-in-the-air crowd. HTML is HTML, and there's only so much you can do to hide it.

Also, after learning PhotoShop, I don't feel any need to learn any other Adobe products such as GoLive. They're made for a market that grew up in the print world and can't quite let go. Deal with it.

One or both of two popular free WYSISYG editors may already be on your computer. If not, you should download the latest versions of both browsers anyway so that you can test how your pages look in each.

downtown

Netscape Composer is bundled with Netscape Communicator 4. In the browser, pull down the Communicator menu and select Composer.

FrontPage Express is bundled with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5. In the browser, click on Edit on the top right.

geek city

If you want to get your hands a little dirtier with the HTML code, HTML-Kit is a good choice. If you go to a search engine to learn more, the term "HTML editors" will bring good results. I used it happily until I found 1st Page 2000 from Evrsoft. I used 1st Page quite happily until I found NoteTab Light, which I've been using for a few years. All three of these editors are free for the downloading. 1st Page has an especially good online tutorial for learning HTML.

Tip | FrontPage uses a relatively small font size in HTML view. To increase or decrease -- with Microsoft IntelliMouse or Wheel Mouse -- hold down the CTRL and roll the mouse wheel.

History of FrontPage

Charles Ferguson started Vermeer Technologies to develop his original idea in late 1993. They shipped FrontPage 1.0 in October 1995.

Until about a year ago, most Web page authors needed an intimate knowledge of special HTML codes to create pages. HTML editors were born, which eliminated some of this complexity, but still didn't model the simple document creation standard of modern-day word processors; many of the HTML editors still required some detailed knowledge of HTML. But Vermeer's FrontPage Editor is an excellent WYSIWYG HTML editor with a built-in to-do list that keeps track of necessary changes to your Web pages.

Then, to keep up with Netscape, Microsoft had to make a move. Here's a press release from January 16, 1996:

Critically Acclaimed Visual Client-Server Web Publishing Tool to Complement Internet Offerings From Microsoft Desktop Applications Division

Microsoft Corp. today announced the acquisition of Vermeer Technologies Inc., a pioneer of visual, standards-based Web publishing tools based in Cambridge, Mass. Vermeer's flagship software application, FrontPage�, is a critically acclaimed tool for easily creating and managing rich Web documents without programming. FrontPage will become a key component of Microsoft's strategy to provide a full range of tools that put the power of Web publishing.

Microsoft felt such time-to-market pressure that they rushed their first version of FrontPage out of the shop without even changing all the directory names. For example, note the _vti hidden directories. The vti stands for Vermeer Technologies Inc.

What Microsoft calls "complement", its competitors call unfair monopolistic leverage. In spite of the Justice Department's seeming to have won the federal case against Microsoft's software bundling, FrontPage has prospered with Microsoft's constant upgrade marketing strategy. Its four versions in the last five years have kept the revenue rolling in.





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modified: August 15, 2001 by Douglas Anderson http://RicciStreet.net/gizmos/toolkit/webmaking/webedit.htm

Web Page Editor

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