Thoughts on HTML editors and writing by hand

I'm fairly new to writing web pages and am in the process of trying to learn how to write proper HTML and such (many good link from these forums! Thanks for the info. I'm working on http://www.lisaexplains.com right now. I do feel a bit like Bob from "What about Bob?" *baby steps to the door, baby steps to the hall ........* )

Anyway, just curious on some feedback as to a good way to learn and make pages. I understand the idea that HTML editors such as frontpage are bad because they do all the work for you. This in turn keeps one from learning how to write the code properly. Eventually, when one chooses to include a feature in the site that is beyond the capabilities of the editor, one will be lost as to how to properly include the new code in the page.

However, it seems incredibly tedious to sit there and write the ENTIRE site out by hand. I cannot imagine writing an entire site by hand in notepad, especially a more complex site with lots of features.

How do most folks make good quality (code-wise) sites? Do they actually write the whole thing out by hand, or do they use a mix of html editors for simple stuff and code by hand for the more complex features? I've played with HTML Kit a bit, and that seems like an interesting idea. Not quite a WYSIWYG editor, but it does automate some of the tags to remove a bit of the redundant typing. Just curious as to what approach most folks take to creating their sites.

Mark

No site is too big for Kwrite...or notepad!

I use all text based because I like to have the code formatted EXACTLY how I like it, so I can go back and edit with ease. I tried HTML kit but got scared away by the auto complete (didn't even think to turn it off as ATNO pointed out afterwards). I'd say you could use that if you wanted to. But really no page is too big that it can't work with a text editor.

Syntax highlighting is nice though.

I'm not really referring so much to the pages working as much as to the sheer volume of typing that seems to go into writing a complete page. Just having to constantly type < and > slows down my typing so much that it seems there might be a method out there to automate the mundane portions of writing a page while still allowing the control of writing HTML by hand.

And I do agree, syntax highlighting is nice. Makes it alot easier to find stuff on the page when you're trying to go through and edit the page.

Mark

I used to use Notepad , but now use HTML kit exclusively. Copy & paste helps. I know a lot of "Pro's" use Frontpage and Dreamweaver, but I think you'll find many of us here enjoy writing pure code. I know one exception is Musik. She uses Frontpage and does it very well. She may be able to give you some pointers.

Using a HTML editor to design a site is no different to using Micro$oft Word to write a letter. It's all about presentation. You can also code RTF format documents by hand, adding in all the coding for you for font size & formatting, positioning, etc. But nobody would think less of you for using Micro$oft Word to write that document.

For a static site with half a dozen pages, I don't see any problem with creating your site in FrontPage or some other HTML editor.

As far as doing it all by hand, the sites that have a lot of features are usually database driven, like my site. Each page you see is not all created "by hand". There are basic templates for different sections of the page, but the script calls those templates to complete the whole, so it's not as tedious as you might think sometimes.

Reusing template code like this also helps to keep all your content looking uniform and like it's all part of the same site.

I still use FrontPage for creating quick CSS tags, just by editing the styles, and I still use it for making basic table layouts (selecting a bunch of cells, right click, merge/split/properties/etc.), and seeing how it's going to look when you've got an image chopped up into 50 smaller images to make the header, is so much easier & quicker doing it in FrontPage than trying to figure out all the columns, etc. manually.

Then I just go to source view, copy+paste the code into my document in EditPlus, and tweak it manually.

EditPlus is great, as it has a built-in FTP client. You can edit files stored on a remote site without having to download them, save them locally, upload them, and mess around in half a dozen programs; It's just open, edit, save, it's done, live on your site - IMHO essential for testing server-side scripts like thos written in PHP.

Well stated Axe....

Thank you ATNO, and I'll be completely honest, I'm not ashamed to say it, regardless of how many people badmouth it, I think FrontPage is probably the best product Micro$oft has ever written.

On the whole it might produce badly-coded, bandwidth-hogging sites if you're attempting to create a huge static site with FrontPage alone, but it has saved me SO much time over the past few years developing sites for clients (Ever since "FrontPage Express" was distributed as a freeby with Internet Explorer), that I can't imagine not having it any more.

For doing quick snippets to then tweak manually in a text editor, nothing beats FrontPage for me. But then, maybe I've just been using it so long that I've gotten used to getting some of the tasks done quicker in FP over using other methods, and I'm sure some of those things are quicker for other people using their own methods rather than FP, so it's all a matter of what works best for each individual. But, like I said, I can't imagine working without it any more.

I'm not sure about that. I think 2003 Server might stand up to that challenge. I'll let you know in a couple months.

Nor was I, you get used to typing out < > over and over again. It is actually one of the few symbols on the keyboard I can touch type!

i've never written out a single page of html code by hand and I
think i do pretty good. Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of the
code and can fix most things from the code itself, but I'm just
more comfortable sitting in front of the page itself rather than
all that code when designing.

That being the key word for me: designing. Hard for me to
break that concept looking at all code since I'm a visual person.

I use Dreamweaver MX exclusively now, although I used to use
Frontpage all the time as well.

I think it all really depends on what you're trying to do. My goal is to try and be a web designer, not a coder. I'll probably have to kick myself and learn a little asp and php one of these days, but as of now I’m just twiddling in Photoshop.

This is where programs like dreamweaver come in handy. I spend more time thinking about design, rather then coding. I decided to take some small css/javascript class that was only a few weeks long. It took a hellishly long time to code the website by hand because I still wanted it to look good. I even used a set I had played around dreamweaver before. It was a simple design, but there were still lots of code to write

By Hand time: 1 week (had to keep looking up stuff, I would say someone who knew what they were doing could do in it..perhaps and in two hours??

Dreamweaver: 20 Min.

By hand the clode is much simpler and cleaner. Overall if you want to make your own webpages you should do it by hand, if you have the time... but it wouldn’t hurt to try and learn one of the programs available just to get a little more well-rounded. My pages are more graphic-orientated then anything else, so I’ll probably keep using dreamweaver while on the side (slowly..heh) learn how to code my webpages by hand.

OK...I'll take a bite at this. I have Dreamweaver, but very seldom use it, because I just completely can't get the WYSIWYG side of it to work for me. But I'll make an effort later this month to take a shot at designing a few pages in Dreamweaver just using WYSIWYG. I'm sure I'll cringe when I see the code, but I'd like to learn that side of it. I agree coding by hand takes more time, but to me it's more satisfying and easier to fix, because I know what I wrote. But there have been times when it would be nice to produce a page or two quickly. I will say that I do like how easy it is to create FLASH buttons in Dreamweaver, but I've never used them because they seem to take forever to load.

I am fairly new to it all, but I prefer just using notepad. Maybe because I learned using notepad, I don't know.

I have dreamweaver, but I can not figure it out lol. I can be a total ditz most of the time and I am too impatient and everytime I have tried I end up getting myself even more confused. lol

Plus with copy and paste I don't actually end up writing the same thing 50 million times, ofcourse I like to save blank pages and stuff with just a little bit of code so I can just copy and paste it all.

this argument to me isn't even .0001 of % of my satisfaction in creating
a web page. The code is irrelevant to me in most cases, so it never
factors in to the overall process, in terms of "builder's satisfaction."

Don't take that wrong, I have plenty of respect for those that enjoy doing
code by hand, and the code itself...it's just not for me.

And that really is what it comes down to anyway -- preferences and opinions.

Coding straight HTML I gotta agree with Unflux... but with actual web scripting languages, like PHP, JavaScript, etc. I like coding it by hand, learning more about how the language works, and satisfaction when the code works - rather than using pre-built software, or having something generate the code for you.

But even using pre-built scripts (Like I do with PostNuke on my site), and hacking it to work exactly the way you want can also give the same sense of achievement.