Looking to do my own webpage soon and I'm looking for advice.

Background: I've done a webpage in MSPublisher (essentially MSFrontpage), not afraid of HTML, just don't know it that well. Not afraid of graphics, know how to ftp.

Requirements: Price from free to about $200, relative ease of use, ability to code there but not required. MS98se or better compatable.

Thanks for the help,

Legrue

NOT!



Your best bet is to us a standard text editor. In addition to being an LEO, I own a web design/hosting firm that does public safety and pro 2nd Amendment sites. All of the "hard core" designers use a text editor, be it Notepad (which comes with Windows, or something like [url=http://www.ultraedit]Ultra Edit[/url] which is one of the tools we use. There is also a really cool app called [url=http://www.maxworld.co.yu/htmlbeauty/]Max's HTML Beauty[/url] which is getting a LOT of attention. Ultraedit is shareware, HTML Beauty is freeware. HTML Beauty has AWESOME support, and some very cool features. It was designed by a guy who is a perfectionist.

If you learn HTML, and use a text editor, your code will be MUCH simpler than those bloatware programs like FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc. Plus, you'll have a MUCH better understanding of how things work.

There are some nice tutorials and discussion forums at [url=http://www.gurusnetwork.com]http://www.gurusnetwork.com[/url], [url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com]http://www.ozoneasylum.com[/url], and [url=http://www.handson.nu]http://www.handson.nu[/url].

I hope this helps.

If you need anything else including hosting prices, let me know. We provide full end-to-end solutions.

I disagree.  If you understand the basics of HTML there is no reason to waste your time spelling out your whole page manually in a text editor.  Save the manual work for scripting and other things that software can't do much of.

Oh? I suggest you build your page in one of these WYSIWYG editors, and then look at the terrible code it generates. It's never standards compliant. Very fat, bloated code.

Manually written code is cleaner, smaller, and faster to load. It's also easier to comply to HTML and XHTML standards.

I've seen both FrontPage and DreamWeaver generate more than TWICE as much HTML as was needed. Literally.

They are garbage. Totally garbage.

Try Weborama by Kevin Gunn:

[url]http://www.kevingunn.com/[/url]

It's a "glorified" text editor for HTML coders.

I use Dreamweaver right now because I'm lazy, but used Weborama from almost the beginning of it's creation long ago.
Did a lot of testing for it. Got tired of plain Note Pad & a browser window for coding.

It's FREE or $25 bucks for a WYSIWYG & spell check enabled one. Check it out. Real nice.

I agree that the WYSIWYG editors like FrontPage bloat the code terribly, and I prefer to write my own clean HTML....

[blue]BUT[/blue].....if a person just knows a little code and doesn't want to take the time to really get into it,

[blue]AND[/blue].....if they just want to make a personal web page and not spend a lot of time doing it.....

I would recommend FrontPage.  It's easy to use and it lets you edit the code if you want to.  Just stay away from the glitzy components unless the server you are uploading to supports FrontPage extensions.  A lot of them don't.

Just my .02  [;)]

I guess if handcoding was always the best route in any situation then all programmers today would be writing their applications in assembler. After all, it's the cleanest, smallest, and fastest code that can be written.

Anyways, I agree totally with AR-15gal.

Ok.  You can spend all the time you want optimizing html.  Yours will take 6ms to load and mine will take 7ms [rolleyes].  My point was:  for anyone who values their time, don't waste it dinking around with html.  It's like optimizing a word processor.  Who cares?  I propose that one spend his time where optimization and functionality actually matter.

Well, that's only partly the issue. That fat bloated code can be rendered differently by different browsers.

My point is that if you want good, clean, fast code that looks the same across browsers, you'd be better off doing it manually. HTML (or even better, XHTML) isn't that hard. Editors like UltraEdit and HTML Beauty work on the manual code idea, but have HTML based layouts. The best of both worlds.

And lest you think I just don't like Microsoft, that's quite the opposite. I've made a small fortune off their stuff. And supporting their stuff. And supporting users who use their stuff (we have clients who use FrontPage).

No biggie, really.

I don't think so. You ask 100 different full time designers what they use, and you'll get 100 different answers. The most prevailing is that they use manually based text editor type, and not a WYSIWYG editor. While DreamWeaver has its advantages (especially over FP), I wouldn't say it's the standard.

I've got 6 designers here and there are 4 different editors being used for the bare code.

I went over to see some friends at [url=http://www.cecom.com]Campbell Ewald[/url] the other day. They do things like all of the Chevrolet stuff, the US Navy stuff, etc. Text editors and Photoshop for most of it. Flash for the rest.

Thanks for the replies. I knew you guys would come through ;)

Now to do some research.

-legrue

I've got to vote for the text editor approach too.  I bought a copy of DreamWeaver and decided that the learning curve to use it effectively was more than I wanted to invest.

I would also recommend the use of an HTML extension language.  I use PHP, which is a lot like C.  There's very little you can't do between HTML and PHP.  Or, if you prefer, use JavaScript.