What Authoring Program To Use

**aglasser** · 10-27-2003, 05:11 AM

Hi Everyone,

I have been using IBM's Homepage Builder but its getting old and they are not updating it. I also use "Pop Up Menu Creator" which is suffering from the same fate.

I am a rank amatuer and only use my web site for family photos etc. I do not wish to learn any languages and would like to find replacements for the above programs. They are both drag and drop type with The Menu Creator developing a script which I paste into my IBM script. It works well and I FTP the results.

I would appreciate anyones advice on what may be good for a "programmer :-) " like me.

Thanks,

Al

**Vin DSL** · 10-27-2003, 05:34 AM

One of the best sites I ever saw was done by a 12 year-old using MS-Word. LoL! No joke!

**lookout** · 10-27-2003, 01:53 PM

Word, yikes! Edlin is the editor for me!

Seriously, I'm interested in answers to this question too. Not for myself, but for some other people I know who like to dabble in this kind of stuff.

Might be worth checking out some software review sites for something like this, or swinging by epinions.com for some other input.

**mattsiegman** · 10-27-2003, 02:33 PM

Dreamweaver: best WYSIWYG, Notepad or Bluefish [Linux]: best editor overall

, Open Office: best word processor

**lookout** · 10-27-2003, 04:22 PM

Somehow I don't think something like Dreamweaver or a Linux based solution is what is being sought after here, Matt, despite their charms.

**mattsiegman** · 10-27-2003, 04:34 PM

oh

**lookout** · 10-28-2003, 10:39 AM

Since the suggestions aren't exactly flowing here, maybe these sites might spark some ideas:

http://www.webreference.com/authorin.../html/editors/

http://www.webattack.com/shareware/w...swwysiwyg.html

**Vin DSL** · 10-28-2003, 04:19 PM

I'm in a real time crunch right now. Let me do a couple of copy 'n' pastes on my own posts here, then I gotta run...

LoL! In that "decent text editor" thread you talk about WinSyntax. That's the one I use. I've tried a ton of editors but kept coming back to WinSyntax, so I guess that's my pick too. I use HomeSite for HTML and TopStyle Pro for CSS, but for everything else, I use WinSyntax.

Anyway, good call on both accounts, bro!

Yeah, you almost hate to tell ppl about WinSyntax. Their web site looks like some old static HTML thing from the last century (and probably is). When you download WinSyntax and start using it, you are completely underwhelmed at first. It looks very much like a fancy version of Notepad. But, a funny things happens after you use it for a while. LoL! You start depending on it.

I dunno. They say the simple things in life are the best, and I guess that's the attraction to WinSyntax. It's one of the few programs I have where I use ever feature. I suppose I could live without it, if I had to, but why would I want to do that? There's nobody here to impress at 3:00 AM when I'm digging through 1000's of lines of code. I want to focus on the task and not the tool, and WinSyntax is perfectly suited for that.

I can't think of one thing I would add to WinSyntax. It's perfect for what I use it for. However, it makes you feel funny recommending something so simple, you know? It's like you're afraid ppl will laugh at you or something. But, I do it anyway...

**aglasser** · 10-30-2003, 05:00 AM

Thanks for the input. However, so far, none of the suggestions match the ease of the IBM. I guess (I'll have to keep looking.

Again, thanks

Al

**jason** · 10-30-2003, 06:32 AM

A few years ago there were tons of HTML editors. Most of them were really text editors with "HTML helper" features, such as buttons and lists to automatically insert certain HTML tags, although there were a few WYSIWYG ones too (AOL produced a decent one, I remember). Back then HTML was still a relitavely new thing to most people and there was a fairly large demand to learn it.

Now the market seems to ahve settled, just like any market does with time, and many of those early editors have gone by the wayside. The few most dominant editors are still around, the most popular by far being Dreamweaver and FrontPage. The problem is that Dreamweaver is huge and feature-packed, and can by quite overwhelming to a beginner, and FrontPage is so tied in to all of its proprietary stuff and its site management features that just using it as an editor can be difficult sometimes.

I do this stuff professionally and generally combine Dreamweaver with hand-edited (read Notepad) code. I haven't kept up with the HTML tools market lately, so I can't really recommend much else. I know someone mentioned Word, which does have HTML features, but I personally don't like how pages created in Word look in a browser. Open Office (www.openoffice.org) is a free Office suite that includes an HTML editor that you might want to check out. I haven't used it much, so I can't really comment on its features. Also, Netscape includes Composer (File>New>Composer Page), another decent HTML editor. I used to use composer a little bit when I first started publishing a personal site a long time ago.

Good luck in finding a replacement. Sorry I can't be of much help.

--Jason

**lookout** · 10-30-2003, 08:34 AM

There are still quite a few of those lesser known programs left though, as the links I posted above testify. Hardly mainstream like Macromedia's Dreamweaver or Microsoft's Frontpage, but they do appeal to certain audiences. And don't forget Adobe, who always seems to have one product offering or another in this market (currently GoLive).

I had wondered after reading the initial post whether a serious web authoring program was even the way to go here. I mean, many programs originally designed for other purposes (like Word, as Vin had suggested) can now can generate web pages. Page layout programs like Adobe Indesign (PageMaker's replacement) or QuarkXPress are some of the commercial ones that spring to mind. They should NOT be thought of as bona fide web authoring programs, but for some, they can work well enough to suit their web publishing purposes. Bear in mind that the HTML they produce usually gets pretty ugly. But maybe that's not as important as working in a program that you find both familiar and comfortable to use.

If the desire is to publish picture galleries on the web, maybe an image handling program would be enough. Something like Thumbsplus might do the trick. It certainly is not a web authoring program, but it does offer a wizard that generates the HTML for web based picture galleries.

**Df_Gamer** · 10-30-2003, 09:05 AM

Depending on how complicated your site is, you have several options. I utilize Flash MX, Html, Javascript, CGI, Ulead Video Studio, and Macromedia Fireworks, to create my pages. (I create original art as well as ALOT of graphics manipulation). With the exception of image mapping, I code everything with Notepad.

A small site is best handled with a plain text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad. WYSIWYG editors like IBM, Dreamweaver etc. put a lot of "uneccessary" code into smaller pages thereby making the process LOOK a lot more difficult than it really is.

If you have a small site, I would recommend "HTML for the WorldWideWeb" by Peachpit publishers examples.

(You will be a code junkie before you know it and they have a series of books covering Javascript, CGI, Perl, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc.)

For a larger or more complex site, the authoring tool should be determined by functionality (ease of use) availability ("free" versus $200) and server preferance (Do you HAVE to put it on a site that does not support Frontpage tags etc).

If you have a small photo site, try some HTML [come on...its free. No its not addictive -- really

]

P.S. A link to your site would provide an idea of what you are working with.

**Spathiphyllum** · 11-06-2003, 02:04 PM

Hi aglasser,

Try HTML-kit (http://www.chami.com/html-kit/). It's not a pure cut-and-paste editor but it is easy to learn, versatile, and comprehensive. Plug-ins can be added to make certain chores easier as your skills/needs increase. It's really an editor for several programming languages with ftp capabilities. Oh yeah, did I mention that they offer it free?

The product is actively developed and is constantly being improved. Highly recommended.

Later,
Spathiphyllum

**bluesky** · 11-14-2003, 05:47 AM

Probably, combination of adobe photoshop and macromedia dreamweaver is the way to go. Dreamweaver is very easy to use and good for programming tools as well if you do web programming such as php, jsp or asp.

First design your template in photoshop and then cut into pieces to put into html template page.

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