Learning HTML

[tchild]

If FP is all you have,then by all means use it as it will do the job for you,BUT,I am switching over to dreamweaver. It is a steep learning curve,but no bad coding.

tchild

[temex]

How I love to answer to these year old threads...

Advice for new web designers and learners: Learn HTML basics first. No matter which way you head from there. Even if you use one of those wysiwyg coders, it's neat to be able to read the code when troubleshooting. Coding involves lot of copy-pasting from your previous scripts and knowing which parts must be copy-pasted requires knowing the html.

Good way to learn is to peek the source code of some easy and short web pages, save it to your hard drive and start changing it. Lot easier and faster than to start from "Hello world" messages.

Instead of Windows' Notepad, use Notepad++. It'll take care of much things for you by it's own and is as easy as regular Notebad. One to mention: the FTP/ascii problems.

Personal opinion: If you already have Front Page and know how to use it, stick with it for now. BUT if you're comparing the products, stay away of FP and get a Dream Weaver. You'll thank yourself later. If you get good enough with your code, you can write it with Notepad without wysiwyg editor. It's good in some cases to do quick changes or short scripts.

Temex

[chockedup]

i do realize this post is an old one, but i will post my answer and i hope it will hope someone out there.

when learning how to write HTML code there is absolutely no substitute no learning from the basics. it might take you about 2-3 weeks to be comfortable making your webpages from scratch, using nothing but your text editor a great place to start is w3school dot com. they have great range of web languages. First learn html then CSS then Javascript and then DHTML(DHTML wont be so hard becuase it just a combination of HTML,CSS and javascript).
God Bless

[The Professor]

I think for writing raw HTML which is what I prefer to do, the best application is TextPad. It gives you line numbers, preserves indenting and colours HTML words, comments, special character codes and text withing quotes.

If you want a WYSIWYG that doesn't produce the all the unnessary code that most do, try writing a simple application to generate a page with a textarea form element to write the code in. Next serach Google for the FCK Editor and download it (it's free). Read the documentation in intergrate this and you'll have a WYSIWYG editor that produces code that is as clean as you or I could write ourselves in TextPad.

If you need help with the above I might be able to help you.

[dave1]

Post may be old but the issue is fresh for me. Church computer runs Vista, accessed the Web via wireless connection, and has DW and SPD. I do most of my work from home which has XP and SPD, no DW because of $$$.
Just recently assumed AV media positon which includes posting service on our Web site. Site was built with FP and has beau coup old (read ancient) files that slow down my learning curve, trying to update the site.
Believe that starting over with a new site content is my best move, but this post makes me leery of using the resources at my disposal. Should I just go with Vista, wireless, and DW, or be comfortable with SPD?

[blonborg]

If you're considering starting over, I'd suggest that you consider moving to a Content Management System. Many churches use Wordpress, Joomla!, or Drupal.

I chose Joomla! about a year and a half ago, when faced with a similar situation. Our old site, with static html was a mess that was controlled by one person. By moving to Joomla, we now have several people updating content on the website.

Originally Posted by dave1

Believe that starting over with a new site content is my best move, but this post makes me leery of using the resources at my disposal. Should I just go with Vista, wireless, and DW, or be comfortable with SPD?

[dave1]

Thanks for your perspective. While I wait for our Pastor to decide what he wants the Web site to "do", a static site seems to be in my future. If he wants a CMS, then another resource person will be needed. Can't see myself learning SQL, HTML, JAVA scripts and a CMS.

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by dave1

Thanks for your perspective. While I wait for our Pastor to decide what he wants the Web site to "do", a static site seems to be in my future. If he wants a CMS, then another resource person will be needed. Can't see myself learning SQL, HTML, JAVA scripts and a CMS.

That's where CMSes are even more beautiful: they're ready to go fresh out of the box. They have the web application built already, as well as the underlying data structures. They take very little configuration, and once running, all tasks are accomplished through the application.

While it's perhaps a good thing to understand SQL, PHP, JS, etc., with a CMS the only time you actually need to write in any of those is if you need to either write a new type of module or encapsulate a script (such as, in a previous incarnation of our site, a custom sermon-listing script I had written).

We had a static site once. I started working towards building a completely custom "limited CMS" five years ago and got virtually nowhere with it. Finally a couple of years ago we switched to Wordpress (which is decent but not my first choice). Now, people update information without anyone ever having to touch programming or markup. It's beautiful. And honestly, even Wordpress is better than what I could have written.