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Netscape Composer and Other HTML Editors

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Long ago, when the web was but a young pup in the world (way back in the early 1990s!), all web pages were done the old fashion way: simple and reliable ascii text with the tags in brackets (just like what you did with lesson 2). It was tedious and time consuming and a little confusing to novice users, but that's the way it was. And really, that's the way it still is with a lot of web designers: many folks still don't have any faith in the various editing software products now available. But pretty soon, HTML Editing Software packages appeared. They came with the promise of being"WYSIWYG," and they have broken that promise time and time again...

Let's back up a step. "WYSIWYG" (pronounced "wiz-e-wig") is "What You See is What You Get." The easiest example of this is word processors. In the old OLD days of computers and word processing (back in the 80s!), it wasn't easy to get your text to show up as bold or in a different font or what-have-you.You had to insert strange little markers, and these little markers would do certain things, but you couldn't really see what your page would look like until you printed it out

Nowadays, when you want to make text bold with even the most basic of word processors, you highlight the text and select an option in a menu that makes it "bold." Then it shows up on the screen as bold text. Furthermore, when you print the document out, it shows up as bold text on the paper. That's WYSIWYG:what you see on the screen (be it issues of fonts, layout, size, graphics, you name it) is what you will see on the page when you print it out.

So that's the promise of HTML editing software: making it as easy to create a web page as it is to create a document with a word processor.

So what's the catch? Well, for a lot (maybe even most) web pages, there really isn't a catch: it works, especially if your page is relatively simple. I think Netscape Composer is a particularly good example because it seems pretty reliable and because the price it right-- free.

But if you're trying to do something with your web page that is a little more advanced or if you some very particular layout demands for your web site, you might be disappointed with using these editors by themselves. That's because the HTML WYSIWYG isn't quite there for HTML Editors, at least not yet. It's probably better to think of HTML as "What You See Is What You Get Most But Not All Of the Time, and Even Then, It Has a Bunch of Junk HTML Tags In It."

There are some problems that can crop up with HTML editing software, especially with more complicated web sites that I'll spare you the details of for now. But ultimately, I think the biggest problem with HTML editing software is that it makes invisible the "machinery" that holds up a web site. For making very simple web sites, I suppose it probably doesn't matter if you understand how HTML works. But even the best HTML editing software packages aren't completely reliable enough to be called WYSIWYG and problems can happen with all HTML editing software.

These differences might seem pretty minor and they might not matter much for web writers who are making web pages that are mostly text. But they can be very frustrating, especially if you don't know why they're happening ("It looked OK in the editor! What's wrong with it now?") and if you don't know what to do about it ("What are all these weird codes?"), you are in deep trouble.

That's why knowing a little HTML goes a long way. "Are you saying we shouldn't use HTML editing software?"

Heck no! I use HTML editing software for all of the web pages I make and I think there are great reasons for using HTML editing software:

They're as easy to use as a word processor. Start typing and play around with the arrangement of things and you've got yourself a web page. Just that easy. The better software packages have a lot of neat features. For example, the software that tends to cost a little money allow you to spell-check your web sites. For a bad speller like me, That's a nice feature. They allow you to include more sophisticated features in your Web site. For example, most HTML editors make it easy to include tables or frames and other features that can be kind of tricky to do with "raw HTML." Just like a good word processing software can make writing all sorts of things a lot easier, HTML editing software makes writing web pages a lot easier. All I'm saying is that it's important to have a little understanding about how HTML actually works to effectively use HTML editors.

What Kind of HTML Editing Software Is There?

HTML Editing software basically breaks down into two categories: not free and free. Here are a few examples that cost some money (between $50-100):

• Adobe PageMill 3.0
• HomePage 3.0 (formally a Claris product, but now a FileMaker one)
• Microsoft FrontPage
• Adobe GoLove

There are LOTS AND LOTS of other examples I could mention here, but these seem to be the most popular nowadays, and they are the three that I am personally most familiar with.

The free software tends not to be as good, but the price is right. If you end up getting serious about making web sites, you'll undoubtedly want to invest some money into one of the better packages. In the meantime, there are a couple free softwares worth checking out:

Netscape Communicator or Netscape Gold 3.0 There are probably other "full blown" versions of Netscape that have a simple version of an easy to use HTML Editor built into them. Netscape Communicator and frontPage are currently available in the Writing center and Mac Lab. Depending on your modem connection, this could take hours, but may be well worth it. The basic "trick" to using the editor in these versions of Netscape is to look under the file menu, select new, and then either "blank page" or one from the templates or wizard. From there, it works similar to other HTML Editors.

It might be worthwhile checking out Yahoo's directory of HTML Editing Software. A lot of this stuff is free, some of it costs money; some of it works well, some of it doesn't.

How do these software packages work? Obviously,each of these programs works a little differently and has different strengths and weaknesses, but they are all similar to conventional word processors. They tend to have menu buttons that allow the user to manipulate text, insert images, change colors, add links, etc. Most of these editors allow users to do more advanced functions too, like adding tables, frames, style sheets, etc. My recommendations for learning how to use any of these software packages are (in this order):

Play around with them a bit, keeping in mind they tend to work a lot like word processors. Try some of the functions, poke around at the menus to see what different things do, experiment a little. You probably won't break the Internet by doing this, so what the heck? Read the help files. Most of these software packages provide some help you can access on the screen. This is especially true with the HTML Editors you pay for. When all else fails, read the instructions. This might be a problem with the free HTML Editors that tend not to come with booklets explaining how to use them.