WYSIWYG Editors

Welcome to the wonderful world of WYSIWYG ('what you see is what you get,' pronounced wizeewig) html editors. They let you put up pages quickly. In fact, after you have set up the style of the pages you want to use, they can be as fast as a blog post. You can type or paste in the text that you want to use and the editor will work out the code for it.

I do not use one so far for my own sites, but have been using FrontPage on a customer's site. It does have things that I don't like about it but some very impressive capabilities too. I have been reading more and more that I like about Expression Web, and have just updated this page to include a couple of capabilities that surprised me.

The two most recommended html editors are Dreamweaver and Expression Web. Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 is more sophisticated, more expensive and has a learning curve, but is also the most capable. People do usually mention that the curve is worth it because of its capabilities but you might want to check your enthusiasm level about that.

It does have a strange problem that I wouldn't expect after paying that much money (!) It is difficult to get it to save pages as UTF-8, and here is an interesting forum thread where one person mentions saving a few Japanese characters in commented out code to force it to save as UTF-8. utf-8/ansi pain in the neck

Microsoft Expression Web 3.0 is cheaper but still produces sites for professional builders at an impressive rate. The latest version has a graphic design section that is interesting to me, and I have thought a few times about getting it to try that out. I enjoy math and some formulas produce curves that are elegant. It would be nice to be able to use them as decoration near text. It can also import images directly from Photoshop in layers. You don't even need to open Photoshop and you can work with any layer you want.

You can also use Expression Web to edit code like PHP, which I am just getting into. Here is a 3 page Sitepoint article from an author who is happy about this part of Expression. Expression Web 3 PHP

A surprising cheaper product making its way up the Amazon software charts is SiteSpinner V2. It does have a lot of impressive reviews. The reviews start about half way down each page that these links open.

I used to enjoy making good solid forum posts with a lot of information. After I got fast at putting up web pages I started putting up a new page instead. If I do like a forum that inspired it, sometimes I will post it there too, but I'll put up a page now at the drop of a hat.

Sometimes it's just because I think I have something useful to say about an issue. If you do have a general issue website, you can pile on topics like cord wood. (Pardon the farm folk stuff.) Every extra page gives the search engines one more thing to associate with your website.

You can also do a blog style page with each new post at the top of the page. Every time you have something new to add to the topic you can just put it at the top of the page with the date or a horizontal rule or whatever you want to use to section it off. When you do use a WYSIWYG editor to add this type of post to a page, it takes about 2 minutes, and that includes the time it takes to pour a double brandy after you finish.

You wind up without some of the blog disadvantages like huge file size and slow load time. You also save yourself the time it takes to make posts on forums like: "My blog was hacked. How do I get it back?" A simple css and html site is the most secure online platform there is, without a wagonload of updates and security plug-ins. Why it's just like having fuel efficient tractor.

One new negative that sounds serious for blogs is that Google is starting to take site load times into consideration when ranking a site. Here is the Google article about it. (On a blog!) Your site's performance in Webmaster Tools.

I don't mean to make this sound too easy. Unless you can find a template you like, getting your first page set up will take some time. Getting to know your editor will also take a bit of use. And you will even learn some html as you go along just by seeing it used.

Everyone is so different and will go in different directions with web pages. Those are just 2 things I use pages for, to express opinions and to add topics to a site.

And just a bit of an update. Since putting this page up I ordered Expression Web 3 and 2 books about it. The books arrived but the DVD was shipped from the States has to go through customs yet. (I'm in Canada.) I went straight to the PHP part of the books and already learned enough to thoroughly impress me. I'll be putting up a couple more pages about it soon. I have just been getting into php. The pages on this site started out as .html and are now .php. (I'm a bit excited about this.)

best wishes,
lloyd

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