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Subject:RE: GUI vs Hand From:"Rock, Megan" <Megan -dot- Rock -at- fanucrobotics -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 30 May 2000 15:16:10 -0400
John wrote:
3) More and more information has a short half-life, when after
that limit, the value of the information is reduced or lost. Is
it more important to save several minutes or several bytes.
------
I started out coding by hand in either pico or Notepad. The main advantage
was that I learned HTML thoroughly. The disadvantage was that it was very
time-consuming to make changes across files.
I started using Dreamweaver 2.0 at work and liked it so well (once I got
comfortable using it) that I purchased a copy for personal use for the Web
sites I maintain at home.
I used FrontPage for a while at work and hated it. It was difficult to
learn, threw in extra tags even though I deleted them in the source code,
and was generally obnoxious.
I still tweak by hand in Dreamweaver if something isn't working just right
(it leaves my tweaking along, unlike FrontPage), so I'm glad I spent a few
years coding by hand. When my husband wanted to learn HTML a couple of
years ago, I made him buy an HTML for Dummies book and teach himself how to
code in Notepad. He's thankful now that he knows the tags and how they work
together, even though he is now using Dreamweaver, and I'm thankful that he
knows the tags so he can bail himself out if the editor cops an attitude.
More and more companies are now using ASP to maintain their sites.
Templates are nice for making changes across multiple files, but storing
information in chunks in a database and building the files on the fly is
even better for those people or businesses who deal with rapidly-changing
information and don't have the time to maintain thousands of files by hand
or with an editor.
I haven't gotten the hang of ASP yet, mainly due to a lack of time here at
work and a lack of resources at home. But I think that ASP and XML are the
up-and-coming thing in Web site design.
-----------------
Megan E. Rock
Technical Writer, Product Information
FANUC Robotics North America, Inc.
Voice: 1-248-377-7948
Fax: 1-248-377-7363
E-mail: megan -dot- rock -at- fanucrobotics -dot- com
Web: http://www.fanucrobotics.com
