Re: HTML editor

[Joe Malin <jmalin -at- jmalin -dot- com>]

I learned to do HTML before using a specific editor or tool. I was 
teaching myself so that I could work on HTML/Web internationalization, 
even before I became a tech writer. As a result, I never learned how to 
write in pre-4.0/pre-CSS HTML. Also, when I first became a tech writer I 
was always assigned the most "techie" tasks, including the management of 
accessibility for HTML.

So, I can say with some level of confidence that I write very clean, 
universal HTML and JavaScript code.

Nonetheless, I use Dreamweaver. Yes, as a SW engineer I have written 
tons of code in all sorts of tools starting with an IBM 026 keypunch. I 
quickly learned that these experiences make for nostalgic and incredibly 
boring stories (unless you were there) and little else. I don't know 
many SW engineers who still use punch cards, or paper tape, or 
DECWriters, or CICS Terminals, or edlin, or even EMACS. Give a SW 
engineer a good integrated development environment that he or she can 
extend (well, EMACS does qualify) and he or she will use it in a second.

If I need to, I can write good HTML in Notepad. I can even design good 
web sites in Notepad. I just think that Dreamweaver helps me focus more 
on the end result and less on remembering the attribute values for the 
<table> tag.

Joe

Al Geist wrote: