Re: George Hayhoe's Observation

[Mary McWilliams Johnson <mary -at- SUPERCONNECT -dot- COM>]

At 03:59 PM 4/11/98 -0400, Tim Altom wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: George F. Hayhoe <george -at- GHAYHOE -dot- COM>

>
>Of far more usefulness, it seems to me, is a) an extensive working knowledge
>of HTML and how it affects browsers (hard to acquire unless you do web
>coding a lot), or b) a tool that can spot such problems for you. So far as I
>know there isn't a web authoring tool out there that's always on top of
>everything and capable of making bulletproof web pages. The problem only
>surges when we try to provide our websites with automatically converted
>manual or catalog pages. And add to that the need for special frames or
>scripting, and the potential for mischief approaches certainty. Something's
>going to get hosed.

=======================

Happy news. An HTML editor now exists that will tell you exactly which codes
will work on which browsers. It's Macromedia's Dreamweaver. It costs more
than other WYSIWYG editors, but it does more, too. 

I'd recommend you read an article · HotWired's WebMonkey survey:"WYSIWYG
Editor Shoot-out" :

( http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/98/08/index1a.html ),

which reviews "the cream of a not-so-outstanding crop" and concludes,"No one
editor is the universal winner in what-you-see-is-what-you-get land.
Different packages suit the needs of different users."

WebMonkey's recommendaation about WYSIWYG Editors: "For newer users, budget
shoppers, the technically disinclined, and folks who want to make fairly
simple pages without a lot of fuss and muss, we recommend Adobe PageMill and
Microsoft FrontPage." For advanced users, WebMonkey gives high praise to
Macromedia's DreamWeaver, in part because it "has fabulous support for newer
technologies, JavaScript, dynamic HTML, and Cascading Stylesheets?" and
because it is the only WYSIWYG editor surveyed that did not "have a cruel
tendency to change the HTML code of your files while inserting their own
proprietary (and, frankly, weird) tags."

Dreamweaver comes bundled with Homesite (for PCs) or BBEdit (for Macs).
Personally, I love Homesite, so this is a great pair to have together.

============================

And I recommend a  PC Magazine Online article "Web Editing for Nearly Nothing."

 (http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/htmlauthor/sb1.htm )

This takes a look at the wealth of great Web authoring tools that do an
awful lot for very small prices.

Surprisingly, many of the low-cost editors have more features that will help
create the fancy elements like Javascript, DHTML, Stylesheets, etc. than
Pagemill or FrontPage. Although I don't think the Web is ready for DHTML or
Stylesheets, it's nice to have an editor that can do these things when the
day comes when everyone has a browser that supports such things.

=============

Cordially,

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                                 Mary McWilliams Johnson
                               McJohnson Communications
                                  Documentation Specialist
                Web Site Design, Development and Graphics
                                  www.superconnect.com
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"One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it,
                       you have no certainty until you try."
                             --Sophocles,  c 496-406 B.C
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