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"Web Design"

Hi, I havent been here long and Ive only just come across this forum. I design websites for personal needs and for companies.

I thought I would maybe write a GAD worthy post in here and see what happens! :o)

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What program do you use to write your websites? There are plenty to choose from - CoffeeCup, Cute-HTML, Netscape Composer, FrontPage... and countless more. They come with bells and whistles all the way from automatically finishing tags for you to providing a interface like a Wordprocessor or DTP package and just generating all the HTML code behind the scenes. In fact, a lot of modern Wordprocessing software comes with the ability to save your pages as HTML, so on the face of it, there's no need to even buy any special software.

However, what I've generally chosen to use, over the course of years of experience and professional web design work, are just plain text programs that let me write the HTML directly. Why have I chosen to fly in the face of time-saving modern conveniences? Here are my reasons:

1. Text editors are free, easily available, and don't take up a lot of system resources. That becomes less of an issue as computer power increases - but I want to learn skills that I can transfer between different machines and operating systems. If I learn how a particular HTML editing package fits together, then I'll become dependent on that particular tool, which may not be so portable.

2. Writing HTML is the quickest way to understand HTML. Sometimes your pages will not act the way you expect, forcing you to either abandon what you're trying to do or look 'under the hood' at the HTML code. If you're used to dealing with raw HTML, this isn't as hard as it would otherwise be. After all, HTML is hardly rocket science - it essentially consists of wrapping your text in a limited range of angle-bracket enclosed .

3. What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) is a dangerous illusion. What you see in an HTML editor is the way that HTML editor displays your page. Unless you are writing for a very specific audience (maybe a company intranet where everyone has a standard browser) you need to test your page on a range of different browsers. Writing raw HTML reminds me to think about the structure of the information more than the layout, and makes it easier to find solutions that will work for all visitors to my sites.

4. Related to the previous two points, getting your hands on the HTML allows you the maximum degree of control in fine-tuning it to your needs. Many HTML editing programs produce very messy code that is hard to read (and thus very hard to maintain if your original tool is no longer available). Even worse, some programs will take your hand-finished HTML and uglify it back to their own standards, undoing all your painstaking work.

5. When you use a specific tool, you are often quite limited in what you can do. You might be able to write basic HTML pages quickly, but will your editor start to frustrate you when you try to get into scripting with something like .asp or .php. Text editors are general purpose tools and can be adapted to all sorts of purposes.

Maybe this sounds too polemical for your tastes. Maybe you are quite happy with whatever program you have chosen and feel that it makes you more productive. It's not my place to censure the tools you choose to use. However, I have found that using text editors for most of my work has given me a very good understanding of the medium of web design. If you haven't tried handcrafting HTML, then maybe it would be worthwhile digging up a text editor and seeing what you can learn.

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What did you think? Not bad for 15 minutes?! :o)

Anyway thanks for reading, and you may be seeing me around this forum a little more!

ajg wrote:
> With 6 years commercial experience what are you hoping to achieve by getting a degree?

True... but I fancied leaning something new that my job wouldnt teach me. Mayebe a career direction. I've peaked where I am and am starting to get bored with it all and want to find something new that will let me push the boundaries further. Academic website publishing only gets so exciting!!


> But then you get these kids round here boasting about designing a site for 60 quid. Making me dead jealous. ;)

£60, £60? Blimey... Wish I was that good!;-) Better not tell 'em what I've just charged for my last one!!;-)

With 6 years commercial experience what are you hoping to achieve by getting a degree? I don't think it would be worth your while. I'd get professional qualifications instead. Get your Micro$oft or Sun certification. When moving jobs you'll find that alot more useful after working for that long.

I've got a degree in Software Engineering. Ain't much use after you've got a few years experience to be honest.

Working for a consultancy is cool. Same as a contractor except you trade off *large* amounts of cash for on-the-job training and cash when you're in between projects. The reason I joined was so I can change projects without moving companies. I've been on projects as a database programmer using Foxpro and fortran(!) VB programmer, DBA and now a java programmer. In between I've messed with HTML, flash, javascipt and networking. So I know a little about a lot of subjects. Plus I travel. Life is good.

But then you get these kids round here boasting about designing a site for 60 quid. Making me dead jealous. ;)

ajg wrote:
> In my experience, just take what most people on
> here say with a pinch of salt.

I have learn't this one...

> After a while you get to know the people who know what they're talking about, and those you can just ignore. ;) There are quite a few of them.

Still learning this one!!

>I've been there, got the t-shirt. I've also got my degree, MSCE, and 7 years comercial experience. I work as a consultant, I know my stuff.

I was offered a job in consulatncy but wasn't too sure what was involved and was worried about loosing out on the "hands on" stuff!! What's your desgee in? I'm looking at doing a degree but not sure whats relevant or what to do it in. I have 6 yrs commercial experience but nothing on paper!!

>But that doesn't mean I can't still learn more. I like sitting here in the background and listening to what everyone is saying.

Same here.. some times it can get quite comical around here!:-) A friend once told me that your never to old to learn!! How right he was..

Right... and your point is?

You feel superior to these 16 year olds? You don't believe them when they say they do all this work and get paid for it? Big deal. You're probably right.

In my experience, just take what most people on here say with a pinch of salt. After a while you get to know the people who know what they're talking about, and those you can just ignore. ;) There are quite a few of them.

I've been there, got the t-shirt. I've also got my degree, MSCE, and 7 years comercial experience. I work as a consultant, I know my stuff.

But that doesn't mean I can't still learn more. I like sitting here in the background and listening to what everyone is saying. Leave them to show off amongst themselves, making up job titles for themselves, safe in the knowledge that you're probably earning the good wage that they dream of... :)

ajg wrote:
> Tyla, whats you're problem with people calling themselves
> professionals?

don't get it...

PS... The other point is this...

I know I am a pro, but I don't go spouting off about it as my bility and knowledge reflects this... Mr X has to constantly say he's a pro as he doesn't have the ability or proof to demonstrate this!!

Arghhh... where's the damn coffee!!

ajg wrote:
> Tyla, whats you're problem with people calling themselves
> professionals?

don't get it...

OK... Professionals... A pro is someone who has been in a certain industry for so long and understands the ins and outs and get paid for this knowledge as well as his ability...

Ameture... Someone who has only jsut started out and yet to proove themselves and get little pay.


I am a professional... my job is my profession, I've been in it for over 6 years and I know my stuff inside out.

Mr "X" is an ameture, he works form his bedroom for his friends claiming to be a professional but has yet to finish his GCSE's and has little experience or knowledge...

Have we worked out the difference yet?

How would you like it if Mr "X" was claiming to be a pro footballer? You'd all laugh as you know better. My Point is that I get fed up with reading about these 12-15yr olds who claim to be professionals but have only just got out of nappies and have no or little experience just blikered self enduced ego's because they built a site for their friend once!!...

Monday morning isn't a good time for me to be posting responses!! apologies if I have come across rude or abrupt... I will go find some coffee and cheer up!!

Read his "Wanna-Be Web Designer..." Topic.....

Will explain all! :-D

Tyla, whats you're problem with people calling themselves professionals?

don't get it...

I use either CuteHTML or DreamWeaver. If I am making say my finally finished website (zpgamer.co.uk) I started off using CuteHTML, as I was using frames on the page I found it easier to use HTML and just check on it every hour or so to see what it looked like in the browser.

Then I tried to use DreamWeaver, it was very hard to use frames on it. So I decided to take the frames away, but using just plain HTML on it was hard so, I have ended up using the split screen Half HTML and half what it looks like. That helped if I wanted to just type out the HTML, and then use the WYSIWYG thing for stuff I am not to good at.

I eventually switched back to CuteHTML as it was less hassle though.

But the DreamWeaver program is good for small and quick sites, like this guy who asked me to make him one so he could show more people his artwork....I haven't finished it yet though.

Skippy Doris wrote:
> What program do you use to write your websites?

Me personally... Dreamweaver UltraDev, Deeamweaver, HTML-Kit, BBEdit, Notpad & Visual Interdev

> However, what I've generally chosen to use, over the course of years of experience and professional web design work

Another "professional"!!:) Lets see some of ya work then!!?

Yes, HTML's not rocket science but a it's still a little more complicated than that, it has form and structure and basic rules. Understanding the different DTDs can effect your HTML and have great impact on the way your tage behave.

I agree that "Hand" coding is he best way to learn, and especially good for debugging but when you work for a company that produce over 500 sites a year, you don't have time to produce it all by hand. I primarily use Dreamweaver and UltraDev, but these tools allow me to rapid prototype a site in a matter of minutes instead of days by hand.

In "real" business, time is money and when your charging out your time at £35ph the client doen't want to sit around all week waiting for you to hand code his homepage when you could rapidly produce 3 versions of a site in DW in under 3 days. WYSIWIG tools are good for rapid production and with the more Pro-Industry tools like DW and HomeSite Macromedia have woked hard in addressing the old problems in the code handling.

I produce sites of enourmous size, some nearing 800+ pages. Checking the HTML in notepad can take sometime for these and if someone else has been working on the code, you tend to loose your structure as everone has there own way of laying out their code. But in a tool like DW, debugging HTML by hand is much faster especially with colours assigned to your tags and scripts making it a damn site quiker to wade through a million lines if code.

If you understand your tool well (and DW is totally x-platform!) you can adapt it to work more with the way you do. I produce the occasional script for DW to assist me in bug fixing, (an adaptabiity no other WYSIWYG environment offers!), Macromedia Exchange supplied bug fixs, plugins and utilities for on going support. DW is THE industry standard tool and one I have used since the days of DW1 and although it does have some quirky habbits, it's still the best resource for the type of work I do.

If i have to work on a site somewhere else, it's HTML, it'll open in anything that'll handle text on any platform.



> 5. When you use a specific tool, you are often quite limited in what you can do.

Depends on how you "understand" your tool...

> You might be able to write basic HTML pages quickly, but will your editor start to frustrate you when you try to get into scripting with something like .asp or .php.

This is why I use UltraDev and Visual InterDev

I spewed off about this type of subject yesterday and reveived quite a good response. Your debate here stems from the same arguments I was using yesterday, that so called proffessional web designers need to understand more than just how to make it look pretty, they need to understand the technology and that includes the code.