Re: [OT] HTML Template for Small Online Newspaper?


"William M. Klein" <wmklein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2Ttbe.1131926$za2.182986@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I know how some in this group feel about M$ products, but I use Microsoft
> Publisher (that has *bunches* of such templates) and then "save as web
page".
>
> Of course, M$ html output is KNOWN for the fact that it works well with
IE, but
> sometimes (often?) fails with Netscape.
>

I too, am not anti MS (notice that Gerry Pea*** seems to have stopped
posting here - maybe he got fed up with MS bashing?), however, I would NOT
use MS Word or Publisher to generate web pages. The MS Classes and styles
that are automatically included are horrific. You CAN save as a 'filtered'
web page and this removes some of the nonsense. On the rare occasions when
people send me web pages produced by Word or Publisher I let Dreamweaver
loose on them immediately. It has a 'clean up MS HTML' feature and it will
tell you what it took out. I have never had a page fail to work properly
after this exercise so it simply confirms that much of what MS puts in is
just unnecessary, and is probably someone's idea of optimizing for MS
Browsers.

People who are serious about web development are better off using proper web
tools. Font Page and Cold Fusion are MS products that fall in this category
and many people find them useful. (I don't personally use them because,
again, Front Page adds little directories of its own to the server and this
muddies the purity of my web server virtual directory structure, which I
spend many hours optimizing and tuning...)

It's funny, Dreamweaver also automatically includes its own directories if
you use advanced features of it (like database connections and bindings, and
certain layered behaviours), and I don't mind that. I think it is because
the purpose of the DW additions is documented and you can look at them and
see why they there and what is in them makes sense. They actually increase
the elegance of your application, while the MS directories are undocumented,
and you are not supposed to notice them or wonder what they do...

Dreamweaver does it for me, but I also use AceHTMLPro (which used to be
free, although I believe it is now only free for a trial period.) Both of
these are excellent.

I can't stress enough also, that whatever you use, you SHOULD learn at least
HTML. I often change DW code to work slightly differently or add something
to it. The first web site I ever built (in 1994) I used Notepad. Everything
was coded by hand in straight HTML. It had animations and music which I also
built from scratch.

The BOTTOM LINE is:

If you are going to develop web pages, get some decent tools. MS Word and
Publisher would only be in extremsis, and then for something temporary or
one off.

Pete.




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