|
|
Thinkydink
Guide to Choosing a Web Authoring Tool
There
are many web authoring tools available, and each has its strengths and
drawbacks. Here, I present a brief overview and a few tables to summarize
the tools with which I'm experienced: free online page mills, Notepad,
FrontPage, Arachnophilia, Dreamweaver and InterDev. The tables presented
at the end of the discussion cover issues of functionality, level of
expertise required, and cost considerations.
Free,
Online Page Mills
If
you have an internet service provider (ISP), such as America Online,
Earthlink, Yahoo, Prodigy, MSN or something similar, it's very likely
you already have a little chunk of server space reserved in your name
and access to an online web page generator, or mill. Most ISPs provide
their customers with anywhere from 2 to 10 megabytes of server space
as part of the basic service agreement, and those that offer the free
server space also provide a simple online program for their members
to create personal webpages and post them to that little chunk of reserved
space.
The
online page mill programs are all very similar and VERY easy to use.
They work like Microsoft Wizards: you answer a few questions about the
desired content and layout of your page, and presto, the program generates
your page and posts it to the server. The advantage of these page mills
is that they're free and they're simple to use. There are many disadvantages,
however. Page mills are designed to create very basic, static pages.
That is, pages that don't interact with the user in any way---they can't
contain input forms, videos, games, or other dynamic elements. Layout
and color scheme options are very limited. You're generally forced to
accept the ISP's banner advertising for display on your pages, though
some ISPs will let you block the ads if you pay an extra fee. Many page
mill programs embed little proprietary codes in your pages, making them
difficult (or impossible) to edit outside of the page mill program.
Even
with all of that said, for some people page mills are the best choice
in web authoring tools. They're free and they're easy, and for many
people whose needs are basic, that's all that matters. Go to the member
services area of your ISP's menu to get information about your ISP's
online page mill and server space services. If you don't find a link
right away, search your ISP's help pages using keywords like "member
pages" and "server space". If your ISP gives you free
server space but doesn't provide a page mill program, a free page mill
program is available from Arachnophilia at http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.html.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to access the online page builder tool.
Back
to Top
Notepad
Notepad,
Word Pad, DOS Edit, or any other text editor program can be used to
author web pages. For a crash course in editing web pages using only
a simple text editor program, see the How to
Edit HTML With No Tools or Experience tutorial. The main advantage
to using a text editor as a web authoring tool is that a text editor
program comes bundled with every Microsoft, Mac and even DOS operating
system. You don't have to buy any other software to create and edit
your web pages.
A
second, equally valuable advantage gained through the use of a text
editor is control. Notepad will never insert hidden or unexpected HTML
tags or program code into your webpages the way most full-featured web
authoring programs will. Those programs give web authors a lot of little
tools, plug-ins and prefabricated web page elements to use, but they
don't always allow the web author to see all the behind-the-scenes code
that goes into those gewgaws and gadgets. Also, most full-featured programs
are "smart", meaning that the program will try to determine
what it is you're trying to do and automatically create page code to
meet your needs. This can be very annoying, because the program doesn't
always make the right determination and when it guesses wrong you will
have to go back through the page code line by line to find out what
the program did, then edit or remove the unwanted code.
There
are two main disadvantages to using a text editor; first, using a text
editor requires a higher level of user expertise than the online page
mills and many full-featured web authoring programs, and second, text
editor programs don't include any developer tools such as built-in page
preview capability, file transfer capability or version control. Also,
a text editor is not a good choice for development of a website that
utilizes a database because the complexity of those websites generally
requires a more advanced set of developer tools.
Back
to Top
Microsoft
FrontPage
For
users who need a little bit more functionality than that provided by
an online page mill but don't want to use a text editor (and maybe don't
have a lot of experience), Microsoft FrontPage is often the web authoring
tool of choice. FrontPage is easy to find, relatively inexpensive, it
uses many of the same program commands and icons as all the other Microsoft
Office programs and it also provides users with page mill-like wizards,
so getting your first site built with FrontPage can be a breeze.
FrontPage
is what is known as a WYSIWYG page editor: it allows the web author
to create pages in a What You See Is What You Get layout window using
drag-and-drop tools, word processing features and other easy to use
tools. This is very different from the text editor approach, which requires
the web author to preview his pages in a browser window in order to
see how they will ultimately look. With
its sizable library of site themes, clip art and fonts, FrontPage can
generate pretty slick looking results with a minimum of user expertise
or even time. If you want it to, FrontPage can take you by the hand,
step by step, through every stage of the site creation and publication
process. It will even automatically create a to-do list of web author
tasks for you.
Another
aspect of FrontPage that can appeal to beginning web authors is that
it has lots of prefabricated page elements (banner ad rotator, hit counter,
etc.) that you can simply drag to the desired location on your page
without doing any programming at all. As mentioned in the Notepad
overview above however, these prefab items are inserted with hidden
code so you can't change their styles or behaviors beyond the few choices
FrontPage provides. Also, the prefab elements won't work unless your
web host provides FrontPage Server Extensions---many hosts don't provide
them at all, and some that do will charge you extra for the service.
FrontPage
isn't just for absolute beginners, however. For users who have some
skill with HTML and want more control than they get sticking with the
wizards alone, FrontPage provides direct access to the HTML page code
for editing. FrontPage supports VB Script, Javascript, Java Applets,
Active X, frames, CGI and some of the more popular plug-ins, though
use of these items requires a fair degree of user expertise as FrontPage
doesn't provide tutorials, wizards or robust help files for them. As
with text editors, FrontPage is not a good choice for development of
a website that utilizes a database because FrontPage doesn't provide
the advanced set of developer tools needed to access and manipulate
complex sets of data.
Back
to Top
Arachnophilia
Arachnophilia
is a terrific "careware" web authoring program which is available
for download from the web. Its author doesn't ask for any kind of financial
compensation in exchange for the program, but he does ask that you perform
a personal, charitable act or just stop complaining for one day as payment
for Arachnophilia. He goes into more detail on the careware concept
at his site: http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.html
Arachnophilia
isn't as slick as FrontPage but it provides much of the same functionality.
You won't find the baby-steps wizards, clip art library, theme library
or all the prefab page elements provided by FrontPage, but you will
get a WYSIWYG layout window, an HTML editing window, and support for
many of the most commonly used developer add-ins like java, CGI and
even Perl. Arachnophilia supports frames and layers, and even includes
a spell checker, preview windows and a File Transfer Protocol (ftp)
client built right into the program.
What
Arachnophilia won't provide is support for flashier plug-ins like Shockwave,
Active X, Flash and the like. As with text editors and FrontPage, Arachnophilia
is not intended for development of websites with complex data access
and manipulation requirements.
If
you're a more experienced web designer and don't need all the end-user
help and shortcuts FrontPage provides, but want a friendlier developer
environment than you'll get using a text editor, Arachnophilia can be
a good choice. I know of several professional web designers who have
all the best and most expensive web authoring tools at their disposal,
yet have chosen Arachnophilia as their web development workhorse.
Back
to Top
Macromedia
Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver
is much like Arachnophilia, but with more built-in developer tools,
support for more plug-ins, and transparent support for other Macromedia
products such as Fireworks (a graphics editor program) and Shockwave
(a web animation program often used to create games and short films).
For experienced web developers it's friendlier than Arachnophilia, and
it's more robust than either FrontPage or Arachnophilia, but Dreamweaver
is not geared to novices the way FrontPage is.
Thinkydink
was entirely created, and is maintained, in Dreamweaver. I use Dreamweaver
to maintain Thinkydink because it's much faster than manually writing
out all the HTML code and the site is fairly simple. The drawback to
using Dreamweaver is that my HTML code isn't very pretty to look at---Dreamweaver
is writing the HTML automatically as I use its 'drag-and-drop' tools
and that code is not nicely formatted the way hand-written code would
be. To see for yourself, right-click on this page and select 'View Source'
from the pop-up menu. Way ugly, huh?
Since
this is my own, personal website and I don't intend to have anyone else
working on it, I can elect to go with the ugly HTML code. If I'm working
on a project that with other developers, or intended for other developers
to maintain however, I always manually code the HTML and fix the formatting
of any pages previously created in Dreamweaver or FrontPage.
Once
again, for complex database needs, Dreamweaver is not the best tool
in the belt.
Back
to Top
Microsoft
InterDev
Finally,
we come to the tool I recommend for creation of web applications: online
programs that accept input from a user, manipulate that input and return
a result. Sites that utilize databases, provide online shopping capability,
or present online quizzes or calculators are all examples of web applications.
Microsoft InterDev is definitely a tool for advanced developers only,
and while it's not the only tool available for web application development,
it will be the easiest for you to learn if you're already a seasoned
Microsoft Visual Basic, C++, Access or SQL Server developer.
InterDev
allows developers to easily mix and match all manner of page elements,
from regular HTML code to javascripts, VB scripts, CGI, database connections
and more. It is not an intuitive program, however, and even if you take
a class in InterDev it won't necessarily give you all the background
training you'll need to take full advantage of all those page elements.
For example, while InterDev makes it easy to set up a connection to
any Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)-compliant database, InterDev will
not show you how to set up the queries and tables you'll need to pull
relevant data from that database into your web application.
Also,
where InterDev is far more powerful in the hands of an experienced developer
than any of the other programs discussed here, its emphasis is on substance,
not style. InterDev doesn't provide much in the way of tools for creating
or editing page graphics.
Back
to Top
Cost
Comparison
Back
to Top
Feature
Comparison
Where
a feature is listed as "limited", you can include the named
feature in your pages but application support for it (i.e., online help,
design time controls, etc.) will either be minimal or nonexistent. With
respect to plug-ins, "limited" means that only a small subset
of plug-ins is supported.
|
Features
Supported/Offered
|
| Product |
Data
Tools
|
HTML
Editor
|
WYSI-
WYG
|
Java-
script
|
asp/VB
Script
|
Active
X
|
Frames
|
FTP
Tools
|
Plug
Ins
|
| Online
Page Mills |
No
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
none
|
| Notepad |
No
|
Yes
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
No
|
Yes
|
No
|
none
|
| Arachnophilia |
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
limited
|
| FrontPage |
limited
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
limited
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
limited
|
| Dreamweaver |
limited
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
limited
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
most
|
| InterDev |
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
most
|
Back
to Top
Difficulty/Expertise
Required Comparison
Back
to Top
|
