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Tim's HTML Tips
Formatting
HTML documents/files all need to follow the same rule of thumb:
- no spaces in filenames
- no punctuation marks in filenames (only letters and numerals)
- and make sure to append the .html extension--some editors don't do it automatically.
Document Title vs. Filename
The title is what appears in
the top bar of the browser and can be anything with spaces,
descriptive, punctuation, etc.
Break-down of major HTML editing software
| Netscape Composer: | free, so a good beginning, but does some annoying things if you try to get fancy. Ok for text only or simple web pages. |
| Claris Home Page: | cheap, better than Composer, but still does some annoying things. |
| Microsoft Front Page: | not so cheap, same quality as the above two, but does even more annoying things--also only a Windows software. (What do I mean by annoying? Adding extraneous HTML code that's not needed, or not doing exactly what you want it to do.) |
| Macromedia Dreamweaver: | most expensive, probably the best out there, more complex, and does very advanced features as well. |
| Adobe GoLive: | also expensive, student price is $99. Can do very advanced features as Dreamweaver, also good for beginners. Very intuitive and good learning features to help you understand the code behind the WYSIWYG layout. It's included on the iBooks. |
We aren't requiring students buy anything. Netscape Composer will handle most of what they do ok. But, if they want to do more slick-looking and more advanced features, they are better off buying one of the proprietary editors.
Also, very important: Do not create HTML docs in Microsoft Word and save as HTML. Works if only a text document. But anything more than a simple text document, and it generates lots of unnecessary code and structure...it is a pain in the butt. Microsoft Publisher does a better job than Word (don't know why!), but also avoid if possible.