website building

[Monty J. Harder]

On Sun, 10 Dec 2000 20:17:00 -0600 Tony Hammitt <thammitt at kc.rr.com>
writes:

> problems doing advanced functions.  Also beware of using things 
> like
> FrontPage, which require propreitary server extensions that lock you 

  You =can= use FrontPage without using the server extensions.  When I
took the FP classes at New Horizons, I made a point of asking the
instructors to distinguish between those proprietary elements and
standard HTML/CSS.  When you try to preview a proprietary page in IE, FP
normally warns you.  But one really nasty effect is that after you've
edited the HTML yourself, when you reload, FP may change some things. 
This gets ugly in a hurry.

  So, I don't mind using FP to get the basic layout going, but I always
end up using the text editor at the end.  If your editor supports the
color-coding we were talking about, that's a good plus.  Also, the
ability to see two or more windows within the same file is helpful.  As
are macro capabilities.

> If you have a windows box handy, you will probably want to use 
> explorer
> and netscape or mozilla to check whether your site looks the way 
> you
> want it to look for all users.  Also check your site using Lynx to 

  This just in:  Opera <www.opera.com> now has a Windows version for
free, with an integrated ad banner in lieu of the $39 price (half that
for folks like me who bought older versions).  I just downloaded it the
other day, and it's a winner.  Opera is much faster than Netscape, uses
its plugins, and is totally standards-compliant.  I test everything in IE
and Opera, then when I think it's ready to go, give it a go with NS. 
Opera lets you control image-loading, and easily override the site's
styles with a single click of the mouse.

> alienating people again.  The goal is to make a site that people 
> want
> to come back to, not to have some elitist site that requires the 
> very
> latest releases of everything to work.  Millions of people still 

  Amen.  If you can do the job with server-side scripting (perl/php/etc)
it's usually a good idea to do so.

One last tip is to use the validators the World Wide Web Consortium
(www.w3.org) provides to check your HTML and CSS.  If anything is
illegal, you get a report as to exactly why.  Leave ALT= out of an IMG
tag, and it'll nag you about it....
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