Website Authoring

The landscape of web design and development changes everyday. Techniques that were considered safe practise yesterday is considered outdated today. It is for this reason that Website Authoring section of the CHouseLive site is not intended for IGCSE ICT students but rather for any person who wants to make a web page.

Software

Technically you can build a web page using notepad or any other equivalent text editor. There are however, many applications available that make the process of web page authoring simpler.

WYSIWYG web page creators

What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) is a term used to describe applications where by what you see during the editing process is similar to the final output. In other words you work on a page that looks like the page on the internet, and you need not understand the code used to create the page as you can use drag and drop type features to build the page.

Sounds good? The problem is due to the dynamic and changing nature of the world wide web (www) these types of applications are very limited.

HTML editors

An HTML Editor is a specialised text editor

In order to use an HTML editor you are required to code the actual pages but the application provides useful tools like code completion, code snippets and code validation, all of which help you to create pages efficiently.

Hybrid WYSIWYG / HTML editors

These applications attempt to provide the best of both worlds where you can use the WYSIWYG features (normally refered to as the Design View) to execute routine and simple tasks like creating a table and switch to the HTML editor ( code view) when needing to complete more complex tasks like including a drop down menu on your page.

The applications (the best known is perhaps Adobe's Dream Weaver)are often very expensive, large programmes.

Which is best?

This question is really dependent on what your objective is.

A WYSIWYG editor is fine if all you want to do is create a little hobby type page for your friends and family to view.

If you are more serious about website authoring or need to create a webpage for prospective clients that needs to look professional then you would need to learn HTML and CSS, in which case you can use an HTML editor.

The website authoring tutorials listed in the right hand navigation column all require you to code and as such, in order to follow them, you will need an HTML or Hybrid editor.

Code

There are many different languages which can be used to create web pages, perhaps you have heard of things like asp, java, flash and ajax? The tutorials listed here make use of the four best known and most commonly used:

HTML
CSS
JavaScript
PHP

Not sure what the difference is between the above? Imagine that a web page is a house. The HTML provides the actual structure of the house, similar to the function that bricks and cement preform in a real house. The CSS is like the paint and other decorative elements of the house, basically CSS is what makes a web page look pretty. JavaScript represents the fancy gadgets in the house, like a TV, very cool to have but you can turn it off and life goes on. Finally PHP is a little like running water that comes through the taps. You can live without piped water but that would mean going with a bucket to the river and having to haul the water back to the house. Piped water just makes the process of filling your bath easy.

Browsers

Website browsers are essential as they are what people will be using to view your page. The problem is, there are many different browsers out there (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari to name a few) and every browser has multiple versions (IE5.5, IE6, IE7, IE8). So what? Well the problem is, everyone of those different types and versions use different rules and engines to display a webpage and as a result a page which looks exceptional in one browser will look terible in another. The trick is, to create a webpage which displays correctly in all the modern browsers.

When creating a webpage it is a good idea to check your progress in as many different browsers as possible. You can install multiple browsers on a single computer so there is no reason not to have the main contenders installed for the purpose of testing your code.

While this is not a comprehensive list, you can read up about the different options on the Software - Browsers page, which also provides links to the different browsers download pages

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