Theos-Talk Archives (December 1997 Message tl00085)

>    Most of the best web page designers I know, when asked what tool they
>use, usually reply "NOTEPAD", or something similar (I use Winedit).
>    Bart Lidofsky

I'd have to agree - I use the most basic of text editors ... notepad when
I'm writing code on a Win95 and SimpleText when I'm using a Mac. There are
now literally hundreds of programs that advertise themselves as "easy" web
design programs ... but there is simply no replacement for actually learning
the markup language, and to do anything other than the most basic of stuff
requires CGI scripting, Java, DHTML, some graphics programs, even
audio/visual creators/editors - as well as an understanding of how different
browsers (and different versions of each of them) interpret what one has
written, an understanding of Unix or NT or Sun's OS (or whatever the ISP's
box runs) if one wants to run Perl or Tcl for the CGI work, etc., etc.  The
best sites on the web often appear quite simple and clear - but achieving
that simplicity and clarity is an extremely complex process ... the art of
harmonizing design with content, of being exciting while still writing code
tight enough that it won't take 5 minutes to download the first page - and
that doesn't even begin to cover the continual updating that is necessary,
the knowledge of how the various search engines' robots will record the site
when it is submitted  ... well, anyway, I guess it always sounds odd to me
to hear that its "easy" to put up a website - it *is* easy to *produce* a
personal page - and have it sit (like hundreds of thousands of them already
do) with perhaps a couple of hits a week - to produce (as has been mentioned
here) a full bore commercial site with a firm's entire ordering catalog
online, etc., etc ... well if it *is* done for a couple of hundred bucks,
its likely to be utterly useless. -JRC