I notice that a lot of you have your own web pages. I need to do the same. Nothing fancy - just 4 or 5 pages, a few pictures, and stuff like that.
I’ve got FrontPage, but, jeeze, that seems like overkill for what I have in mind.
So what’s you technique for simple home pages?
notepad
Netscape Composer, it’s free & real easy to use. Just visit a web page & click ‘edit page’ Voila!
Front Page only works with front page servers unless you want to hack at the code to clear out the web bots.
I used macromedia Dreamweaver for some intranet pages I did at work. you can download a 30 day demo from macromedia (IT finally came through with a legit copy a month after I was done). If you’re handy with Word, Powerpoint, that sort of stuff, it’s pretty easy to learn. I probably used about 2% of it’s capabilities.
notepad.
<html>
<title><head>lalala</head></title>
<body text=black bgcolor=white background=bg.jpg link=blue vlink=purple alink=red>
<font face=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica size=2>
<p>Lalalala.
<p>Here’s my picture:<br>
<img src=me.jpg height=100 width=100>
</body>
</html>
Hmmm… four responses but only one has an actual home page (Handy, your link is broken)
I didn’t know any HTML, so I started with Netscape Composer, which was handy and let me make a rough version of what I wanted. After that, I got hold of a book that I didn’t need much and then used a text editor to look at the code Composer made so I could see how HTML worked. It’s pretty intuitive. From there I have pretty much used just the text editor.
The fruits of my labor are below:
http://slithytoves.sytes.net/~dave/music.html
Here are some online HTML guides that might help:
http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/
http://www.w3.org/
http://www.zdnet.com/devhead/
http://www.w3schools.com/
http://www.projectcool.com/developer/
You should be able to find what you need there.
I have really been enjoying working on the site above. It’s been a lot of fun learning HTML, and it’s nice because you can do pretty cool stuff in a short amount of time. Enjoy!
I used to enjoy using Arachnophila. It’s sort of a merger between just using notepad and the more user-friendly web page makers. You can either click buttons to have it do the whole “Put title here” “Put image here”… etc thing or else use it how I did and just enter stuff like you’re using notepad and then use the preview feature to see how it’ll look in your browser. Best of both worlds, and I believe it’s freeware.
As a professional (sort of) web developer, I think the best advice I can give is:
I’m not kidding about this. And, no, I’m not one of the knee-jerk anti-Microsoft crowd; I work with MS products on a regular basis, I’ve passed some of their certification exams, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend an MS product if I thought it was the right one… and the above is how I feel about FrontPage.
What would I use? For straightforward HTML development, I’d go with something like Claris HomePage or Allaire’s HomeSite. There are alternatives. There are many alternatives.
(No, I don’t have a homepage. This is not because of lack of HTML expertise, it’s because I have no life, and no desire to advertise that fact on the web.)
I just use notepad. Html is pretty easy to pick up. It hardly even qualifies as a language. It’s also free–if you have a browser and a text editor, you’re good to go.
The absolute best page you could ever hope to find for learning to write your own html… http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/basics.html
Also, if you use Geocities you can use their Advanced Editor to write your code directly to your page and they have a built-in FTP so you don’t need a separate program to upload images.
Jeg elsker dig, Thomas
<shameless plug mode>
Take a look at my web pages. They were done entirely with Notepad, and graphics by Paint Shop Pro.
</shameless plug mode>
One of the best ways to learn HTML is to find other pages that do something you like, and view the page’s source. I learned a lot about HTML by reverse-engineering other web pages.
IceQueen: Wow! Those are some magnificent sites you’ve done.
Steve Wright: Tell me more about you take on FrontPage. Is it hopelessly flawed or would it still be the right tool for certain applications?
Everyone: I notice no one has suggested using something like MS-Word. In my limited experimentation with creating HTML pages, Word looks a little more user friendly than Notepad and doesn’t carry the excess baggage of learning a new tool that would come with some of these other approaches.
I created my pages with MS Word 2000. Then uploaded the whole thing at geocities. I was just experimenting so I didn’t want to spend any money on extra software or site hosting.
I’m no genius with HTML but I have done a little ‘reverse-engineering’ myself by checking other web pages’ source codes and trying to copy them onto my pages.
Anyway, you can view it at
Technically, I used Coolpad instead of Notepad. It removes the major limitations of Notepad, without adding the annoyances of WordPad or Word. And it’s free (sorta–it’s postcardware). I’ve been using it for about 4 or 5 years now and is one of the tools I consider to be indispensable.
I’m not trying to shove to “school of hard knocks” thing on you, but I’m glad that I’ve used Notepad, if only for the reason that I actually learned HTML.
If you’re looking for something rather “quick” (as you said), I would recommend that you just find a page that somewhat resembles what you’re wanting to do layout wise, and reverse-engineer it.
Yup, one more vote for notepad and copying source code from others. I’ve done a lot like that.
Yep, I’ve also done a lot of copying source code from other people’s pages. The thing is, though, that if you don’t have at least a basic understanding of HTML, copying and pasting won’t always cut it for you - especially if the feature you’re trying to copy is actually javascript or CSS and you don’t know the difference between that and a hole in the ground.
Jeg elsker dig, Thomas
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Shayna, I would recommend checking out the links that Legomancer listed. I’ve especially found http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/ to be helpful, as it covers “beginner” to “advanced”.