Webpage Editors

A webpage editor is a program that you use to create your webpages. They range from the simple to the complex. At the simple end, are the WYSIWYG editors like PageBuilder. It stands for... What You See Is What You Get. These function by letting you drag and drop the different elements you want onto your webpage, which is a very simple way to do some very complex things. At the other end, are text editors like Wordpad. They require you to write the HTML by hand, but have the advantage that you can therefore do ANYTHING that HTML will let you do.

Programs also vary from the free to the very expensive. The most complicated, expensive, and powerful programs you may hear about are Macromedia's Dreamweaver, and Microsoft's FrontPage. I can't imagine anyone reading this is using those programs. Here's how you write webpages on a budget... Here are three common editors you may realistically have access to.

Microsoft Word

Advantages:

MS Word is a program that probably came with your computer, so you don't have to go out and buy an editor. If you don't have it, it's quite expensive, so you probably want to choose another editing program. MS Word is basically WYSIWYG. It is a program you're fairly familiar with if you have it. You also probably know how to use most of the features you need for your webpages, because you probably use those same features in your other writing already.

Disadvantages:

Your pages sometimes look nothing like you thought they would. Also, one of the most powerful features of HTML is called a Table which lets you organize exactly how the webpage will be structured. MS Word cannot build them; what MS Word calls a table is unfortunately completely different. If you want a normal HTML table you have to set up the structure manually in Wordpad, this is the biggest problem with MS Word.

It also creates very large webpages. The webpage that you've written, frequently only accounts for half of the HTML code... the other half, is all garbage that MS Word adds by itself. This may be a problem if you're getting close to the limit of your space on your Geocities account, and can cause nightmares if you try to edit the HTML code afterwards.

Make sure to save your work as a webpage, and that it ends with an .html extension. Windows prefers to use three letter extensions and tries to default to .htm, it is identical in all respects, but if a visitor types in the web address they invariably type .html and won't find your webpage. You may have to manually change the extension to the more familiar .html, by renaming it. NOTE: If Windows doesn't display your file extensions you can usually turn it on someplace in Folder Options.

Make sure smart tags are turned off!

Microsoft has a feature called smart tags. If you are an expert web builder they may be a useful tool However, if you’re reading this page you are probably not. Smart tags are automatically added to your webpages unless you have specifically reset your options telling MS Word not to use them. They function as a link to other information. If you do not know how to control them, then they simply sit there waiting for someone else to use them for their own purposes. While these people may not be malicious they are linking people away from your website, probably to their own advertisers. Imagine putting up a webpage to boycott a company, and someone activates a smart tag taking your visitors to that company’s sales page. At best, they steal your visitors and redirect them someplace else. Turn the smart tags off.

If you have a page with smart tags and can’t eliminate them in your editor, you can add this line to the head of the document to deactivate all smart tags in the document. <meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

Winer, Dave. “The Smart Tags Weblog.” 2001 June 27. 2005 July 17 <http://smarttags.manilasites.com/>

Yahoo! PageBuilder

Advantages:

WYSIWYG. Simple to understand and use to build webpages. Easy to get onto the web.

Disadvantages:

Can’t create certain effects. Can’t import webpages very well.

If you don't want to code HTML, this is probably your best bet. It comes free with your Geocities account. PageBuilder is a beautiful tool for setting up a webpage exactly how you want it to look. You don’t have to do much more than drag and drop elements and type text to get very sophisticated webpages including HTML forms and counters, all available even with the free account.

However, PageBuilder is awful at importing webpages. If you have a webpage you've designed with another editor, or even a webpage that you built in PageBuilder and then tweaked one little thing in Wordpad. You still have to upload the file to your Geocities account. Once you do that and try to open it with PageBuilder it's considered a foreign file, and when PageBuilder tries to open it, it comes out very messed up and needing a lot of work. You can upload files to your Geocites account and use them on your website with no trouble, but PageBuilder is horrible at importing them, so you realistically can never modify it in PageBuilder again.

If PageBuilder did everything you needed, this wouldn’t matter. However, borders and in-page links are just two of the features PageBuilder can’t create. There are two answers. One, live within those limitations. This is the easiest thing to do.

Yeah, that doesn't work me either. Your other option is to build them in PageBuilder until you've done every last little thing you want to with them. I recommend having the pages up on your website for a week or two, because you inevitably think of some minor changes you want to make. After you're SURE you won't want to change the PageBuilder stuff anymore... ever. Then open the webpage with Wordpad and you can adjust the few things you want to change in the HTML. If you are interested in doing this, you can check out our summary of programming languages relevant to the internet, or read more about Wordpad below. Don't panic, this is pretty easy to do, so Wordpad may not be a bad option especially as you become familiar with PageBuilder and are learning more about how to build webpages. The only down side is... you are now on the slippery slope to learning HTML and writing your own webpages. This is exactly what happened to me. In which case you'll definitely need...

Wordpad

Advantages:

You code in raw HTML.

Disadvantages:

You code in raw HTML.

Wordpad is the antithesis of a WYSIWYG editor. Things won’t appear as you want to see them on your finished webpage. You are programming the raw HTML code. You may only be touching up a few things you're regular editor couldn't do. However, if you are an intermediate or even an avid beginning web builder, this gives you the most control over your webpages. Either way, our HTML Reference is probably all you really need to help you make some changes. It's also a handy reference once you know what you're doing. If you need a tutorial on how to write in HTML, there are many good books at your library, and you can find literally dozens of online tutorials in any search engine.

HTML is infinitely simpler and more understandable than programming in a computer language. However, like a computer language it is unforgiving of errors and/or typos and will require some debugging. To minimize trouble, I open up the webpage I'm writing in Wordpad to build it. Then, I also open it in my browser to see how it will look for my visitors. That way every change I make, I can save it in Wordpad and refresh the page on the browser to be sure that I'm doing exactly what I think I'm doing.

Note: For the intrepid who want to program HTML, I can’t get Wordpad to save a *.html file. If you can great, but if you're in the same position, save it as a "Text Only" (*.txt) file. You'll then have to find the folder your webpage is in and rename it from "Whatever.txt" to "Whatever.html"; this is all you need to do since *.html files like *.txt files are text only. You may have to turn your extensions on in Folder options or wherever that setting is hidden on your computer.