OT: website design and creation

[Huge]

There's a Windows port.

Sadly, it's crap.

[Huge]

Amaya is a WYSIWYG editor for HTML from the W3C, but rather cleverly you can open a source HTML window and edit in there, while observing the effect of the changes in the rendered window.

[Bert Coules]

Oh, clever stuff. I'm sort of settled with Notepad++ now, but I'll give it a look, thanks.

Bert

[F]

HTML-kit

sounds like what you're asking for. I've used it for a long time now and it's excellent.

[Man at B&Q]

Notepad++ will highlight syntax. Same with JEdit but I found the latter to be unstable.

HTMLkit is not too bad. CoffeeCup also, but I think the completely free version is no longer available, my latest one timed out.

MBQ

[The Natural Philosopher]

One reason to reserve the laptop for special occasions ONLY.

[dennis]

My notebook has an Fn key and keys F1-F12 but you press Fn to get to the alternate uses (screen brightness, play, etc.). Has anyone actually got one of those keyboards to see which way around the Fn key works?

[Bert Coules]

I just tried it but ran into an immediate quirk: my test webpage, which comes up perfectly in every browser I've tried, was all over the place in the Amaya display, with images the wrong size and text elements wrongly placed. I'll investigate further but for now it's back to Notebook++ and checking changes by refreshing the display in Firefox.

This is clearly one of those larks where if you're not careful you can end up spending more time playing with the tools than getting on with the job...

Bert

[Huge]

Oh, well. Sorry.

Welcome to computing generally.

[Bert Coules]

Don't be; I've probably just not set it up properly.

Bert

[MaRKg123]

Rather than plain-old Notepad, why not try Notepad++ Does syntax highlighting amonst many other tricks...

have also used this one, which is broadly similar:

[djc]

Used at its most basic PHP is an enhanced form of server side include. Certainly if you have a lot of pages with the same base form separating the content from page structure in this way can be very effective. All the structure and CSS formatting can reside in one document and the content in others. it is then easy to add new content without being buried in a forest of HTML tags. Write content text in any word processor taking advantage of spell checking etc, save as plaintext, edit plain text to add the minimal markup required.

When using PHP I think the important thing is to decide whether to conceive of the file linked to the URL as a PHP program that will assemble the HTML page or, as fundamentally an HTML page that uses PHP to include other bits of HTML. Not making that conceptual choice at the outset is, in my opinion, a sure way to end up with an insecure and unmaintainable mess.

[Bert Coules]

Yes, I've been trying it, thanks. My colour vision is a tad strange and some of the visual coding is a bit wasted on me, but I'm liking the program overall.

Bert

[Bert Coules]

That's great, thanks for the recommendation: the more options to try, the better.

Bert

[Bert Coules]

Thanks for that, but the fact that I haven't the slightest idea what it means suggests very strongly to me that just at the moment I should concentrate on the basics.

But isn't that exactly what the CSS approach does? Certainly the simple site I'm putting together has one CSS file to format the several HTML pages, which are much less cluttered as a result.

Bert

[The Natural Philosopher]

:)

Rather fighting the browsers

Important is to define a suite of fonts that are supported across nearly all browsers and occupy the same pixel space.

[Paul Herber]

CSS is good for seperating the content from the page layout. PHP can be used for automating web pages, including common blocks of code, automating image sizing etc.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Why he is saying that

.....

is the easy way to have a common block of HTML for multiple pages that e,g. have the same frame top and menu buttons down the side. .

Style sheets define styles for elements, but not the actual HTML elements themselves.

But that is the next step AFTER mastering style sheets and basic HTML elements.

[Man at B&Q]

You can make your HTML do that automatically

delete the code before you publish for real.

MBQ

[Bert Coules]

very useful.

Bert