HTML/Web Editors...

[Konoko]

Hi

A friend of mine has asked me about recommendations for HTML/Web editors for an elementary school that have Macs.

They're looking more for graphical editors. I'm sure cost is an issue but it sounds like they're willing to spend some money.

Now I personally just use the BBEdit text editor for doing HTML stuff. I also have GoLive and use that occasionally but mostly just to play with or get the layouts started and then use BBEdit for the fine-tuning.

I would like some suggestions for graphical HTML/Web editors for an elementary school. I'll suggest ones like GoLive and DreamWeaver but what other ones are out there?

Is Claris Home Page still out there somewhere?

I don't know if it really needs support for all the latest and greatest stuff like stylesheets, java, flash, etc but maybe the older kids would like this.

If you do recommend some browsers, please state what kind of support it has for the other web stuff (if you know)...


Thanks much!

Konoko

[Himitsu]

The best program for making web sites is called Freeway by Softpress (http://www.softpress.com/). They have a full-featured demo so the school can try it out before buying and the cost is very reasonable. Unfortunately, it's only out for the Macintosh although there is a great possibility that version 4 will be cross-platform.

You can have many advanced features by using something called actions which make text rollovers easy and other niceties like making the browser window shake easy. There are tons available on the Softpress site with a high number of tutorials so it's easy to learn how to use them. If you are able to code, you can write your own actions via AppleScript or Java. If not, subscribe to the great mailing list and it's possible that someone can write it for you or suggest using one that already exists.

The interface has been likened to Quark (except a lot easier to use) and everyone says that learning Freeway is fast and easy. I recommend that you check it out and when I get some free time, I am going to make Himitsu's page using it.

[Kiriel]

If they just need an HTML editor to throw some pages together quick, any decent graphical editor will do. However, if they actually plan to teach the creation of web pages, they should be very careful to pick an editor which doesn't create bad HTML code (Dreamweaver is probably best) and should be sure to use a text editor like BBEdit (or if on Windows, HomeSite) too to teach some aspects of HTML that can't be properly taught by just using a graphical editor. A graphical editor is great for getting the design started quickly- but any class with the purpose of actually teaching web design should teach at least a little code futzing and using an editor which doesn't generate unreadable code is key. I'm not sure how bad Freeway is at this, but Frontpage and Netscape Composer are definitely ones to avoid. Dreamweaver is nice in that it's integrated with BBEdit and thus makes a nice part of a team- speeding up design without requiring that you use the graphical editor for everything.

Sorry for the preach, but I think there are way too many classes out there who don't even teach the simplest part of raw HTML and those designers haven't got a clue what's under the hood- they learn to be afraid of HTML code, when it's really not that hard to learn the basics.

[Kiriel]

Oh- also, if they decide to go with a text based editor and they want something a little simpler than BBEdit, PageSpinner is very user friendly (Mac only I believe)