Web Authoring Tools
What is a web authoring tool? A web authoring tool is an application that enables you to create, design and program a page for the internet. They come in all shapes and sizes and cost ranges. If you would like to see a list of free open-source applications to build a compete website then click here. If you would like to create a web page, think about what tool you would like to use, it will make a diference in the end. Some applications are more hard coder based (HTML coded by hand), and others are WYSIWYG, or what you see is what you get. When begining html, there are two ways to go about starting. You can read book after book and work from examples, which there is nothing wrong with. Or you could use a WYSIWYG editor and draw out the layout with drag and drop, then immediatly look at the html code generated from it and see how it was done.
We will start the the very basic one. TextPad. Textpad is just your normal note taking application, but with a HTML advantage. They have built in tabs for easy navigation with your pages. There is html color coding for seeing all the html tags and may other features. TextPad is great for the hard coder and is a very small file to download. A good thing about TextPad is, you can get it just about anywhere, and if its non on the computer you can get it in about 2 minutes. You can get it here.
Moving on we have an application from Macromedia (now Adobe) called Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver can be purchased seperatly or it can be purchased in the Studio 8 package. For what you get out of it its a bargain. Dreamweaver is a great application for the hard coder and the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) coder. You can easily switch between editing modes with the click of a button. You can create many pages with ease and that is essential when coding.
Dreamweaver also has a detailed code library, where you can add your own snippits, or browse from commonly used lines. There are tag inspectors, link checkers and many other optimizing tools. The file browser for remote and locally hosted files makes it a very easy way to navigate, edit and relocate files, with automatic link updates. (which saves an amazing amount of time.)
Info: Dreamweaver is a great web authoring tool and is the web standard for many large design and business company's.
Next we have Microsoft Frontpage. Frontpage is also has two modes of coding. Hard and WYSIWYG. Frontpage has similar features as dreamweaver, code helping tools, snippets and optimization tools as well. Frontpage comes with some templates so you can begin coding right away with a little jump start. Microsoft uses Microsoft IntelliSense® technology that you can add to html, CSS, jscript and other common formats while coding as well. You can download a trial here.
There are other editors as well. It is a matter of either usability, trusting a good brand, or just experimenting with many tools before you will find the right one. There are hundreds of tutorials for each tool listed here and you can find them by going to the tutorials page. The help library built into Frontpage and Dreamweaver is quite large and expanding regularly so if you get stuck you can always check the help file while coding.
If you want to know what to do after you have picked your new web authoring tool check out the coding section to begin coding!
