Um, I've been thinking with my new computer I might make a few web-sites. I know rudimentary html - but would rather use one of those 'drag/drop' page makers... what is a good one?
Bascially I want to do two sites. 1. Just putting on-line all the starship pictures I have collected over the last five years on the 'net.
2. I thought I might use my new scanner to scan in all the doodles and drawings and diagrams and sketches of ships that I have drawn in numerous books over the years. some are no more than rough sketches... but I know there would be a few of you out there that would appreciate it. Plus someone might like what they see and do a 3d version of it or something!?!
just an aside - does anyone have a good tutorial page for a program like lightwave?
Andrew
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
I use just MS Frontpage Express as I do very simple stuff, when I ever do work on my webpages. And you should give credit for those pics you've collected. If you forgot who you got them from, you should put up a notice that credit will be given as soon as you find out who to give it to. Provide an email address so that you can be contacted by the rightful "owners" of the pics and can credit them. And I would not suggest putting up all the pics you have from the last 5 years as no doubt you've got hundreds... maybe thousands of them. If you want to eventually get them all posted at one time or another, rotate them every time you update and notify your viewers when you update and what you've updated.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I would stay far away from anything with the Front Page label on it. I've heard so many stories about bugs and invalid HTML code produced by that program, it's not funny. The thing is, that most of the bugs in FP's code are designed to plug holes in Internet Explorer's page-rendering process! And I know firsthand, too -- because I very rarely use IE to browse the web.
Given that this is just a starter site for you, I'd suggest trying something like Macromedia HomeSite. I've never used it myself, but I've heard some good things about it and I've used Macromedia Dreamweaver -- which I *know* is a good program, so I would speculate that Macromedia's HomeSite program would be reasonably good.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Actually, don't totally knock FP. It's a great way to learn basic page creation - then you learn the actual code while going in to manually fix all the bloody errors FP makes.
Posted by O Captain Mike Captain (Member # 709) on :
at least its not Netscape. Composer has more bugs than rotting fruit!
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
The latest FrontPage is better, I've heard. But it's still no good HTML. And whatever you do, DON'T USE WORD!! I'm not a big fan of WYSIWYG HTML editors. I use HomeSite myself. You basically write your own HTML, but there are enough tools and wizards to do the tricky and repetitive work for you.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
About the pictures... I know most of the web-sites that I got them from.
Also, why do you have to credit anyone - really... cause it's not their product - they might have scanned or captured the thing... but it's not as if they even have the rights to it.
And what would be the point of not putting up ALL the pictures - that is what I want to do. It'll be a place where - say if here youo want to discuss a ship, you'll have lots and lots of versions of the to choose to look at.
Andrew
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
Andrew, if you don't want to credit people for their scans, then you should try doing all the scans yourself. Scanning may be easy but the entire process can also be quite time consuming. Especially when you take into account cleaning up and editing of scanned images.
Posted by E. Cartman (Member # 256) on :
/me still uses trusty ol' Notepad for all things HTML, PHP, and Javascript. Works better than any frontend utility, and there's something to be said for doing things manually.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
I agree with the Notepad/code yourself people. Cleaner code makes for a better site, as does a proper layout....
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Crediting people for their scans is the Polite Thing to do. Imagine if someone else put up all your pictures without even mentioning you or your site.
And for manual coding, a nice editor might be Scintilla. It has colorcoding for all major languages (including HTML, JavaScript and PHP, but also Java, C(++)) and has a good search/replace system. I find colorcoding very helpful. HomeSite has it too, and it really makes your code easier to read.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I'm no expert, but I use Dreamweaver for all my web stuff, including all the web jobs I've done. It's always worked pretty well, though I'm quite sure the code could be cleaner if it was being done by someone who knew what they were doing. My designs tend to be somewhat complicated, though, at least to me, and if I were to try and do it straight, I'd never get it.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Dreamweaver's code is pretty good
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
When I last rebuilt my PC, I didn't even bother to reinstall FP. Maybe if I'd had 2000 on disk, but I only had 98. So right now I'm using a mixture of Dreamweaver and Notepad.
Posted by Fructose (Member # 309) on :
I use Notetab Light. Great freeware text editor. Has librarys for easier HTML coding. I'd recomend it to anyone who uses Notepad. That's how I build all my pages.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Doesn't Dreamweaver have a HTML clean up option? I used it on a friends system, removed extra tags and all that....
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
If you had a Mac, you could get BBEdit or BBEdit Lite. It's basically a text editor, but it's specifically designed for all sorts of hand-coding -- HTML, Perl, PHP, and just about any other programming language you'd care to use. (And according to their website, "It doesn't suck.�")
I use Dreamweaver to put my site together, and get the basics of my pages ready, but then I go into BBEdit and do some manual clean-up work. It's a pretty good balance -- there's no way I could have hand-coded the table that was needed to create the flashy button interface for my front page -- but there were also bugs in that same table that prevented the code from validating properly with W3C.
I guess you could say... it's the best of both worlds. (*groan*)
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by E. Cartman: /me still uses trusty ol' Notepad for all things HTML, PHP, and Javascript. Works better than any frontend utility, and there's something to be said for doing things manually.
Yes. That people who do things manually have more time on their hands than a lot of other people.
Posted by Free ThoughtCrime America (Member # 480) on :
I don't even have a webpage. So, all this talk of webpage design sounds like a waste of time to me.
Dreamweaver, however, deserves a mention, because I like playing with it. If I were ever to finish my shite and put it up in some obscure region of the web where only perverts and slack jawed Frenchmen go (Mon dieu? What is zis?), I'll probably use it for a primary.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
As a web designer, I've been using Adobe GoLive for a few years. I like the way it works with Photoshop and Imageready, but the interface is can be irritating if you're not used to it. From what I've heard from folks who'd know, Dreamweaver is the one to get if you aren't comfortable with HTML. If you are a student, you can probably pick it up for US$100 from your college bookstore. For my Adv. Flash class Ijust picked up the StudioMX suite (Dreamweaver MX, Freehand 10, Flash MX, and Fireworks MX) for US$200. I haven't had time to play with anything besides Flash (which rules, btw). You can't update the academic versions of Macromedia products but it's a great way to get a whole slew of tools you know are going to play nice together.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Yes, Macromedia Studio MX definitely kicks ass. I bought it back in June and learned Dreamweaver and Fireworks right away. I still haven't gotten into some of the really esoteric stuff that those two programs can do, but I've managed to do some reasonably flashy things. (At least compared to the POS code that was produced with my old program, Claris Home Page...)
And now, I'm just starting to learn how to use Flash -- which definitely is a cool program. If you're willing to spend a few hundred bucks (me, I'm considering a career in web design), then I'd definitely recommend taking a look.
Posted by Austin Powers (Member # 250) on :
Andrew, at work we use Macromedia Studio MX. It is a professional suite, has cleaned out most of the bugs of the earlier versions, and Dreamweaver MX produces the best source code of all the WYSIWIG editors I know of.
But to tell you the truth, after having worked with such editors for several years I have realised that there is still nothing better than good old plain text editors. For my private projects I use a thing called TextPad. It offers adjustable color-coding and many other very useful features. And above all it's cheap. You can download a fully functional trial version at the above address to see if you like it.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Thanks for all your comments.
I guess I should brush up on my html in any case. What is a good on-line html-basics guide that anyone could recommend?
Andrew
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Andrew, you just missed a pretty good overview of HTML and XHTML: http://www.westciv.com/courses/free/index.html -- for the past few months they've been publishing their course for free, but only for a limited time.
If you can't find anything elsewhere, you might want to take a look here. It's written with the goal of hand-coding in mind, and also specifically teaches XHTML, which is slightly more advanced than HTML.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Thanks for that MM - sorry I missed it. This Xhtml... what's special about it? Are there any example pages around the place?
Andrew
"My name is German, Bold, Italic... I am a type face" 'GBI' - Towa Tei feat. Kylie Minogue
Posted by Austin Powers (Member # 250) on :
Well, I would recommend an online-guide called SelfHTML, which to me is the best and most comprehensive tutorial on the Net. But unfortunately for you it is completely in German and no English version is available. Sorry. Andrew, you don't happen to understand German by any chance??
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Nein... shizen! Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Andrew, XHTML is basically the same as HTML, with a few minor changes and some stricter guidelines for formatting tags. The basic premise is that it's HTML that's formatted for the XML language -- I'm not entirely sure of the underlying principles, but suffice to say that XHTML is supposed to be the "up-and-coming" code for the Internet.
If you're just starting out, I'd strongly recommend learning XHTML -- it's close enough to HTML 4.01 in most respects to make learning both pretty easy, but XHTML is also designed to be backwards-compatible with older browsers.
If you'd like to take a look at some code, check out any page in my site via the link below -- all of my pages were made with Dreamweaver MX in XHTML 1.0 Transitional code -- and I've tried to validate as many pages as possible to ensure the best universal compatibility.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
I've heard so many stories about bugs and invalid HTML code produced by that program, it's not funny. The thing is, that most of the bugs in FP's code are designed to plug holes in Internet Explorer's page-rendering process! And I know firsthand, too -- because I very rarely use IE to browse the web.![[Smile]](smile.gif)