Web page creation tools

There are several methods of creating and maintaining Web pages. Ultimately, they all result in the creation of an ordinary disk file, typically with a name ending in ".html", that holds one page's content. Within that file, the content is described in a special tagged language called HTML (for HyperText Markup Language).

It's a good idea to have at least some familiarity with HTML, but there are tools that will insulate you from having to deal with it. However, some of the tools create HTML that is extremely hard to maintain with any other tool.

To learn HTML, see the references on the HTML help page, or our locally-written guide `The Web's source language: basic HTML'.

• The author recommends direct creation and editing of the HTML using your favorite text editor. This is more work, but gives you full control of every detail. For Linux users, see `Selecting a text editor' for details on the available text editors. On Windows machines, you can use Notepad, but you will have to fix the permissions on the files created before they will be visible on the Web; see `Web page hosting policies at www.nmt.edu' for more on permissions.
• Adobe's GoLive product is installed on all of the TCC lab machines that have scanners, and also on all instructor machines in classrooms. This is a modern, full-featured Web design package with a graphical user interface.
• All the popular browsers (Netscape, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Opera, and so on) have Web page creation systems.
• Microsoft FrontPage is free on all Windows systems. The author does not recommend it, as it tends to create HTML that is extremely difficult to modify with other packages.
• You can export documents in HTML form from most of the popular word processing packages such as MS Word, Open Office Writer (a Linux-based package similar to MS Word), and the various Macintosh packages. However, as with FrontPage, the HTML created may not be so easy to modify with other tools.

John Shipman, tcc-doc@nmt.edu Last updated: 2004/01/31 22:53:18 UT URL: http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/html/creation.html