- Most of the pages on the web are created in a code known as Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. An HTML page is constructed by adding special instructions, called tags, to the text a person would like to display on the World Wide Web. These tags specify to the end user's browser exactly how to format and display the text, and they allow the author to add non-text items such as web forms, pictures, or music to the page. All of this is done within special programs known as HTML editors.
- During the early years of the HTML language, most HTML editors were very basic. The author of a web page would need to be very familiar with all of the various HTML tags, their intended uses, and the attributes that could be assigned to them. As the World Wide Web and HTML became more widely used, however, software developers slowly began to add more and more features to their HTML editors, and eventually, it became possible for nearly anyone to create a web page.
- Currently there are many different types of HTML editors on the market, and a customer can easily find several editors that will meet his or her price and feature requirements. Those who prefer hands-on coding often prefer the most basic of HTML editors, which is a plain-text editor, such as Notepad in Windows, or Vi in Linux. At the other end of the spectrum are "what-you-see-is-what-you-get," or WYSIWYG, editors. These allow the author to create a web page in a word-processor type of environment, without interacting with the underlying HTML code. In between, one will find a variety of HTML editors that are basically text editors at their core, with added features to help the page author develop a site more quickly and efficiently than with a simple text editor.
- The basic text-based HTML editors have a very slim feature set, frequently including no more than basic copy, paste, search, and replace functions. Often, there is not even a spell-checker for the displayed text. Enhanced text-based HTML editors will add features such as colored code highlighting, HTML tag auto-completion, preview windows, spell checkers, or HTML syntax validation. Additionally, many of these mid-level programs offer drag-and-drop code libraries that can easily add JavaScript or other applications to a page. The WYSIWYG editors add a large variety of tools that are designed to automate the entire process of creating the HTML, developing a multiple-page web site, and uploading the content to the author's web server. In these editors, the process of creating a page is as easy as typing out the text content, then dragging and dropping items such as pictures, tables, forms, and even music and videos into the desired location on the page.
- While it may seem that the WYSIWYG HTML editors are the best choice for many web design applications, those experienced with HTML often choose the harder, text-based methods for building pages. Often, this is because the WYSIWYG programs create HTML that is more complex than it needs to be, resulting in a larger page and slower load times than an equivalent hand-coded page. In addition, some programs tend to use outdated or deprecated code, or even code that is only fully compatible with certain browsers. Manual coding, in comparison, can produce a much leaner HTML page, and with less superfluous code, the page not only loads faster, but it can be much easier to edit later on, thanks to the reduced amount of code. Many people opt to design the overall layout of the page in a WYSIWYG editor, and then clean the code up in a text-based editor, essentially achieving the best of both worlds.
previous post