Choosing an Editor

HTML files are straight text files, so I urge you to start learning how to write them by using whatever text processor is standard on your platform: for Windows users, that would be WordPad, and for Macintosh users, SimpleText. That way you will just be learning HTML instead of also having to learn to use a complex new software package. Once you have experience as a web author, you may choose to use a dedicated HTML editor, such as DreamWeaver, or to use the HTML capabilities that are included in such word processors as WordPerfect and Microsoft Word. In some cases, it may make sense to use the HTML export feature as the first step of creating web pages based on existing documents, but certainly for an initial learning stage, and quite possibly for a much longer time, you should then edit the resulting HTML file as an ASCII text file.

The following items apply to specific platform and software choices:

• Microsoft Word cannot be used to edit HTML as a text file with recent versions of Word for Windows or for Macintosh (including the versions of Word in Office 97 or 2000 on Windows and Office 98 on Macintosh). Word will always add HTML tags that it wants to, whether you want them added, or not. (It may be possible to use the version of Word in Office 2001 on the Macintosh as a text editor on HTML files without having it add its own tags; this page will be updated to reflect the results of on-going experiments.)

• If you don't have WordPerfect (discussed in more detail below), or if you don't want to deal with its complexity, you can use Wordpad (or Notepad) on Windows. On Macintosh, you can use SimpleText (on Mac OS 9 or earlier) or TextEdit (on Mac OS X) as a text editor for HTML files. SimpleText can handle only files of up to 32 Kbytes, but that is a size it is usually good to stay within, anyway, in order to have the file load quickly.

• SimpleText has no configuration options that need to be adjusted for HTML file editing.

• There are two configuration options for WordPad that are worth changing if you are going to use WordPad to edit HTML pages.
  1. Start WordPad.

  2. Choose "Options..." from the "View" menu.

  3. Select the "Options" index tab, and click if needed to clear the check-box for "Automatic Word Selection" so that it appears as shown below:
     

  4. Select the "Text" index tab, and click as needed to set the word-wrapping and toolbars as shown below:
     

  5. Click on "OK" to set the options.

• There are two tricks to using WordPad to edit and save HTML files:
  1. In the File Open dialog, set the File Type for "all documents (*.*)", as shown below:
     

  2. In the File Save dialog, for new files, enclose the complete filename (including the .htm or .html) in quotes (so that it won't add ".txt" to the end of what you type) and save in Text format, as shown below:
     

     After you click "Save" in the File Save dialog, you will be asked to confirm that you want to discard formatting, as shown below:

     

  
  

• With Macintosh TextEdit, you can edit an HTML file as a text file. This works better if you first set your preferences as shown below. The maroon highlights mark the settings that are particularly important. The illustrations apply as-is to TextEdit V 1.6 (264), and provide guidance for other versions.
  

  
  

  
  

  With Macintosh WordPerfect 3.5, you can edit an HTML file as a text file, if you launch WordPerfect first, then choose "Open..." from the File menu, and hold down the Option key while double-clicking on the file to open it. (This trick does not work if the "Caps Lock" key is engaged.)

  While working with the file, be sure that "smart quotes" are turned off. This can be done with the key-combination <Shift>-<F3> or by using the mouse, as follows:

  1. Choose "Preferences..." from the Edit menu.

  2. Click on QuickCorrect, as shown below:
     

  3. Click, as needed, to clear the check-box for Smart Quotes, as shown below:
     

     Smart (or "curly") quotes should not be used in HTML files, because Macintosh and Windows use different numerical values for those characters, so your page will not appear as intended to all viewers.

  4. Click on "OK" to set the preferences.

  5. Click in the "close-box" at the upper left corner of the Preferences window to return to editing.

  When you are finished, save the file by the following sequence:

  1. Choose "Save As..." from the File menu.

  2. Specify a format of "Text export".

  3. Choose "Mac text - delete soft returns".

  WordPerfect for Windows provides a similar capability.

  To edit the HTML as a text file:

  1. Launch WordPerfect.

  2. Choose "Open..." from the File menu.

  3. When you select the particular file, you will be presented with a "Convert File Format" dialog box, probably defaulting to "HTML". Select instead, "ASCII (DOS) Text CR/LF to SRt" (striking the "Up Arrow" key twice should do this).

  When you are done modifying the HTML file:

  1. Choose "Save" from the File menu.

  2. You will be presented with a "Save Format" dialog box, probably defaulting to "WordPerfect 6/7/8". Select instead "ASCII DOS Text".

Designing Pages and Sites

Building web pages can be fun and rewarding. But it takes some time and patience to build a page, or a site, that is worthwhile. Unfortunately it is all too easy, once you get started, to build a mediocre (or even a bad) web page. Throughout this class we will touch upon various aspects of page and site design, in an attempt to help you improve the quality of your site.

Your primary audience will be people who come to your site seeking information. In many cases they will be trying to find answers to very specific questions. Your first goal, then, is to ensure that the information is present on one page or another within your site. You will want to do more on your web pages than having just lists of links, with no real content.

Your second goal is to ensure that people can find the information easily. If your site includes a lot of information, it will be quite reasonable to organize that information into categories, and provide one or two layers of navigational pages that provide links to the content layer of your pages. You should keep the number of layers to a minimum, so that your reader will not be forced to make an "endless" succession of choices on content-free pages before finally reaching the real information, but do provide enough layers so that the number of choices on each page is not overwhelming. Because each member of your audience will think about the subject in his or her own way, it is quite reasonable, in fact usually a very good idea, to design your navigational layers so that there is more than one sequence of links that can be used to reach any given content.

When you design your own site, it is often reasonable to include a "hotlist" page, one containing links to other pages on the Web that you think visitors to your site would be likely to find interesting. Just be sure that your site is rich in original content, too.

Dick Piccard revised this file (http://www.ohio.edu/pagemasters/class/html1/build.html) on September 8, 2010.

Please E-mail any comments or suggestions to webteam@ohio.edu.