The Kenningtons

Developing Educational Materials for the World Wide Web

Week 3 - HTML Editors, Generators, and Converters

There are a number of different ways to create web pages, depending on what you want to accomplish and how much experience you have. Web pages are "built" using HTML, HyperText Markup Language. It is more like the instructions given to a printer to print out certain typefaces, margins, etc. than a programming language.

Many HTML purists will use nothing but Windows Notepad, which generates *.txt text files. Text files can be directly saved at *.html files. HTML purists know all the tags by heart, and can simply type what they want on Notepad, save it as an *.html file, and then post it to the web.

HTML Editors are simple programs that aid in the writing of HTML code. Many of these are free downloads on the Internet.

Arachnophilia http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/ free download
1st Page http://www.evrsoft.com/download/ free download
BBEdit http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit.html An editor for Macs

HTML Converters Office suites such as Microsoft Office and Word Perfect Office have incorporated HTML converters into their word processors. Theoretically, you can create a word processing document, have the word processor convert the document to a web document, and Presto, you're ready to publish it to the web! Often there can be problems with these documents, for example, a table may be missing several lines or fonts may not convert correctly. This is where knowing HTML comes in handy, so you can pull the document into an HTML editor and make corrections. However, they are easy to use for simple documents and fill the needs of many people who don't want anything complicated.

Another HTML converter can be found in the Sun Star Office suite, which is available as a free download from http://www.sun.com/products/staroffice/get.html;$sessionid$HJ1ADAAAAASWRAMTA1FU45Q Netscape Composer, which comes as part of the Netscape Communicator package, has a simple, wizard-driven HTML page generator, and can also upload web pages to remote servers.

HTML Generators or Web Authors are commercial programs which make it possible to build and maintain professional-looking sites. Web authors generally include support for java, tables, templates, CGI forms for businesses, plugins such as Flash and Shockwave, and style sheets so that daily changes can be made efficiently. Examples of popular web authors include:

Macromedia Dreamweaverhttp://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/ Fast becoming the industry standard. Dreamweaver can clean up "dirty" HTML and provides easy website management.
Microsoft Front Page http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/ Used extensively for business sites, Front Page generates "extensions" which are not compatible with all server sites.
Adobe GoLive http://www.adobe.com/products/golive/main.html

Assignment - Your Own HTML Page
For this week's assignment, you are to make your own HTML page. I would like to see at least these components on your page:

A headline
An image or several images
Different sizes or styles of font
A link

To get you started, begin with this page:

Building a Simple Web Page/Beginner's HTML http://www.kenningtons.com/edtech/html.htm

For more HTML tags, check out these sites:

The Bare Bones Guide to HTML http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html

A Beginner's Guide to HTML http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu//General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimerPrintable.html

Send the HTML page and any graphics to me in an email. Let me know if you have any problems.

Good luck!

Developing Educational Materials for the World Wide Web

EOU Malheur County Center (541) 889-7468 or (541) 889-6222

kenningtons@fmtc.com

Return to Top