(Newbie.) Web (HTML) page editing in Kubuntu

[Derek Broughton]

Andrew Jarrett wrote:

> On Dec 19, 2007 9:20 AM, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> Andrew Jarrett wrote:
>>
>> > No personal experience, but logically speaking the output should be
>> > very similar (and the html just as messy) with the exception that
>> > Impress would probably give you more control over how everything
>> > looks.  The downside would be that a real webpage shouldn't look like
>> > a presentation slide.  Again, I have no personal experience in that
>> > area, but I think you should learn to use a _real_ web authoring tool
>> > like Quanta, Kompozer, or Bluefish (especially if you are in this for
>> > the long run).
>>
>> I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I really can't agree.  HTML is a poor
>> excuse for a programming language, and I just don't believe much is
>> served by using a program like Quanta.
> 
> I agree.  I have never considered any development with web markup
> languages to be "real programming", but what I am trying to say is
> that learning and understanding HTML, XHTML, CSS (et al.) might be
> better for the OP than (being limited by) OpenOffice.

Skip HTML and only use XHTML.  That eliminates one issue.

Now, CSS is important to learn and understand, and so is Javascript
(preferably using something like Prototype, which avoids having to program
to multiple browsers).

But from there, you want to try to stick to frameworks that require you to
generate the least possible HTML.

> My sticking point is 
> that I am of the mindset that people should know what's going on
> beneath the surface and I was just saying that _writing_ code *could*
> be more beneficial than having a WYSIWYG program write it for you.

I'm sure it _could_, but this is where we part - I really don't think it
should be necessary to _ever_ know what the black boxes do.  It's always
been a fine unix principle that you can push stuff into one end of a pipe
and get different stuff out of the other end, and you shouldn't need to
know what the process in the middle does, as long as you understand the
inputs and outputs, and I treat HTML that way :-)

>> I will make every possible attempt to not
>> write HTML for the rest of my life (and I build websites...)
> 
> Good luck with that one... ;)
> I'm a freelance web developer on the side, so I understand your
> frustration with HTML.  However, I hope there is some type of web
> markup language you fancy, or you might not be getting paid...

The idea is to avoid it as much as possible.  I probably won't ever
eliminate it, but I write less than I used to...
-- 
derek