I have been doing freelance web design for 7 years now and a question I hear very often is "Do I have to learn Html or can I use of those software programs like FrontPage or Dreamweaver? And what do those programs do anyway?" Well, I thought you'd never ask (actually yes I did=) HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is a programming language used to display text and graphics through a web browser such as Internet Explorer.

Like any programming language HTML has a structure and formatting functions called “tags”, I don’t know what the latest count is but HTML 4.0 had about 200+ tags. As far as programming languages go HTML can be considered pretty simple compared to all the others. If you have any programming background whatsoever then you should find it easy to learn HTML, if you have no experience at all with programming then HTML could seem a hefty challenge to you. Take my advice when I say that at first glance HTML looks like Chinese Algebra but as you learn it you get a feel for it very quickly. If you are going to take some time out to learn HTML I would say that the best thing to concentrate on is the creation and manipulation of tables. Tables are the ultimate layout tool for web pages, many websites that you visit use tables to layout their whole design. Just do a Google search on anything and click on some of the sites to visit their homepage and on the menu at the very top of your browser click the “View” menu, a new menu will drop down and you will see an option that says “Source”, click this. The HTML code that was used to create that web page will open in Notepad. You will often see a lot of table HTML tags, because with tables you can have excellent control over the position of your web page elements.

So what now you ask? What if I don’t want to learn HTML and all that, can I still build a website? Yes, you can. You can choose from various software programs that are affectionately nicknamed WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. The reason they are called that is because what you see in the design window of the editor is (hopefully, usually) what you will see when you upload the page to the internet. There are normally 2 modes of working in an editor: the “design” mode and the “code” mode. In the design mode you are looking at what should be the version of your page as it would appear on the web, in the code mode you are looking at the HTML that is being used to design that page. You can work from both modes on the same page and during the same session. If you do not know HTML then you would just use the design mode. Those who know HTML can either switch between modes or even just hand code the whole page manually.

Advanced web designers usually use manual HTML to carve out the structure of the page and just use the editor to drop in all of their content. It can become very tedious to have to type the same insert image code 15 or 20 times on the same web page.

So, if I am going to use an editor which one should I use? Good question, there are quite a few options out there, here I will discuss two of those programs which are really the two most popular; Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe (Formerly Macromedia) Dreamweaver. FrontPage is great for beginning webmasters where Dreamweaver is more a tool for intermediate to advanced webmasters, however Dreamweaver can still be used by beginners but it just might take a little longer to learn all the options and palettes that are used during site designing. My personal favorite happens to be Dreamweaver but FrontPage has been getting better with every version.

FrontPage and Dreamweaver also come with pre-designed website templates that the user can choose to build their site with. These templates, in my opinion, are great for the novice genre because all it requires of you is a basic idea of what you want your site to look like, and then it is just a matter of dropping in the images and text. The only drawback is when you publish your site on the web you will have a billion other sites that look like yours. So my recommendation is that you change the template up a little bit when you are designing it. Change the colors and the fonts to suit your taste, this way it will have a little bit of uniqueness about it. Below is a screen shot of Adobe’s Dreamweaver 8, just to give you a basic idea of what you’ll be working with. You can try this software for 30 days absolutely obligation free. All you have to do is go to Adobe's website and download and install the trial version. I would strongly suggest that you take the tutorial that they offer for free to you, it is built into Dreamweaver and it clearly explains to you how to do some of the more common tasks that are involved with building a website.

Well, I hope that about answers your question and clears up any confusion about HTML or the editing programs. Also remember that if you have any questions you can always email me, I usually respond to my emails within 48 hours.


Dreamweaver