HTML Help

garygugu · Joined: 31 Dec 2008 Posts: 1

I use yahoo sitebuilder for several fairly robust web sites, I know the drawbacks...yahoo locks you in, and its better to use non-proprietary tools. Anyone know a really good non-proprietary (by which I mean..not locked into yahoo hosting) tool that has excellent WYSIWYG functionality plus ability to insert HTML?

My web sites are pretty sophisticated commercial sites, not just simplistic personal pages. However, I did not come into web devel from any programming background, which is why yahoo's "Sitebuilder" tool was so appealing. Its perfectly WYSIWYG, but also allows you the insert html. I'm clever enough to be able to view others pages, dissect the HTML and recode it to perform similar functions in my sites (example: using "includes" to propagate a header). But I can't just write raw code, and don't want to take a year off to study it.

The problem: I want to switch to a non proprietary tool, but everyone I looked at falls into one of two categories:

1) simplistic crap designed to create a few basic templates for personal home pages
2) more sophisticated, claims to have WYSIWYG capability, but it doesn't really work. For instance, the tool will allow you to drop an image onto a page, like in Sitebuilder, but it doesn't allow you to drag it to exact position you want it, it just left justifies it, and it seems to get it right you have to switch into the HTML window and recode it.

With Y Sitebuilder what I see on screen is EXACTLY how it publishes, and added HTML is as simple or as sophisticated as I want it to be. While at the same time I don't have to write the code for every single text box or image placement...Y/S does it for me.

Any suggestions?

Corey Bryant · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 3:59 pm

There are a couple of WYSIWYG editors: Microsoft Expression Web, Dreamweaver, Nvu, Sharepoint. The problem with "designing" - you might create code that has aboslute positioning. Now absolute positioning is not bad, but it is usually better to let the elements fall into place as the browser loads the code / content.

I have used FrontPage and now Expression Web. Expression Web will try to absolute position elements if you tell it to, but I prefer not to use absolute position. Microsoft has a free 60-day trial that you can use to test the program.

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Corey
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