website building

[Randy Rathbun]

I agree. PHP rocks. Big time. That is what I run astrodot.org and
quitequitefantastic.org on. Granted, I did not write the underlying code,
but this thing is just so simple to fix problems on it is not even funny.
Just now I fixed some errors that were causing web browsers to be
misnamed - it thought Konqueror was Netscape. Simple fix! And ya gotta
like dynamic web sites. They are just too cool.

But I disagree about designing. This is probably going to start a flame
war now :). Actually, I like the web page maker in Star Office. Another
good one to look at is Amaya from www.w3c.org. Both of those do a nice
job, though they can be a total pain to use at times. When I am in a real
hurry I boot my laptop into Windows and run Macromedia Dreamweaver, which
is the best WYSIWYG page creator out there, imnsho. Hopefully this new
version of wine will fix my "have to use windows" thing and just let me
run DW from Linux.

On Sun, 10 Dec 2000, Tony Hammitt wrote:

> Yes, use a text editor and a couple of different web browsers.  A good
> text editor like nedit is much more flexible than anyone's integrated
> development environment, which constrict you to using their style of
> code, etc.  You can also use more than one kind of technology, like
> Perl along with PHP if you aren't stuck with an IDE.  Speaking of PHP,
> I've found that web development with it is extremely rapid.  You lay
> out the page how you need it to look then stick PHP code in where
> needed to customize the page.  So you usually have some working code
> that is easy to hack on, even just after you have started building the
> page.  As you go on, you have more code to steal from your old stuff,
> which is one of the things that an IDE isn't good at; swiping code from
> old projects.
>
> There is also the intangible benefits of knowing exactly how your site
> is put together so you can always fix it if there are problems.  It's
> more about maintainability than speed of development.  Anyone can hack
> together a website, but adding features is going to be easier if you
> write the code yourself.
>
> Not to say that all IDE's are bad.  They often provide workable starting
> points from which to build, but once you get past that stage, most have
> problems doing advanced functions.  Also beware of using things like
> FrontPage, which require propreitary server extensions that lock you into
> using just their server.  If you want to change providers, you may be
> out of luck.
>
> My personal opinions about web standards:
>
> If you have a windows box handy, you will probably want to use explorer
> and netscape or mozilla to check whether your site looks the way you
> want it to look for all users.  Also check your site using Lynx to make
> sure that people using text-based browsers can use your site, too.  Too
> many sites forget all about web standards and just use Flash or some
> other non-portable tool that leave the visitors with nothing to fall
> back on if they don't have that plug-in.
>
> Also remember that quite a few people have JavaScript turned off, so
> get familiar with the <noscript> tag if you use it.  Without it, you're
> alienating people again.  The goal is to make a site that people want
> to come back to, not to have some elitist site that requires the very
> latest releases of everything to work.  Millions of people still use
> windows 3.x with old browsers, make sure that they can still see things
> on your site.
>
> Have a fun day,
>
> 	Tony Hammitt
>
>
> mac ten wrote:
> >
> > I'm still extremely new to linux, I'm looking for a
> > stable program to build a website.  Does anyone have a favorite?
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products.
> > http://shopping.yahoo.com/
>

-- 

Randy Rathbun                            randy at randyrathbun.org
http://astrodot.org - 100% Amateur Astronomy. No preservatives.
http://randyrathbun.org          http://quitequitefantastic.org
I refuse to participate in HackSDMI.
 See http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Newsletters/EFFector/current.html

A man goes to a psychiatrist. The doctor says "You're crazy" The man says
"I want a second opinion!" "Okay, you're ugly too."
     -Henny Youngman