editors, pro and con

Hello.........

I know that some people are very anti-editors, and others wouldn't be caught
dead without one or more of them.

While I have been building websites for a year now, I still considier myself
very much a novice. There are some aspects of site design that I am very
familiar, and very comfortable, with. There are others that scare the pants
off me, and I couldn't do them to save my life. Right now, I'm trying to do
my first frames site, and it's driving me bonkers.

I started out using a nifty little program called First Page 2000, put out
by Evrsoft. I got it because it was free. For a free program, it had a lot
to say for it. But, I still did about 90% of the coding by hand. I used the
editor as a framework for my coding, and occasionally relied on it to do
something that I didn't know how to do. The more comfortable I got with
writing HTML, the less I relied on the editor to do. However, I do remember
the time I spent three days scouring the web, going to various tutorial and
cut-and-paste sites, posting messages to discussion forums, and the like,
trying to find out how to do a mouse-over button. After three days, I let
out a big "Doh!" when I realized that First Page would do it for me. Just
recently, I put another mouse-over effect in one of my sites, and copied
some script out of my trusty O'Reilly book. (It didn't work, btw. I had to
get some advice from one of my fellow HWG list members to straighten it
out.)

Now I am trying to learn how to use Front Page 2000...mainly because it was
given to me. I still do 90% of my coding by hand. But, there are still times
when I'm not sure how to do something, and then I find out the program can
do it. I still try to learn how to do it myself. But it takes time to learn.

This is my opinion of how an editor should be used. Not to rely on it to do
the work for you, but as one tool among many. We learn by reading books, by
scouring the web for tutorials, by talking things over with our peers and
those who know more than we do, and by good old trial and effort. But, when
a tool is available for use, why not use it? Not as a crutch, but to give
assistance when needed.

Oh, and that extra code that editors put in or take out? That code can be
taken out or added. My pages that I did with First Page validated just as
well as the ones I coded completely by hand. I have yet to take one of my
Front Page pages to the validator, so we'll see what happens.

Comments?

Dusty
www.geocities.com/ussknight4141/index.html

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