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8 Steps to Design a Surfer Friendly Website That Search Engines Love!
1) Crystal Clear Source Code (HTML/CSS) Many web-designers give far too much importance to the look and the graphics of the website while ignoring the clarity of the source code. Clean and well-written source code is the first step to website...
CGI Security Issues
When you are creating or using CGI routines, you must be careful to keep good coding techniques, security and just plain common sense in mind. Sometimes you can do things that cause serious unexpected site effects. In fact, sometimes you may think...
Dirty Web Promotion Tricks #1 - Legitimate and Malicious Javascripts
One of the best way to get visitors to further explore your site is to convince them to set your home page as their Internet start page, or for them to add you their "Favorites". In this article, we'll examine some ethical and unethical ways this...
Don't Blame It On The Webmaster
I'm going to try here to give you some very valuable information. We all have a tendency to want to blame someone else when something isn't right or the way we think it should be. If you take nothing else from this article take this, before you...
Elements of Graphic Design for Your Website
We’ve all seen them. Poorly designed web sites that make you cringe as soon as they load. But how do you keep your website from becoming, well, ugh. You could hire a professional web designer, and that’s expensive, or maybe you already hired a...
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Should You Bother Learning HTML to build Webpages?
The most popular method to build webpages today is to use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You
Get) software. Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver are prime examples of
WYSIWYG software. Both programs allow you to create webpages as though you were creating a
document with your favourite word processing software like Microsoft Word or WordPerfect.
Its as simple as entering paragraphs, headings and inserting clipart or images.
WYSIWYG software like those listed above are prefect for beginner webpage builders who want
webpages constructed quickly without having to learn HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).
All webpages are brought to life using HTML codes, regardless what webpage building software
is used. WYSIWYG programs simply create the HTML codes as you construct a webpage (in the
background, without you knowing), so you don't need to understand them.
This is without a doubt the biggest advantage over any other type of webpage building programs.
It means that if you can press keys on a keyboard, you have what is required to create your
very own webpage!
However, most WYSIWYG programs don't give you absolute, total control over webpage design (ie,
exactly the way you want the page to look). There are design limitations.
For example, you may want to place headings, sub headings and a navigation menu in a particular
arrangement on the webpage, but no matter how many times you try, the program won't permit
such placement or position them correctly. This is one big disadvantage of WYSIWYG programs if
you desire a custom look to all your webpages.
Knowledge of HTML, however, can assist you to overcome such design shortfalls in WYSIWYG
programs. How is this possible? Let me explain.
If you understand HTML codes, then you understand why webpages appear the way they do in a
web
browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. This is powerful stuff
because the moment you change/modify HTML codes, the webpage will take on a new design/appearance.
And don't forget that HTML codes are exact, giving you total freedom over how everything appears
on the webpage. Most WYSIWYG programs allow you to view and modify the HTML codes. As you can
see, knowledge of HTML is beneficial.
The downside to HTML is the learning curve. It takes time to understand how HTML works and why,
but once you know, using HTML to create totally custom designed webpages is easy. For the
beginner, HTML can be challenging, but don't despair because there are HTML tutorials available
that teach you basic and advanced HTML in a matter of days!
So the question is - Should you bother learning HTML to build webpages? The answer - yes and no.
It is obvious that WYSIWYG software speeds up production of webpage development regardless
of your knowledge on how to build webpages. However, to further refine and tune your webpages
exactly to your liking, it is usually necessary to add and modify HTML codes. So yes, HTML
is worthwhile learning if you are unsatisfied with the webpages produced by WYSIWYG software.
There is little point learning HTML if you are 100% satisfied with the webpages made with
WYSIWYG software.
One thing is certain. Using WYSIWYG software and learning HTML codes is the answer for those
of us who want webpages made exactly to our requirements. Learning HTML is not as hard as
you think. To get started, simply search any major search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN
using the search phrase "html tutorials", its that easy!
Les Pinczi is the creator of interactive HTML learning software to help you learn how to build a web page in hours!
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