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Website development

Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Nap, interrupted.
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Joined
Aug 3, 2001
Messages
19,141
I need recommendations for a good Website development application. Inexpensive is good, but easy to use and powerful is better.

~~ Paul
 
I'm sure I won't be the only snob to say that the best website development tool is undoubtedly Notepad, with xhtml and php.

I'm told Dreamweaver is very good, but I can't stand the code it outputs. Coffeecup used to be very good if you had a little html knowledge. Frontpage is Satan.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Rat, you use Notepad as a program editor? Holy yikes!

Okay, should we go the manual route, what's the best book(s) on XHTML and php?

Meanwhile, folks, keep the recommendations coming.

~~ Paul
 
I use UltraEdit as editor. Great editor, very flexible. And yes, I hardcode too. Sorry, but that's the way to go. You need to understand the code before you can use it.

Compare it to composing: Before you know about harmony, scales, keys, and compositional styles, you can only compose a simple tune. But you just don't need to know about it, you have to breathe it.

I templatize, isolate functions and reuse code - rigorously. That way, I can not only secure solid coding, as well as short development times, I can also make major changes in very little time. I also use this approach in design, user interfaces and information architecture, too.

It helps a great deal by keeping a library of reusable code that has stood the test of time. There is no need to code something that you have already coded once.
 
Well, having been a programmer since forever, I'd probably be more comfortable with the coding route, too.

So I need book recommendations!

~~ Paul
 
I would say the Bible series is by far and away the best for learning. I'm not sure whether there's an XHTML one yet, though. The route I went was to read the HTML4 one, then just upgrade my knowledge online, mainly via the useful but interminably dull W3c recommendations.

I agree about the comparison with music. You have to know what the rules are before you can break them. I know plenty of people who use Frontpage or whatever to set up a basic page, then open the code in Notepad (or whatever) to tidy it and finish it. I'm afraid I do the whole thing from scratch every time using either Notepad (here at work) or Notetab (at home). I like Notetab because having white text on black is easier on my eyes.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Jalfrezi has some very good tutorials on the basics, and a little info on some more advanced topics (like stylesheets and DHTML). Won't help much on stuff like php or asp, though.
 
Just use your favourite text editor. If you are used to color coding of syntax, see if you can find a version that color-codes html. There are some good resources on HTML on the web - just google on HTML tags - and browse from there.

A good way of learning is to find some existing web pages with features you like, and use the 'view source' option. You will soon see which pages have been generated properly, by humans, or human written PHP code etc., and which ones have been generated by WYSINWYG tools like (ugh) FrontPage.
 
Frontpage is perfectly decent, provided you stick to the code view and don't use the design view. I've never had any problems with it...but then, I code mostly in ASP, and Microsoft products usually get along with each other.

But Notepad is probably better. All that razzmatazz can get in the way, and sometimes "helpful features" are just irritating. Not to mention that it's freeeeeee. Which always helps. Plus you get snob points for programmer purity!
 
Why asp? Why not php? In this case, it's a genuine question and not just snobbery.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
I'm a web programmer, which to me means I do mainly the code that drives the pages and I try to avoid touching actual HTML as much as possible.

My personal tehchnicque is to use a text editor, but I like at least to have syntax highlighting, which notepad doesn't support AFAIK. I therefore use VIM, some folks prefer EMACS, I think it's just a matter of which you learned first. There's also a number of free IDEs that can do syntax highlighitng and more.

I don't know what technologies I would recommend, but I would seriously recommend PHP over ASP. PHP is portable to nearly any webserving platform in the universe, and it's all open source... ASP is the opposite of that. You could also use Perl or any other scripting language as you prefer.
 
Whisper- my preferred text editor is still DOS EDIT.Exe
So, I'm a caveman. Sue me.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Whisper- my preferred text editor is still DOS EDIT.Exe
So, I'm a caveman. Sue me.
Click to expand...

Edit is so new-school. Real DOS guys used debug. Wanna-bes use edlin. You don't even rate at edit.

:P
 
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