Ryan Mann wrote:
Out of curiosity, why not learn HTML? There are a lot of free html
tutorials on the web. One is at http://www.w3schools.com/html/
I strongly agree with the sentiment that the best thing to do is learn
HTML and use a decent text editor like Smultron to produce it.
Leaving aside aesthetic aspects (as usual Apple is masterly there), iWeb
produces the worst output of any HTML authoring tool I've seen yet. HTML
has lots of specific elements (or codes, in layman's terms) for various
purposes, such as quotations, headings, lists, and paragraphs. But iWeb
invariably uses "span" (a generic element without any meaning at all),
so you can't navigate an iWeb site by heading for example. For lengthier
critiques of iWeb's approach, see:
http://www.w4a.info/2007/prog/14-power.pdf
http://www.atpm.com/12.07/web-accessibility.shtml
http://www.phest.net/home/iweb-a-blessing-or-a-plague
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200603/iweb_the_new_tag_soup_generator/
I would, however, caution against learning HTML from w3schools because
while it presents things in an approachable manner, it also contains
glaring inaccuracies that will have to be painfully unlearned. For
example, this page on semantic phrase elements like em, strong, code,
and cite (that's emphasis, importance, code, and citation respectively)
implies they should be avoided in favour of stylesheets:
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_phrase_elements.asp
When in fact it is presentational elements like b, i, and u (that's
bold, italic, and underline) which should be avoided in favour of those
semantic phrase elements where applicable and stylesheets.
I've collected a series of resources for people starting web authoring at:
http://webdev.benjaminhawkeslewis.com/getting-started
You may find them helpful.
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Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
