Shel,
No, actually every page on the site was created using Composer.
It's true that I've tried to set things up to match various browser
window sizes, but it was done by setting the table width to 100% from within
Composer. Older versions of this software weren't very good at formatting
text around images, but the new one (6.02) seems to do a good job, which
will make it even easier to set things up for different browser sizes.
I entirely agree with you that the HTML code that Composer creates is
sloppy, for instance there are far too many <font> tags, but no-one viewing
the page will know that, unless they dig deep into it. Even if there's 1K
or 2K of unnecessary code in a page (and I doubt it), that's dwarfed by the
size of even the small icons at the bottom of each page, which are mostly 2K
or 3K in size. So the time taken to download the sloppy code even over a
slow modem is much less than the total page download time.
As an aside, my pages don't load particularly quickly (esp the wallpaper
pages), because I make my photos large - I'm looking 5 years into the
future, when many more people will have broadband connections, and when that
time comes I don't want to redo the hundreds of pages which are already up
there, let alone what I add between now and then. I am breaking the
wallpaper pages into smaller, more specialized pages to allieviate this
problem.
I have dug around in the HTML on occasion, but very rarely. I've been a
software engineer for 15 years, so I'm no programming novice, but even for
me manual generation of HTML code is just too burdensome. I take your point
that a good goal is to generate template pages (which is what I did also,
but using Composer), but even then you have to edit the things to create a
new page, and that's still more easily done using an WYSIWYG editor than
manually.
I guess the main point for me is that it seems reasonable to encourage
Paul and other web-building newbies to get started in the easiest possible
way, and if they find limitations with their method then by all means dig
deeper. I just hate the idea of people becoming discouraged and abandoning
the effort because it was too awkward, when an easier way was available. If
Paul or others enjoy the manual process, then for them that's certainly the
way to go. If they don't enjoy it, maybe it's time to examine alternatives.
There's no question that an HTML whizz could produce a far snappier and
fancier website than mine, and there are surely improvements I could make to
it; but at present I'm only concerned with getting lots of content up onto
the web in a simple, use to access format.
I do agree that getting hands-on experience in HTML can be very valuable,
but I've seen several people just give up after putting 5 or 5 pages onto
their website, which is why I gave my two cents worth earlier.
I'm going to be away for 2 1/2 weeks from tomorrow, I might be checking
the list periodically, but can't guarantee it! I actually only responded
because you'd thought that I hadn't done my pages with Composer, but once I
got started on this topic...
cheers,
Richard.
home page: www.richard-seaman.com
--- original message ---
Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 17:22:34 -0800
From: Shel Belinkoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: A Website (Hey, I'm trying)
If you check out Richard's code you'll see that he appears to have used
a program other than Composer to create the site. Further, he's used
some specific coding that allows the page to come up in a readable form
on many browsers and screen sizes. However, being readable is not
always the same thing as looking good, but given the choice, I'll take
readable and usable any day over something that jumbles the visuals on
one system or another.
Again I'm far - very far - from an expert here, so take my comments with
a bit of skepticism. OTOH, nothing, imho, beats some hands-on
experience writing code. I suppose it's like the difference between
manual and automatic cameras - and you know on which side of that
argument I stand <g>
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