What do people use to make websites?

Question

Well, I know a little HTML, and I'm just interested in playing around with it. I was wondering, though, do people usually write websites from scratch, or do they use templates, or do they use WYSIWYG editors?

To me, it seems like writing from scratch is unnecessary, nowadays, with the editors and templates we have, but maybe I'd be better off to try write something from scratch from learning purposes?

So, if I want to learn HTML better than I do, what is the best way to go about it (I have access to a free server) and how do professional website creators do it? Maybe this is an obvious answer but I'm quite new to it. Thanks!

Answer 1

If from scratch means hand-writing the markup, yes, that's the correct way to do it.

WYSIWYG, fully-bloated editors, are not good alternatives if you are serious about writing a web-site -- as most drag-and-drop-and-run systems out there. They might serve their purposes, but they are not general professional solution.

Hand-written markup (HTML, XHTML) and CSS will always provide better cross-browser compatibility, will be much more optimized and easier to maintain.

I really like Aptana Studio. It is an IDE that enables you to easily write the markup (HTML, XHTML), the formatting (CSS), the client-side code (ie, animations, etc, through JavaScript, and it is really well integrated with common JavaScript frameworks) as well as server-side code in a very professional way (PHP, Ruby, and many others). Oh, and it's free.

Aptana is better than, say, Notepad clones, because it is adapted to Web Development: all the time you have context menus popping up containing hints about compatibility, it displays errors on the markup, etc. It understands your code better than most notepad clones do.

Answer 2

Advanced users relies on the Visual Notepad :)

Answer 3

I definitely recommend writing from scratch when you are learning. Using a wysiwyg editor can create a lot of extra code that you have no idea how to deal with when something strange happens and you have to edit the HTML itself. Using something like Notepad++ that supports code highlighting can help a lot.

Answer 4

the secret of html is: not writing it. means: keep it as tiny and semantically as possible and thats where all WYSIWYG editors fail. they let you create 403 nested dom elements whit 2 mouseclicks and if you are a beginner you don't even realize how wrong that is.

Answer 5

I agree with others that learning HTML makes sense. But at the same time, you can use WYSIWYG as a learning tool if necessary. I know that when I first started creating websites, margins and padding always seemed hard to properly format (due in part to inconsistencies across various browsers), and using a visual editor did help me figure out how changing certain values affected the view.

My favorite WYSIWYG editor is probably Nvu just because it is free and less bloated than software like Frontpage. But as others have noted, just practice with HTML. Check out w3schools for a nice intro and reference pieces.

Answer 6

Depends on the budget and software adquisition posibilities (yes, the budget).

Assuming you are talking about research, design, development, scripts, flash and everything you need the best option is Adobe Creative Suite for Web Designers.

There´s no powerfull editor in the world than Dreamweaver and that´s a fact.

You should use Notepad, Notepad++, jEdit and whatever you want but if you want to be productive a serious IDE is the best choice and Adobe win by far.

My opinion!