[filmscanners] Re: Web home page writing software

["Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>]

Paul writes:

> But look at most professional web sites. They're
> full of nested tables, not to mention frames, plus
> little fragments of javascript for special
> effects, hit counters, etc.

No, they are not.  Professional sites contain only the HTML required to do
the job; amateur sites and wannabe sites contain a ton of code that usually
only partially works and requires a great deal of time to download.  In
particular, sites created by amateurs and wannabes using web-design software
contain an order of magnitude more code than necessary and almost never work
as they should; they are a bloated, unsightly mess that can scare away at
least as many visitors as it attracts.

As for very high-traffic commercial sites, they usually have full-time staff
to write their HTML.  But they still write all or most of it by hand.

> You can write that stuff if you want, but I wouldn't
> recommend it to most people.

I don't have to, and neither does anyone else.  You don't need "little
fragments of Javascript," or special effects, or hit counters in order to
make a site useful and interesting.  All you need is content.

> The largest Web sites on the Internet are written mostly by hand in HTML.
> It's not difficult at all.  My own site is entirely hand-written.

Where did you get that idea?

By looking at the code.  It's also the only way to get pages to work right
across a wide variety of environments and browsers.  Additionally, I used to
work for a company that was very well placed to know what was running on
these large sites.

> When I do a View Source on any major web site
> (Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon), it's obviously not
> hand-coded.

Those are exactly the sites I'm talking about.  Hand-written, for the most
part, for the reasons stated above.  It also reduces download time to write
only the code necessary, not whatever junk a web-design program puts into
the page.

The front page of Yahoo is very carefully handwritten in order to make sure
that it downloads as quickly as possible--you'll note that the site is
amazingly free of special effects, animations, and the like as well.  Google
is the same way.  But even complex sites like Microsoft's site are largely
hand-written.  It's easier than trying to find a web-design program that
will do the same thing, and do it well, and make it small.

> Many of the pages are dynamically generated based
> on queries, cookies, etc.

Using scripts that are handwritten.

There are telltale signs that something was written with web-design
software.  Such pages are usually bloated with code and take a long time to
download.  They include too many special effects for their own code, with
every link and graphic flashing and blinking and moving.  They tend not to
work on many browsers.  The code itself is usually a mass of
incomprehensible junk when you examine the source.

> It may not be done with something cheap like
> FrontPage, but when you see endless reams of
> nested tables with no indenting, you know
> you're dealing with HTML that was generated
> by software, not by hand.

No, you don't.  I've written stuff like that by hand.  It's not hard.  It
may or may not be indented, depending on how it was edited.  HTML generated
by scripts often does not have pretty indentations; but the scripts are
handwritten, too.

> Not erroneous links.

Bad links are human error.

> And if you are doing something like a photo
> album by hand, you have to make sure that you
> create all the thumbnail images by hand, given
> them names related to the image names, and make
> sure that none of your HREFs are misspelled.

So?  It's not difficult.

> If you use an automatic tool, you wind up with
> HTML that's guaranteed to be correct.

For someone with more money than time or competence, then yes, a web-design
package might be a good choice, as long as the site is not too complex.  For
large and complex sites, or high-traffic sites, or for persons on a budget,
handwritten HTML is better.

> Well, I don't want to get into a flame war
> with you.

No flames intended.  I just don't like to see misinformation spread around.
It's easier to write your own HTML with a text editor than it is to use an
expensive web-design program.

HTML is easy to learn.  It takes very little to build a Web site by hand,
and it saves you time and money.  You can learn enough to build your first
Web page in about fifteen minutes.  And if you ever build a really big or
busy site, you'll probably end up writing it by hand, anyway, so knowing
HTML always comes in handy.

> I do know HTML, and have created simple web
> sites with text editors.

Then I'm surprised you'd recommend web-design junk, or compare HTML to a
programming language, since it is nothing of the kind.

> And I think your recommendations are lousy advice
> for someone else who wants to create anything
> beyond a very basic web site with very few links,
> the simplest page layout, and no dynamic
> content.

But that's EXACTLY the kind of site that will attract the most visitors.
People look for content on Web sites, not cartoons and special effects.  If
you have the content, they will come.  If you don't have the content, you
shouldn't be building a Web site in the first place, and so special effects
and Flash animations won't matter.  Newbie webmasters never seem to
understand this.

For someone putting photos on the Web, a simple Web site is the best Web
site.  Either he has nice photos, or he doesn't.  But the number of Flash
animations or twinkling rollovers or Perl scripts or Javascript cookie
managers he jams into the HTML isn't going to make any difference for site
traffic and utility over the long term.  Content is everything on the Web.



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