CMSes, WYSIWYG -- why learn HTML?
Many libraries may wonder whether on-staff web-design expertise is truly necessary, given the proliferation of content-management systems and WYSIWYG tools such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver.
I'm here to say—maybe.
Major concerns for any library website migration fall into two groups:
- Patron concerns: usability, accessibility for the print-disabled, visual-design quality, printability.
- Staff concerns: maintainability, ease of content creation and updating, compliance with legal requirements.
In practice, ease of content creation has tended to trump all other concerns in libraries, which has produced some truly unfortunate results measured by the other criteria above. Most other industries have abandoned Microsoft FrontPage, for example; the HTML code it produces is thoroughly abominable for accessibility, printability, and maintainability. FrontPage is alive and well in libraries, though—and if you're using it, you need to stop as soon as you reasonably can; you'll thank me in a year or five, I promise.
(And if you're using Microsoft Word to produce HTML—please, please, please stop. I hate to beg, but Microsoft Word was an unconscionable thing to do to a poor innocent markup language like HTML. Don't even cut-and-paste out of Word into an HTML document if you can avoid it! Learn to love text editors; this is what they're for!)
Dreamweaver, on the other hand, can produce tolerably responsible HTML. The problem is, Dreamweaver has to be tweaked into doing so, and the tweaker needs to understand HTML to perform the tweaking properly. Anyone who relies on Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG interface exclusively is almost certainly not producing web pages that will meet legal accessibility standards, never mind future-proofing or easy maintainability.
Content management systems are much like Dreamweaver. They can produce HTML so beautiful it makes text artisans weep for joy—or dross almost as horrid as Microsoft Word. To embrace the former and avoid the latter, there's no getting around a need for HTML expertise in the CMS selection and customization/design process.
Be duly wary about trusting your CMS vendor/consultant's expertise, for all the obvious reasons. If you can't hire or create web-design expertise on your staff, at least find an independent contractor to give the results a swift once-over.
Once you have a responsible CMS up and running, though… the need for HTML expertise on your staff may go down precipitously. With a few simple precautions (such as never, ever pasting content from Microsoft Word!), a CMS can simply meander along doing the right thing, while staff with no web expertise whatsoever create and alter content in TinyMCE textareas or wiki markup or whatever's easiest.
For a small library, or indeed any library with limited IT expertise, that may be the Panglossian ideal. It's certainly a goal worth pursuing—especially if you're still using the horror that is FrontPage.
"(And if you're using Microsoft Word to produce HTML—please, please, please stop.)"
In an ideal world, I would agree. In the world we live in, though, I'd recommend using WordPress 2.1, which has a hidden TinyMCE feature which strips Word input into passable text.
See More Editor Options.
One of the problems when you're maintaining websites is that people often send you information to post in Word format. In a pinch, I copy and paste from Word or an HTML-based email message into Notepad. Then I copy and paste that into a wysiwyg editor. Of course, then you have to redo all the formatting. Generally, that doesn't amount to much and it does effectively strip out all the superfluous code.
Suzanne Reymer
Montana State Library - Billings Office
They baked that in, did they? Smart. The Drupal version doesn't, and I've had some trouble with Word pastes over on Five Weeks.
Joomla has a "paste from Word" option as well. I don't recommend it too much though. Much better to handle formatting using the wysiwyg and template.
I suppose that sometimes you do need to have the formatting remain stable. It's a drag when that happens
We find that with Joomla you do need to know html. For instance, you ought to know when settings are encumbering the code (using tables too frequently for navigation bars etc)
I'm here to say - yes
It's xhtml not Sanskrit...just a few things and you can be up and running, no reliance on software, able to interface with lots of systems...the learning curve isn't that high...css? ok, there's a lot to css, but xhtml is easy.
This weekend I changed the appearance of my blog and my del.ico.us tag roll BECAUSE I knew xhtml and css...w/out this knowledge I wouldn't have been able to customize or optimize my and my user's experiences.
I also use online course software that (at least w/Firefox) requires a certain amount of xhtml knowledge even to add a line break or paragraph...
If you're in a library with no budget, what's better than notepad and an ftp program...all you need to run a decent website (if you know how to code)
Before this "rant" gets too long...this question to me is kind of the same as "Why know any Dewey/LC?...I'll just look it up in the Catalog"
A friend wants me to create a website for her small bookstore. I have limited experience in creating websites but am looking forward to the experience. I'm very excited to learn how to create sites. She knows that this will be built whilst I learn and she's fine with that. What editor would you recommend for a beginner that will also be good for me as I pass the novice stage and into possibly a professional stage? W3C standards are seen as an important issue here. Also, ideally, I will be able to show her how to make minor edits (news, events, book signings) to the pages I have created. Sub question: she has her domain name(s) parked. Now, who to go through for hosting? Why?
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Submited by : Libros Gratis
Lots of good questions. Let me preface this by saying these are not my official endorsements. I don't work for any of these companies. I'm just a Web developer with 6 years of experience working with public and private organizations.
First off, out of Front Page, HTML-Kit, nVu, and many other HTML editors I've used, I've found Dreamweaver to be the best, especially where you are now. It's not too bad to start using it for WYSIWYG editing, but the HTML text edit is the best I've seen. And it has many advanced features you'll want as a pro, and integrates nicely with other Adobe/Macromedia products.
Now for hosting. I haven't found a host I'm really happy with yet, except when it's done within the client's organization. Since that may not be an option, here's a couple thoughts. I've used various large, extra cheap hosting companies. Google for Web hosts and thousands come up. You can go cheap, but you might lose customer service/support. You might go with a local web hosting company you can talk to and get some hand holding. The 99.999999% up time the big guys promise online is just marketing spin. Talk to the customer service and tech help for a company before you host with them. Side step the salespeople as much as you can.
That said, nothing's perfect. I had a bad experience with a super cheap host out of "Timbuktu". They cost a little more, but maybe finding a local Web host with good customer service and tech help will be really beneficial in the long run.
I hope that helps. Good luck with you endeavors.
All WYSIWIG editors break down at some point. They can save a lot of time putting in standardized chunks of code, e.g. setting up skeleton tags for a new page, standard table tags, etc. But in the end, when you need to get a page right, you need to be able to adjust the HTML code directly. WYSIWIG editors can only take you so far. As a parallel, anyone can use a simple software program to make music, but to make great music, it helps if you study musical notation, and composition.