There are two ways that most people who create web pages do it:
either they hire a professional web designer, or they use some
visual HTML editing software. You could say that hiring a
designer is like getting someone to make furniture for you and
deliver it, while using an editor is more like buying flat-pack
furniture.
What I'm here to tell you, though, is that you should consider
doing things another way. I'm telling you that you should go get
yourself some wood and a saw. In short, you should do it
yourself.
Why Would I Do That?
No matter what you might do, unless you're doing it yourself -
that is, coding your website by hand - you're not going to have
full control. Doing it yourself gives you control over every
tiny, tiny detail, and puts you in a situation where there
should never be a problem you can't fix. You're not relying on a
company, or a designer, or anyone else - whatever goes wrong,
you can fix it.
Thanks to XHTML and CSS, creating websites by hand has never
been easier - in fact, once you know the basics, it's often
easier than fighting with some piece of software to get it to
make things look the way you want. Once you know the tag for an
image, it's much easier to just type it than go through a bunch
of menus. When you know you want something to be a certain
width, it's easier to type that in than to try to make it the
right size using the mouse. Web design benefits from the kind of
preciseness that you get from doing it by hand.
At every stage in the process, you know what you've done and you
know what you have left to do. If something isn't working the
way it should, you can easily look through, find the problem,
and make it right. Altogether, not only do you save the money
that you would have spent on Dreamweaver or FrontPage, but you
also end up with a better website in the end.
Tables and Coding
For a long time, the biggest reason to stay away from
hand-coding websites was that most complex layouts were done
using tables, and tables were hard, especially when you had to
put one inside another. Any modern website, though, really
shouldn't be using tables at all, which means that you won't
have to learn how to do them - that takes down the biggest
barrier to hand-coding. HTML is very easy to figure out, and
from there all you have to do is learn a little CSS (there are
plenty of good books on it, and there's not that much to learn
altogether) and you're away.
Re-using Code
There are only a limited number of things that you'd want to do
in HTML, and they've all been done by someone, somewhere. When
you see an effect you'd like to use on any website, anywhere,
knowing HTML means that you can simply use your browser's 'View
Source' function to see how it was done and adapt it for your
own website - this is generally considered an OK thing to do.
You'll also be able to start building up little libraries of
code you've written yourself - a two-column layout, a splash
page, and so on - and quickly adapt them as they're needed. Even
better, if you already have some HTML from a template that you
bought or that came with some software, having built websites
yourself will give you enough know-how to figure out how to edit
it and make it look exactly the way you want.
About the author:
Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain
Services
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