WYSIWYG Web Editing
by Andy Rush

Wizzy What?

In the old days, HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, was written manually. HTML is a language made up of tags (commands) that surround text in a document. The tags then get interpreted by a web browser. Creators of web pages inserted the tags by hand to make the text look bold or italic, have large and small headings, and to insert pictures and hyperlinks. If you looked at the HTML Basics tutorial, you have a bit of an idea how an HTML document works.

There is an easier way. You need to find a WYSIWYG (pronounced "wizzy-wig") HTML editor. WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. It means you can build an HTML document in a word processor like fashion, and not worry about the tags so much. What you type in is pretty much how the page will look. Thankfully, there are two good and free WYSIWYG editors available. Netscape 7.0 comes with a program called Composer. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer no longer comes with an HTML editor, but you can still get Microsoft's Front Page Express (Microsoft has a full blown page creation and site management tool called Front Page 2002, "Express" is it's baby brother without the site management features).

Also, definitely worth mentioning is Macromedia Dreamweaver. The best web page editor/site managment tool ever!

How Do They Work?

FrontPage Express (FPE) and Netscape Composer have many similar features, though FPE is a bit outdated in looks. The toolbars from each program are shown below. If you are familiar with Microsoft's Office products, then the FrontPage Express toolbars will look familiar. Composer's interface resembles the Navigator browser, but it's pretty intuitive.

Netscape Composer

FrontPage Express

Again, you want to think of these programs as word processors, or better yet, HTML processors. No coding by hand, unless you want to (we'll talk about that later). The tags are added behind the scenes. A Netscape Composer tutorial is available on this site, and a Front Page Express tutorial is available at the AccessFP site.

You Can Use a Word Processor

All of the commands that are available in these two programs are also available in the latest versions of Microsoft Word and Corel Word Perfect. The key to making an HTML document is saving the file as HTML (makes sense). If you go to the file menu in Word there is an option to "Save As Web Page...", and in Word Perfect you need to select "Save As" from the File menu and in the dialog box choose the HTML file type. These programs will automatically generate the code, but they may only approximate the way you designed it in the word processor. HTML is not an exact science and these programs especially fall short. So how do you control everything?

You Can Code It By Hand!

The advantage of writing HTML code (placing the tags) by hand is that you assure yourself that there is no extraneous stuff inserted without you knowing about. Microsoft Word is famous for adding unnecessary code. You may approach the level of control that allows you to perfectly design a page. The disadvantage is that it takes intimate knowledge of the code and it's capabilities, i.e. years of practice and hours of study. So for most people, WYSIWYG is the way to go. By the way, Composer and FrontPage allow you to code manually. You can even switch back and forth from WYSIWYG to manual. Front Page has a built in text/HTML editor. Composer has a tab at the bottom of the screen to edit the HTML source. If you really want to learn more about manually writing HTML see the tutorial on HTML Basics.

There Are Other Ways!

There are other ways to create a homepage without any of the programs mentioned here. You can create HTML ON-LINE. Go to Teachers.Net Web Tools page or sign up for a web hosting service like Tripod and they will provide you with tools to get a web page up without knowing much about HTML.

Internet & Web

Web Browsers

Creating Web Pages & Sites

HTML Basics

WYSIWYG Web Editing