Writing for the World Wide Web
Using Webpage Editors
HTML Editors
(using HTML code)
WYSIWYG Editors
(designing visually)
With HTML editors (also referred to as text editors or code editors) you can manipulate the code directly to create your webpages. When you use an HTML editor, you see the HTML code for the pages you are creating and cannot see exactly what the webpage will look like until you load the page into a web browser.

HTML editors require knowledge of HTML code for any features you might want to program into your webpage, but often allow you more control over the design of your page. Ensuring that a page looks and functions exactly how you want it to is easy because of this direct control over the HTML code.

Some free HTML editors are available here.

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors allow you to design your webpages visually. When you use a WYSIWYG program, you are seeing in the program screen what your page will look like when you post it on the Internet.

WYSIWYG editors require only a little knowledge of actual HTML code. However, these programs can sometimes add unnecessary code to your pages or design a page for a specific browser (as in the case of Microsoft Word creating webpages that are best viewed in Microsoft Internet Explorer); and webpages are sometimes difficult to "fine tune" when using WYSIWYG editors, which is why we are also learning how to use HTML code.

Some free WYSIWYG editors are available here.

Using Microsoft Word as an HTML Editor
We've seen that Word seems to have a problem with creating pages that are not compatible with some browsers, especially Netscape; there is a way to fix this... So, if you are interested in using Microsoft Word as your WYSIWYG editor (and want to create pages that work), follow these steps:

PC Users Macintosh Users
  1. Open Microsoft Word.
  2. Under  Tools  in the file menu, click  Options... 
  3. Click the  General  tab at the top of the window that opens.
  4. Now at the bottom of the window, click  Web Options... 
  5. In the window that opens, click the  General  tab.
  6. Check the box next to  Disable features not supported by  under  Appearance .
  7. In the pulldown bar under  Browser  choose "Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape Navigator 4.0."
  8. Click  OK  (the window will close).
  9. Click  OK  again.
 Note:  To the best of my knowledge, this feature is not available on the Macintosh platform.


Home | Course Information | Assignments | Schedule | Class Notes | Resources | Student Pages