[ale] OT easy html editor

[Geoffrey]

William Fragakis wrote:
<snip>
> Using HTML + CSS to accomplish this is like using a tank to drive to 
> the grocery store for the average user, imho. It takes a really good 
> understanding of coding both HTML and CSS to accomplish this, and 
> lacking that knowledge, an expensive proprietary wysiwyg editor like 
> Dreamweaver.  CSS is a pain enough to deal with in web pages if trying 
> to be very specific in layout.

Agreed.  Although CSS 3 is supposed to be addressing the various devices 
that now view webpages (mostly wireless, cellphones, Nokia's new toy). 
Still, html was originally designed for the www, with the assumption 
that you don't know what the display device might be.  There are print 
formating options in css now, although I'm not sure how extensive they 
are or what version they showed up in.

> This is never more 
> obvious than being in a school loaded with 800 x 600 monitors trying to 
> view a page written by someone who has a nice, sparkling 19" 1280 x 960 
> monitor and loves to use the full width- "Well, it looks fine on my 
> computer." - while the rest of us are scrolling right to see what was 
> hidden.

This, is a lousy developer.  Unless you can code your page so that it 
will be reasonably presented at a minimum of 800x600, as well as your 
1280x960, you should code for the minimum.  I've got a 21 and 22 inch 
monitor side by side, but I still view websites with a browser window 
that's 800x600.  I'd say 50% of the websites I view don't fit that size 
window.  That's not a problem for me, but what about the girl who's got 
the 14-15 monitor?  There are still plenty of them out there.  What 
about those mini laptops?  Sure some of them will go to 1280x960, but 
then you need a magnifying glass to read the bloody page.

> CSS makes it display like one, for example, by defining locations and 
> font sizes in specific terms. Yes, CSS does a good job but you have to 
> really know what you are doing to do it well - as a Mac user, I can't 
> tell you how many times somebody using Windows makes the CSS type 
> specification on a web page unreadably small for me. And then, you 
> still aren't accounting for browser differences (again, the original 
> poster didn't think he would even use Mozilla). I think a missionary 
> has better things to do than figure out how many pixels over or down he 
> needs the headline to be and where to put his img tags and what specs 
> he needs for every div and span. He wants to type a few words, throw in 
> a picture or two and be done with it.

Not to mention that even the latest version of IE is still broken and 
does not properly render CSS.

Personally, I would think someone in a situation such as a missionary 
would be much better off with a Linux based solution.

> I don't want to assume that someone who is having fits doing a two page 
> newsletter in Printshop is about to learn all the specs of CSS and whip 
> out notepad and write code. I've been writing html for years and still 
> struggle with the more arcane parts of CSS - one could be nasty and 
> assert that I have trouble with the more elementary parts as well ;-).

Agreed, with the exception of the self deprecating remark. :)

> As well, there are plenty of freeware, shareware and OSS ways of 
> dealing with .pdfs. My take is that he's creating a newsletter and 
> printing it out or emailing it along ("opening")- no mention was even 
> made of displaying it on the web. .pdfs have their virtues - they [can] 
> carry their own fonts and images. If our missionary friend wants to use 
> some obscure font he's found - and what Printshop user doesn't - how 
> does he _easily_ accomplish that in html/css?

Embedded fonts? Yuck.  I really don't understand the objection anyone 
would have to pdfs.  It's not open, but I've never seen a windows box 
since win95 that didn't have acrobat on it.  Further, he could always 
include a link to the adobe website, since a monkey could install 
acrobat from there on a windows box.  Seems to me that would be a whole 
lot easier then learning html/css.

> You may disagree - yes, in a strict sense I'm wrong but, then, I often 
> have trouble parking my tank at Publix. I think the suggestions about 
> using something like OpenOffice Writer are more appropriate.

So you're the guy who ran over my H2????  Agreed again on the OO suggestion.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey