Copyright 2004 by http://www.organicgreens.us and Loring Windblad. This article may be freely copied and used on other web sites only if it is copied complete with all links and text intact and unchanged except for minor improvements such as misspellings and typos. There are two major WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors available for beginners. These are: Microsoft FrontPage and Netscape Composer. So
question is which one is better?
They both have similar features and ease of operation. They can be used easily by beginners with only “in program help” features and you can design exquisite websites. The limit is your imagination.
In my mind, having used both of these programs, major difference between them is cost. Yes, Microsoft “charges you big bucks” for FrontPage while Composer comes as a part of Netscape program and it’s FREE. Just go to http://www.netscape.com, find and download their browser and install it and you have their Internet Browser, Netscape E-mail and a website Composer.
To check out some of simple work you can do with this FREE program (I get nothing for this, btw), check out my efforts at:
http://www.windydawn.com (an 7-year ongoing "work in progress") http://www.windydawn.com/wines (still being re-constructed and soon relocated) http://www.santaclaus-ca.com (added to every year) http://www.windydawn.com/phulam (pretty complete unless I add another chapter or two?)
My idea is that MS FrontPage and Netscape Composer are ideal for beginners as they provide so much help. Then you should move to Maccromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive when you feel yourself more comfortable with html code and finally, if you are serious about web design, you should reach hand coding level as it is still best way to code pages.
In final analysis, regardless of “program” you may use to help you design and build your website – or if you program it from HTML code – it is ultimately only as good as your imagination and your check-back validation of base code and overall site. Writing your own HTML code gives you freedom of using tags and styles as you want them to be used.
Do not forget, however, that ultimately invaluable final step: to validate your code, whether generated by hand coding or by one of WISYWIG programs. You would be surprised at number of errors actually created and overlooked during creative process. These can range from simple misspellings and run in code from broken links to invalid tag attributes.
As a final note, there are other free web page design programs out there which will work just fine. One of them is AOL web composer, which I haven’t used for about 6-7 years. You can easily search a site such as TuCows or Download dot Com for free web page building programs.
