The Tools for Web Publishing

The Tools for Web Publishing

I've already mentioned it above-all you need is a text editor. In Windows 95, that's Notepad or WordPad. For Mac users, SimpleText is the perfect HTML editor. UNIX users can opt for VI or Emacs. Basically, all you need to remember is that HTML pages, while they include the .htm or .html file extensions, are simply ASCII text files. Any program that generates ASCII text files will work fine as an HTML editor-even a word processor like WordPerfect or Microsoft Word.

If you create an HTML page in a word processor, don't forget to use the Save As command to save it as an ASCII text file.

You'll also need a Web browser to check on the appearance of your Web page as you create it. All Web browsers should have the ability to load local pages from your hard drive, just as they can load HTML pages across the Web. Check the menu of your Web browser (if it's a graphical browser) for a command like File, Open

You may have heard of some dedicated HTML editing programs that are designed to make your work in HTML easier. They do indeed exist, and they can be very useful. Unfortunately, many of them also hide the HTML codes from the designer, so they would be difficult for us to use as you learn how HTML works. Once you understand HTML, though, it can be a great benefit to use one of these browsers.