website creation tools
 

OK, thanks to amazing brilliance and sparkling personalities of the people here at linuxquestions.org, i've managed to get a rather neat, albeit little, server running slackware 10, apache, php, and mysql (go me).

now, i'm about to load some website creation software on my daughter's pc so she can learn to become a webpage creating monster....

I've heard the term "frontpage extensions", and will be looking up some more information on how to install fp2k extensions on the slack box,,,, mainly because i own (well, as much as you can "own" ms software) a copy of fp2k and fp98,,,

I also own Dreamweaver MX, and i'm thinking that may be the way to go to teach her to use dreamweaver (you are a little "closer to the code" with dreamweaver).

And i own a copy of a few other "oddball" little site design programs.

Aaaaaaaaanyway,,,,,,,,,

Any suggestions? anyone have any particular probs with dreamweaver or fp on slack10?

PS,
I can't put her on a linux box, she's a game freak and i really just don't have time to learn how to "wine" everything she wants to do.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated :D

Abandon Frontpage extensions. All they are is a collection of CGI applets that try to provide added functionality. In addition, they can allow remote administration/uploads of sites without using FTP.

Really, unless you're hellbent on using Frontpage, there's absolutely no reason to enable the extensions on your server. You can easily accomplish everything that FPX enable through PHP and MySQL, and those two products are a whole lot more secure.

Just create the webpage in PHP, and upload it through FTP. Or failing that, do the webpage editing/creation in PICO through SSH. You say that you're basically just starting out, so why not start out with something like PHP instead of frontpage?

That explains a lot
 

I'm actually used to using dreamweaver locally and ftp'ing to "appliances" (cobalt RAQ servers) located at remote, and sometimes local locations....

but, the whole reason why i came to linux was to learn how to "really" learn how the servers worked,,, now i'm addicted to learning linux (there needs to be a warning label on the cd's).

Anyway, this explains why sun hasn't updated frontpage extensions for the RAQ systems that i use in a long time... i didn't know there was such a security risk involved.... wow.

So, looks like i'm going with Dreamweaver MX on her machine and i'll teach her how to upload.

Sometime soon, i'll change her machine and put her in a dual boot Vector and win machine.

Thanks again for all the help.

Be Happy!

oh, she's running win. :o sorry. :D

All webpages should be made using vim. Anything else is for failures.

:eek:

:p



for her, i meant. :D

Wuss. Real men use ed.


Then again, I'm a complete pussy and usually use SciTE. :)
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html
It's available for Win and Lin.

Alternatively, there's Crimson Editor
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/
It's another free programmer's editor. This one's only for Windows, but it does the job pretty well.

I'd suggest using either of them, as they'll allow you to get right in there and actually work on the code directly. Familiarity with DreamWeaver is all well and good, but you won't really learn all that much about how websites are constructed, or about improving your coding skills.


g'luck.

I rather like Kate myself. Its text highlighting and tree collapsing of functions and things is quite handy. I love programming PHP in Kate.

SciTE does that, too, nama, and it doesn't require that you install KDE. :)

I do all my development in Bluefish under Linux, but that's of no help to you.

I'd recommend staying away from whatever Adobe is flogging these days. Pagemill was alright, but whatever the successor they put out was called sucked, bigtime.

For extremely rudimentary, beginning websites, you might just get her using Mozilla-- the composer isn't a bad program in general, and it's free.

Once she starts asking how to do more convoluted or interesting things, you can either migrate her to Dreamweaver or get her set up with a shell account and teach her how to use vi and get down to the nitty gritty.

You may want to try NVU: http://www.nvu.com/

I like quanta and bluefish, but I hate kde ;D

I prefer just Vi to do the job :cool:

And about FrontPage just hearing this name I get seek... if there is something I really hate is FrontPage. And I would never aprove such a thing like FrontPage Extensions (uncle bill never stops trying dominate the world with his all-bug-programs)

;D

Yeah if you don't wanna run kde(which you dont have to in order to use kate) then I can understand that. But kde's kioslave's is indispensable when working with remote files. Just open and use "fish://" and as long as the host is running ssh you can access it easily and securely. I suppose you could also use shfs but doing it on the fly is so much more convenient also. Plus shfs is quite buggy and it seems there isn't much going on with it anymore. Or at least he's really quiet about anything he's doing.

Been using it too, just for the "one-click" webpages though. Anyway, NVU is available for both linux and windows, so if you want to switch to linux completely you don't have a web-editor problem ;)

Mozilla Composer is not bad... It's part of the Mozilla "Suite", and one of two features that are not (yet) available in the same quality as a Firefox plugin. Mozilla is included with Slackware, and available for Windows, too.

gargamel

I'm surprised no one has suggested Emacs. If you change you .Xmodmap and remap youp Left Ctl to Caps Lock, it's a great editor. I'm just getting back into html after a 3 yr break. I prefer doing it all myself, makes it easier to find mistakes and you learn much more that way.

www.pagetutor.com gives you a quick tutorial on making webpages.

maybe because he's asking about what windows app for his daughter who uses windows? don't worry, it threw me at first, too, until i did more than quickly scan what he was saying.

what this thread is doing in the slackware forum i have no idea. :confused: at best it should be in the linux general, or even general, probably.

Use the proper W3C Tools (replacements for Front Page, MS Publisher and others):
W3C Amaya
Amaya is a complete online web browsing and authoring environment and comes equipped with a WYSIWYG style of interface, similar to that of the most popular commercial browsers. With such an interface, users do not need to know the HTML or CSS languages.
NVU
NVU (pronounced N-view, for a "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.
Quanta Plus.
Quanta Plus is a web development tool for the GNU/Linux K Desktop Environment. Quanta is designed for quick web development and is rapidly becoming a mature editor with a number of great features and lies at the heart of the KDE Web Dev suite of tools.
Bluefish
Bluefish is a powerful editor for experienced web designers and programmers.
Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, but it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites.
Mozilla Composer
Mozilla's HTML editor keeps getting better with dynamic image and table resizing, quick insert and delete of table cells, improved CSS support, and support for positioned layers. For all your simple documents and website projects, Composer is all you need.
SCREEM
Screem is a web development environment. It's purpose is to increase productivity when constructing a site, by providing quick access to commonly used features. While it is written for use with the GNOME desktop environment in mind it does not specifically require you to be running it, just have the libraries installed.
Unlike most other HTML editors SCREEM does not provide a WYSIWYG display of pages. Instead you are presented with the raw html source in its editor window.
Scite
SciTE is a GUI-based single-document editor which uses the Scintilla editor component. It rapidly styles most common programming languages with good control over how syntactic elements are displayed, and features folding for C++, C, Java, JavaScript, and Python. Styling of HTML also styles embedded scripts written in VBScript, Javascript, or Python.

Of course you can always use a text editor to code.

For Windows user I would recommend HTML Kit
HTML-Kit is a full-featured, highly customizable and free development environment that can be used to create, edit, validate, preview and publish web pages and scripts. Despite its name and the light download size, HTML-Kit is a multi-purpose tool that has support for several scripting and programming languages. Over 400 free plugins are available for extending and customizing HTML-Kit to fit the way you work.

Memory serves, there is a version of Emacs for Windows though.

Also, I would seriously suggest that your daughter *not* learn on Frontpage, and that any copy of it is purged from said computer - besides trying to force its extensions on you, the code it produces is pretty shabby as well and not very conducive to learning HTML/XHTML.

I would probably recommend Dreamweaver for web developing in Windows - it can be a bit more intimidating than FrontPage to start with, but once you get into it, it's a lot more flexible and powerful.

and i'm sure that's the first choice of windows users everywhere. :rolleyes:

Oooops
 

yeah, you guys are right, this doesn't really belong in Slackware section... sorry.

Anyway thanks for all the ideas, but i think i'm going with dreamweaver MX for her to start with, at least so she can get some stuff up quickly, but still uses the "split screen" style to show what she's creating (sort of) and gets her close to the source code.

Then, when she wants to do something that Dreamweaver doesn't do (unless one purchases all these "packs" for hundreds of dollars) she'll have to look it up and go into the code..... and knowing her, it should take her a few days to want to do something that dreamweaver won't do out of the box.

I'm also giving her the "teach yourself HTML" CD and book that used some years ago,, it is a bit dated, but then she can pop down some raw code and really begin learning how this all works.

I do believe i'll be setting her up a dual-boot system soon,, i believe i have an 800 mhz board and processor somewhere, then we'll get into "why linux is better than win". Then she'll be tearing up the Vector Linux discussion boards.

Maybe after she sees "march of the penguins" she'll really want to go Linux.

Thanks for all your help, you have all given me much to think about,,,,,, be happy.