Web Spinning
The Hard Way
by James E. Henderson
© May 3, 2000 revised 4/27/2002
What program do I use for building Web pages? Any text editor or word processor capable of working with ASCII text. I used to use Word Perfect, but never in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) mode, back when Corel first released their Linux version. I still use Word Perfect when working on Windows, but I don't build Web pages on Windows very often. Right now I'm using a text editor named gedit. But I'm experimenting with two new programs, Bluefish and Quanta. Bluefish is the more mature of the pair. Gedit is a Linux program written for the Gnome desktop environment. I work as much as possible in Linux, only going to DOS, Windows 3.1 or Windows 98SE when I have to do something special that I can't yet do under Linux, such as my annual taxes. As time passes, I can do more and more on my Linux system, and the programs are getting better and better now that KDE and Gnome are working and becoming popular. What are KDE and Gnome? They are desktop environments for the Linux graphic interface. Linux operates at several levels: the command line interface (CLI); the X-window interface; window managers; and desktop environments. Even in the simplest Linux environment, the command line interface, there are many text editors available: vi and its variations; Emacs; jed; and joe. In the graphic environment, there are publishing programs such as LyX, a front end to LaTeX; there are office suites such as Word Perfect and Star Office; and there are word processors like Abiword. I have gotten rid of most of the text editors and word processors I once had under DOS and Windows, keeping only Word Perfect. HTML is a simplified subset of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language. Early HTML was very simple. It was necessary to use something simple at first, when the Web was young and nobody had experience with it. It was too simple and couldn't do much. People wanted to do things that couldn't be done with HTML. What they couldn't do by improving HTML they did by adding Java, JavaScript (or its variations JScript and ECMAScript) or, most recently, XML (eXtended Markup Language), another subset of SGML. HTML is not static; it changes rapidly. Browser writers added extensions, with different features in each browser. Programs to generate HTML would generate the code to be displayed by a particular brand of browser, usually Internet Explorer or Netscape, both of which were derived from the original Mosaic browser. But the HTML code generated by HTML editors doesn't always work well for its target browser. They are incapable of producing clean code and the browsers ignore any code they don't recognize. Lots of extra code is generated ... and ignored. Humans are better at producing HTML code than programs are, so far. The browser wars have basically ended, replaced by attempts at standardization. HTML is mating with XML to produce XHTML for the future. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) have been added and new features are on the way. New browsers have been slow to adapt to the new standards, still incompletely defined. The people building pages have no control over the browsers users will employ to view their creations. Most test with several of the most popular recent browsers. I sometimes use my wife's Windows 98 system to test my pages and make sure they work with the Netscape and Internet Explorer programs there. At this point I want to mention a special class of browsers, text-only browsers like Lynx. They serve a very special class of users, the blind who have programs to convert text to the spoken word. They will not display graphics but will speak the ALT phrase if included in the graphics link. It is considered good form to include the ALT descriptions for this very special class of users, to help them distinguish the descriptions of graphics from the remainder of text on the page. The TITLE operator in an anchor serves a similar function. There are several factions at work so far. Browser manufacturers, who want to corner the market, favor adding features unique to their software. People building Web pages want as many people as possible to view their pages, having a pleasant time in the process -- and buying something whenever they can be convinced to do so. Advertisers, who want to bombard users with revenue-producing propaganda. Lawmakers, who fear not having control over any powerful system. Special interest groups, including the handicapped, who cannot appreciate and don't want features beyond simple text. The World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, want to build order out of the present chaos by specifying a powerful set of features that all browsers should share. Professional groups, whose members believe that Web page creation is a profession and should be done in a professional manner. Together they are producing the Internet. Tomorrow the Internet will be different. My little piece of it tries to be browser-independent, standards-compliant and, hopefully, entertaining.