Web Authoring Software

When the web was young and HTML was relatively simple, using vi, emacs, and other UNIX text editors was a viable method for creating and editing HTML documents and maintaining a web site. Some would still argue that editing raw HTML text files helps you to learn HTML and also fine-tune the design of web pages in ways that dedicated HTML editors cannot. Also, vi variants such as vim and emacs now come standard with HTML modes, including color syntax highlighting.

However, with more tags being added as the HTML (and now the XHTML) standard matures, and with the need to pay attention to CSS, Doctypes, the DOM, JavaScript, etc., it may be worthwhile to mention some alternatives to plain text editors for web page authoring and web site maintenance. Among these alternatives are word processors, filters, and dedicated HTML editors.

Office Suites and Filters

A quick way to create a web page is to prepare the document in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processor application and then save the document as HTML. Word processors for UNIX that can do this sort of work include the Sun StarOffice (http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice) and OpenOffice.org word processors. Typically, these word processors include a software filter that can convert their native file format’s formatting to HTML code. Unfortunately, the HTML code that these word processors’ filters generate can be a mess and can be very difficult to manually edit if the need arises (the same can be said of the HTML generated by WYSIWYG HTML editors, which are mentioned later). Also, the look and formatting of the document in the word processor often does not translate well to a web page. Otherwise, the word processor to HTML approach is fine for simple documents that need to be generated quickly The StarOffice and OpenOffice.org suites also include presentation software that usually does a good job of converting electronic slide presentations to HTML; this makes it easy to publish your presentations to the web.

For UNIX users who prefer to use LaTeX to generate all their documents, there is a command-line latex2html filter (http://www.latex2html.org). The latex2html filter generates cleaner HTML than the word processor filters.

The Website META Language (WML, http://thewml.org) is more of a web site programming tool than a filter. It is billed as an “off-line HTML generation toolkit for UNIX.” The idea in the WML is to describe web pages in a higher-level language than HTML and then use filters to build the HTML documents all at once in a manner akin to building a large C/C++ project using a makefile. This method lends itself to building sites with a very consistent look and layout.

Dedicated Web Page Editors

Dedicated web page editors, also called HTML editors, usually try to be all-in-one web publishing solutions, including features to upload files and directories to remote web servers and also to manage multiple versions of files. All HTML editors provide all or a subset of the following features: drop-down menu access to commonly used HTML tags, tools to ease the building of HTML tables and forms, support for the different HTML/ XHTML standard Doctypes, support for the integration of JavaScript and CSS in page building, DOM support and support for CGI script languages, and remote publishing of files to a server via FTP or another network protocol. The sections that follow describe some HTML editors that are available as binary packages or can be compiled from source code on Linux and UNIX platforms:

Non-WYSIWYG HTML Editors

Bluefish (http://bluefish.openoffice.nl), Quanta Plus (http://quanta.kdewebdev.org), and Screem (http://www.screem.org) are non-WYSIWYG HTML editors. They are designed to appeal to users who have some prior knowledge of HTML. The HTML editing is done in the main edit window in these applications, which offers syntax coloring, syntax highlighting, and automatic tag completion. HTML tags must be typed in directly or inserted using a tag button bar or the drop-down menus provided. Since there is no WYSIWYG mode, the HTML pages being written must be previewed in a web browser using a preview button or preview menu item. Figure 27–17 shows a screenshot of the Quanta Plus editor.

Figure 27–17: The Quanta Plus HTML editor

WYSIWYG HTML Editors

Amaya (http://www.w3.org/Amaya), Mozilla Composer (http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x), and Nvu (http://www.nvu.com) are WYSIWYG HTML editors. They may appeal to users who have little to no prior knowledge of HTML but who have used a WYSIWYG word processor.

Amaya is an editor and browser, developed by the W3C to be used as a test bed for new web technologies that have not made it yet into major production web browsers. As an editor, it is rather rudimentary and has poor CSS support.

Mozilla Composer is part of the Mozilla browser suite, has many of the same features as the non-WYSIWYG editors mentioned previously, and may be a good choice for a beginning web page author.

Nvu, based on Mozilla Composer, is intended to have a feature set comparable to well-known, “professional-level” HTML editors on the Windows platform, editors such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. A screenshot of Nvu in WYSIWYG mode appears as Figure 27–18.

Figure 27–18: The Nvu HTML editor