I'm with you. I haven't personally used FrontPage, but I've taken over
sites that had been built with it. It creates such a tag soup that it's
given me a really bad (make that really, really bad) taste in my mouth
for FrontPage.

Personally, I would commend a good code-oriented text editor to you.
I'm quite happy with SciTe, because it gives me great syntax
highlighting. It also understands languages like PHP and Ruby, so it's
better suited to scripting than Dreamweaver or something (you can edit
any text file with Dreamweaver too; you just don't have so much text
editing out of the box). If you're going to do much with a web site,
you ought to expect to use scripting languages eventually if not at
first.

One other issue in this: if you want to make a first-class web site,
you'll want to set up a css-based layout rather than a table-based
layout. Others may disagree with me on this, but without taking time to
lay out the case, I think I have the votes of virtually all
forward-thinking web developers. Last I checked, all of the mainstream
WYSIWYG editors create table-based layouts, so if you use them, you'll
want to do a lot of hand coding anyway.

So, I still use SciTe, and use PHP for simple web sites just to handle
repeating elements using "include." There are lots of really good web
pros who do the same. Nevertheless, I'm not against Dreamweaver and
plan to purchase it pretty soon. I have at least one friend who's a web
developer, who uses css layouts vs. tables, and who loves Dreamweaver
for the help it gives him with editing css and stuff. Dreamweaver won't
get in your way if you're coding by hand, and there are good articles
out there on how make it behave in a good standards-compliant way.

HTH,
Jonathan

GreyWyvern wrote:
FYI, "user agents *should*..." only makes it desirable behavior, not
required.

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On Sat, 14 Jan 2006, kchayka wrote:

The HTML spec cites the definitions in RFC2119, where it says:

SHOULD This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there
may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a
particular item, but the full implications must be understood and
carefully weighed before choosing a different course.

I'd say that's stronger than merely "desirable", wouldn't you?

To me it says "you'd better have a jolly convincing excuse if you
fail to comply with such a recommendation".

kchayka wrote:
If you think about it <p></p> structurally make no sense, a paragraph
with *no* words. But we all know why it is usually is done, the author
wants more space above another block, which is a *style* issue. Should
be done

..moreheadroom { margin-top: 3em; }

<p>Some bit of info, blah blah blah...</p>
<p class="moreheadroom">Ah! Now that is better...</p>

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Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
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http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 04:54:14 -0800, Blinky the Shark
<no.spam@box.invalid> wrote:

Because (thankfully) I have better things to do with my weekend !

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
I spent numerous years both writing and reviewing software requirement
specifications, where "should" wasn't considered quite as strong as that.

It didn't occur to me that the word would have a different emphasis in
the HTML spec. Now I know!

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Jonathan N. Little wrote:
I wasn't really promoting the use of empty paragraphs (I think they are
darned silly and just add bloat). I was really only debating the meaning
of the word "should".

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On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:29:52 +0000, Andy Dingley wrote:

Than to think clearly and avoid assumptions?

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Neredbojias wrote:
That sounds like the way to do it. I have taken that approach with
nroff in the past. Yikes, that probably ages me a bit. :-)

Thanks very much,
Peter.

Thanks very much. I'll try it out.

Peter.