A Note From the Webmaster

It's already too late to spread the word to my fellow webmasters for this semester, but in case this site has been archived and a future 451 webmaster is reading it, let me tell you about a lovely program called Dreamweaver.

I hate WYSIWYG editors. I usually find that they're slower than hand-coding, and I don't like how they "hide" the coding process from the user (usually because their code sucks). But I heard about Dreamweaver from a friend who said it was really good, and I noticed that an employer here in Calgary wanted its Technical Writers to know Dreamweaver, so I thought it might be just what the doctor ordered. It was, at least in my opinion. It gives you quick access to the code, and the html it writes is usually sensible, although not spectacular. It also does all of the useful things WYSIWYG editors usually do, such as spell- and link-checking, and you can easily incorporate "extras" like Stylesheets in your site using Dreamweaver.

By now I'm starting to sound like an advertisement for this program. Why not? I spent many hours slaving away on documents in this course, but Dreamweaver reduced my workload significantly without taking away the control that I like to have over the html. I only wish I'd found out about it sooner.

My point is, if you're planning to use Notepad for the assignments in cpsc451, please reconsider. The documents are huge, and a program like Dreamweaver will save you a ton of time. You can download a 30 day trial version at Macromedia. If you aren't interested in buying the program, (I admit, it's pretty expensive) you at least owe it to yourself to try out some of the numerous free html editors at Tucows before you start doing the documents. Even if it's just a text editor that colour-codes the html, it will make your life a lot easier, believe me.