Beginners 4 - Composing/Previewing   Back | Next

I recommend using a text editor to make your web pages. The learning curve is a little steeper at first than using Netscape Composer or one of the free services web builders, however the reward is that you will have more knowledge and ability in a short time.

There are many fine resources on the internet designed to teach you how to write code. On my links page, you will find some of my favorites. If you are a "raw beginner," or simply want to review your web page creation skills, these links will help you.

What I will do here, is take you beyond the "beginner" stage by telling you how I learned to write code. Perhaps you will pick up some tips you can use right away.

One of the best pieces of advice I learned the hard way:

Before making changes to a web page you have created, make a copy of the page in case you don't like what changes you made!

Another tip:

View your web page in different browsers. Why? Because pages often look diffent in different browsers. Surprised? Sad, but true. I have seen web pages that looked good on the author's computer but looked absolutely terrible on another.

On your own computer, you may already have more than one browser. Most PC-type computers come with some version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. You may also have a version of Netscape. If you are using a Mac, you will probably have a version of Netscape.

I first ran across the issue of cross-browser compatibility when I had a page I really liked. I had finally learned to write code and was viewing my results in Internet Explorer. I happened to read an article on how pages look different in different browsers. I remembered the problem I had when my first efforts looked different on another computer, and thought it might be the browser and not the computer.

Since I already had Netscape on my computer, and did the next logical thing - I opened my beautiful page in Netscape. To my frustration, I found that my beautiful page was all mixed up when viewed in Netscape, the way my first web page effort was.

I began to learn about browsers. I eventually fixed my page. Now I check all my pages in different browsers. I downloaded and installed several different browsers on my computer. When I have a page I think is ready for the internet, I open it in the other browsers to see what needs fixing.

But that's not the last thing I do before uploading my page to the web. I check to see if it validates. Validates? What's that? Read on...

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