[Malvern] HTML and other Web stuff

[Guy Inchbald]

Ian,

Sounds like a Windows 2000 environment? If it isn't, look away now.

Probably your first port of call should be MS Front Page. It offers both 
WYSIWYG and text modes and is well integrated with the MS way of doing 
things. I'm not sure how handy it is with SQL though, and the downside 
is that it tends to reinforce the proprietary hook-in.

Adobe Dreamweaver is the 'de facto' professional standard tool 
(previously sold by Macromedia). More powerful than FrontPage and less 
tied into the MS contract with the devil, but not quite so easy to throw 
yourself into, and your boss might whinge at the price if you already 
have a FrontPage license on a server somewhere (which you probably do).

If you use a less sophisticated tool (and there are many), you will have 
a deal of learning to do on topics such as CSS, javascript/ECMAscript 
and HTML vs. XHTML, never mind ASP. FrontPage and Dreamweaver have a 
good supply of click-and-pray type wizards and such so you can hide from 
most of it for quite a long time. Your code will be vile, but then so is 
the software stack so why care.

Also, what web browser/s do they all use? IE6 is notoriously 
idiosyncratic and non-compliant with web standards, while IE7 may not 
have arrived yet? Hope they don't expect you to support Netscape (like I 
had to until last year when we all got Firefox hooray)! Most text based 
"web editors" focus on standards compliance and are useless in an 
IE6-plus-web-apps environment because so much non-standard code needs to 
be chucked in, at least until you become expert at the differences 
between the w3c standard in front of you and the horrors that your 
particular version of IE6 expects - especially in the realm of debugging 
CSS styling and javascript client-side processing. FrontPage and 
Dreamweaver are reasonably aware of most such bugs and will work around 
them for you as you point-and-click away.

Don't know how familiar you are with the SQL language or MS SQL Server, 
but MS of course have their own useful extensions to the SQL standards, 
which you may want to use/avoid according to taste.

Sorry I don't know any good learning resource, but the tutorials that 
come with the software are probably a good place to start developing 
your working practices and deciding which areas you need to dirty your 
hands with.

HTH

--
Cheers,
Guy

On Sat, 3 May 2008 16:17:15, Ian Pascoe <ianpascoe at btinternet.com> 
wrote:
>Guys n Gals
>
>I've attempted to avoid doing anything with the web for a considerable time
>now and feel duely pleased at this achievement!  However, this ignorance has
>now come around and bitten me well and truely.
>
>I need to start learning about constructing web pages with links into SQL
>servers behind the page.
>
>Can anyone recommend any good on line teaching resources to give me the
>basics?
>
>This is for work, and like any multi national company they won't pay for
>external training!
>
>If it helps, the pages will be hosted on an MS Web server running ASP -
>note, none of the servers run .NET.
>
>Also, any good Windblows HTML editors people can recommend so I can start
>looking at how real live web sites coding happens and works?
>
>Ta
>
>Ian
>
>PS  Is the GMH this Tuesday or next?
>
>
>
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