HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

Tools for the Web Designer

While you can use the barest of barebones text editors to create HTML and XHTML documents, most authors have a toolbox of software utilities that is a bit more elaborate than a simple text editor. At the barest minimum, you also need a browser, so you can test and refine your work. Beyond the essentials are some specialized software tools for developing and preparing HTML documents and accessory multimedia files.

Essentials

At the very least, you'll need a text editor, a browser to check your work, and, ideally, a connection to the Internet.

Text processor or WYSIWYG editor?

Some authors use the word processing capabilities of their specialized HTML/XHTML editing software. Some use a WYSIWYG-like (what-you-see-is-what-you-get, kind of) composition tool such as those that come with the latest versions of the popular word processors. Others, such as ourselves, prefer to compose their work on a common text editor and later insert the markup tags and their attributes. Still others include markup as they compose.

We think the stepwise approach—compose, then mark up—is the better way. We find that once we've defined and written the document's content, it's much easier to make a second pass to judiciously and effectively add the HTML/XHTML tags to format the text. Otherwise, the markup can obscure the content. Note, too, that unless specially trained (if they can be), spellcheckers and thesauruses typically choke on markup tags and their various parameters. You can ...