Every web designer has a favorite way that they use to create their web pages. It could be any of the various free or paid tools available on the web, to help speed up the design process. Many of these tools are no longer used, but some designers are realizing that they have to edit the code created by these tools when upgrading older websites. Each of these tools has its benefits and drawbacks. Find out what to watch out for with three of these tools that have been used frequently on older sites.
- dreamweavers– Dreamweaver is a very powerful web design tool and it is still quite popular. You can help speed up the design process by allowing designers to use code or a WYSIWYG GUI to create their pages (or a combination). However, when using some Dreamweaver-specific elements, it can be difficult to edit later for anyone who is No using Dreamweaver. In particular, the templates in Dreamweaver are designed so that they can only be edited within Dreamweaver. They can speed up the design process, but for any designer who comes to edit later without Dreamweaver, this can make the design process a bit more restrictive. The way templates work in Dreamweaver is by making the template area editable within the program. Every time the site is updated, the templates on all pages are also updated. Outside of Dreamweaver, this template is set up as additional code, but each time it is edited, it must be edited on each individual page separately. This means that the only way to take advantage of the time savings with templates is to use Dreamweaver for any other editing.
- Microsoft Word– Most professional web designers do not use MS Word to create web pages, but it has often been used to create a page within a word processor and move it into a web-friendly format without coding. There are some problems you may run into when trying to edit pages that were created with Word. In the case of a multi-page website, using Microsoft Word to create the site means that each page gets a unique subfolder that contains all the files and images needed for that page, even if they are commonly found throughout the site. This takes up more space on the server and makes any image editing within the site much more cumbersome to handle, since any editing to an image that is common across the site must be adjusted for each page containing that image separately. Making any updates or edits to the site can be a strenuous process. The best way to handle this is to go back and consolidate the common files into one location so that post-editing can be done more quickly.
- Nvu– Nvu is an editor that is no longer in production, but was once very popular because it was easy to use and free. There are some issues that Nvu code may contain, and it may be good to keep these issues in mind when editing code that was previously designed with Nvu. One major problem that some designers have seen with Nvu code is that the program would reformat the source code, often making it a bit harder to read. Several times the code would contain extra blank lines that serve a real purpose, added by the program. This is purely formatting issues, but it can make the code harder to read easily. Another problem with Nvu is that redundant tags that are placed in code are not visible within the editor, so redundant tags can go unnoticed. This may be the case for code created with Nvu. In this case, it would be good to clean up any redundant tags found to clean up the code.
These are some of the problems you may encounter when editing code that was created with any of these three tools. Being aware of issues and knowing how to recognize and fix them can contribute to a cleaner web build and reduce the time spent fixing these issues.