Don't you just love web acronyms like LOL and WYSIWYG?
It took me forever to remember that LOL means "Laugh Out Loud" on the internet since it meant "Lots Of Luck" in my previous life.
Then I started seeing WYSIWYG. This acronym was easier to remember once I found out what meant because I'd never seen anything like it before.WYSIWYG means "What You See Is What You Get" and didn't exist as a programming term until the internet. (Us "older" programmers can tell you that you had no idea what we were going to get when we ran a newly written program the first time - we just hoped it would run.)
Just like our mouse gives us "point and click" capability, WYSIWYG editors give us the ability to put things on a web page where we want them and the HTML code "just happens." So unless you were a web programmer in your other life or can learn new programming languages quickly, you should either be using a WYSIWYG HTML editor or paying someone to create your web pages.
Now a few years ago if you wanted a WYSIWYG HTML editor you had to buy 1. If you were lucky, you may have found 1 for less than $100 but usually the prices started around $200 and went up.Today, you can get good WYSIWYG HTML editors free. They may not have all the features as the ones you pay for but they have more than enough to get you started.
Recently I downloaded and tried one of the free WYSIWYG HTML editors and it impressed me enough that I've included it as a free resource in the membership area. Using this free editor you can do all the the "13 HTML Basics" I mentioned in an earlier article and a whole lot more. (The article is archived in our membership area.)
While the free editor didn't have all the same features as the version of FrontPage I purchased, it did offer the most commonly used ones.
In fact, most of the features not available with the free WYSIWYG editor aren't really necessary to those just learning to use HTML because ...
- Many of the missing capabilities can be done manually - like checking your page in different browser types.
- Most people don't need or use many of the missing items and some really increase the amount of time it takes for the page to load into a browser window.
- It's recommended to not use some of the capabilities like custom defined colors and WordArt because they don't display the same across all browser types.
Here's another acronym for you, YGWYPF - "You Get What You Pay For." Only in the case of free WYSIWYG HTML editors, you can really get a lot and pay nothing.
To Your Success,
Susan
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