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Great Pages
Great Pages
Classy CraftsmanshipWhat constitutes a Great Page? I think it starts with content. Add to the content intelligent, attractive layout and you will have a great page. The pages I list further down are not perfect pages. But they are commendable, exemplary, classy — and constructed “by hand”. I have chosen to feature amateur pages, not professional, commercial pages, because this site is intended to be an aid to those who are crafting web pages as a hobby or as a personal expression. It is a site for amateurs, those who build for the love of the craft. To clarify: “built by hand” does not necessarily mean typing all the code from scratch, but it does mean placing the tags by hand, not relying on a robot editor to make the coding decisions.
Exemplary Examples
Commendable Constructions
In a recent discussion, one person claimed he had never seen an interesting page constructed by hand. He said this in defense of some “EZ” editor or other. Since I’ve seen hundreds of very good hand-made pages, I wondered about that person’s experience, where he had been on the web, what pages he might have seen. Actually, when I was making my first pages, virtually everybody constructing pages was learning HTML and using a plain text editor. Times have certainly changed.
I read another recent discussion concerning one of the over-hyped web page creation tools. Its proponents felt that they were being put down by technophiles who like to write HTML the old-fashioned way. I do believe their complaints have some validity. It is very easy for anyone who knows his way around the language to sound condescending when giving advice to neophytes, especially when advising against using a page-creation program that promises ease-of-use and great-looking results, but which in fact turns out pedestrian pages that do not render well across the resolution and browser spectrum, which are apt to have coding problems, which invariably misuse HTML and produce bloated and inefficient coding which is difficult if not impossible to edit once the page is created. On the other hand, there was much praise from these same people for the great-looking pages turned out by the “tool” and great castigation of any person who dared claim that the “tool” is faulty and essentially a waste of time and effort.
As I read, I decided to investigate, to look at these “great looking” pages. Without exception, the layout was created in “fixed canvas” mode, as if it were going to be printed on a piece of paper. Such a layout just doesn't work well as a web page. In addition, the pages had a sterile, pedestrian, cookie-cutter appearance. I have seen enough of these that I can tell at a glance that they were constructed using that particular program. This is not the fault of the people making the pages. It is the fault of the poorly designed web page building “tool”.
Not all the web-page construction programs and WYSIWYG editors produce ho-hum pages. I have seen great-looking pages constructed using some of the better-known editors. Deciding to use a WYSIWYG editor or to construct “by hand” is simply a matter of preference. Those who construct great pages using the fancy editors also have a solid grasp of HTML and can fix any problems that might arise due to the quirks of the editor.
And then we come to one other consideration: Having Fun. People want to create and want to have fun doing it. For the technophiles, a large part of the fun is the manipulation of code to get striking effects. For many other people, however, the fun lies in playing with images and text without needing to know how or why coding works the way it does. So, my fellow technophiles, when tempted to rant about the crappiness of an editor, let’s try to keep in mind who we’re talking to. If they want technical information, I think we should give it. But in advising about web-page editors and “tools”, we need to avoid making it sound like a personal attack on the seeker.
The pages listed below cover a wide variety of topics. They all have good content and are nicely laid out. They are Great Pages.
If you know of a Great Page, please send the URL to pages@bassocantante.com. I want to feature outstanding pages that can serve as a learning tool and inspiration to all web page crafters.
Copyright © 1999 Carlton Higginbotham, Meade Street Productions.
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