MicroShaft FrontPage 2001

[WarBlade]

I am still learning HTML, but I have never used a program to help, so I really have no idea what they can do.

HTML editor: A lot like what I expect you are doing with Notepad or other text editor, but throws in a multitude of extra features aimed directly at web authoring. As an example, Stone's WebWriter 3 has you looking at a familiar view, with some colour coding for various types of tags and has a preview button that toggles the workspace over to a web page simulation, so you can quickly view what your code is doing.

WYSIWYG editor: What you see is what you get. Point and click. Lay things out and start typing. You create the look if the thing and it does all the code or you. Typically they spit out dodgy code that begs for later editing, but at the same time WYSIWYG editors also speed up the process of creating complicated layouts (with table cells and spans in all directions) immeasurably.

I looked at the code from an earlier version of Frontpage once. I started laughing. I called a friend over to show him the page and in moments the pair of us were laughing. Yes, it's that bad.

I'll second Dreamweaver. ;) I've been using Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 for a while and have yet to get Dreamweaver MX, but Macromedia's web authoring product is a good one. Code edits are minimal and they can all be done from within the program. The CSS editing interface is one of my few gripes, but that only takes a minute to swtch the file association for .css back to Notepad.