Web Page Creation Tools Fred T. Hofstetter University of Delaware

This article is based on excerpts from Chapter Nine of the McGraw-Hill textbook Multimedia Literacy, which comes with a CD-ROM full of tools and resources for creating Web pages and multimedia applications. The ISBN is 0-07-913107-7. The material on this Web page is Copyright © 1997 by McGraw-Hill; used by permission. For more information, call McGraw-Hill at (800) 338-3987 or send e-mail to the book's publisher, Rhonda Sands.

There are two schools of thought on World Wide Web page creation tools: graphical versus textual. The graphical camp believes that you should be able to create Web pages in a WYSYWIG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) environment. You never need to look at the HTML (hypertext markup language) source code behind a Web page because the GUI (graphical user interface) inserts the codes automatically when you edit the Web page. The textual camp believes that you should work directly with the HTML codes for two reasons. First, because Web pages are defined by the HTML codes, being able to edit the HTML codes directly gives you more control over the Web page. Second, since HTML is an evolving language that continually gets new features, graphical tools will always lag behind; working directly with the HTML codes lets you use the latest HTML commands, which may not yet be implemented in the graphical tool.

There are dozens of World Wide Web page creation tools. You will find a complete list along with reviews of the tools at http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/www/html/editors.html.

This article reviews Netscape Composer, which is an example of a WYSIWYG Web page creation tool; Microsoft's Internet Assistant, which is an HTML translator for documents written in Microsoft Word; and Kenn Nesbitt's WebEdit, which is a text-based HTML editor. Then we take a look at three approaches to incorporating active multimedia elements on Web pages: Sun's Java, Macromedia's Shockwave, and Microsoft's ActiveX technologies. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Animated GIFs, which provide a simple way for you to add animations to Web pages.

Netscape Composer

The most comprehensive WYSIWYG Web page editor is Netscape Composer, which comes as part of the suite of tools in the newly released Netscape Communicator. When you create a Web page with Netscape Composer, you work on a screen that makes what you create appear just as it will when viewed in the Netscape Web browser. You can download the latest version of Netscape Communicator from http://www.netscape.com/comprod/products/communicator. Netscape Composer's Web-page creation toolbars appear as follows:

Internet Assistant

Microsoft's Internet Assistant is a free add-on for Microsoft Word that you can download from http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/default.asp in Macintosh, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 versions. Figure 9-14 shows how the Internet Assistant adds a Web page creation toolbar to Microsoft Word. The philosophy is that if you can create a word-processed document with Word, you can turn that document into a Web page with the Internet Assistant. Note: This capability comes built into Microsoft Word 97, so if you have Word 97, there's no need to download the Internet Assistant.

The author has used the Internet Assistant to put several of his scholarly publications on the Web. Since these publications were word-processed with Microsoft Word, the author can attest to how easy it was to create Web page versions with the Internet Assistant. While the Internet Assistant may not let you work with the latest greatest features of HTML, it certainly provides a quick and easy way to put word-processed documents on the Web in a format that the whole world can access.

For example, you can access one of the author's scholarly papers on the Web at http://www.udel.edu/fth/cms/cms.html. The references in the paper are hyperlinked so you can quickly jump to the source materials and examples the paper cites. Imagine how scholarship would be enhanced if all scholarly writings were available in this format on the Web. Researchers and students could learn so much more in an online world of interconnected scholarship. Yet many disciplines lag behind, with little scholarly writing mounted on the Web today. The author believes that when the word processors used to write scholarly documents make it so easy to create Web page versions of those documents, scholars have no excuse for not mounting their research on the Web and making it accessible to the world.

WebEdit

WebEdit is a textual HTML editor for creating Web pages. As shown in figure 9-16, WebEdit lets you edit the HTML in one window and view how it will appear on the Web in another. WebEdit is the tool you will learn how to use in the World Wide Web tutorial in Part Ten of this book. Why did the author choose a textual tool like WebEdit instead of a graphical tool like the Internet Assistant for the tutorial? Because WebEdit gives you a better grasp of how HTML works, and it lets you use the latest features of HTML that have not yet been implemented in the Internet Assistant. You can download a shareware version of WebEdit at http://www.sandiego.com/webedit.

So how do you know when to use a graphical tool like the Internet Assistant? The author's advice is to use the Internet Assistant when you want to create a Web page version of a document word-processed with Microsoft Word, and use a textual tool like WebEdit when you want to create something fancier that uses the latest HTML features that the Internet Assistant may not yet support.

Java and Hot Java

Java is an applet development language invented by Sun Microsystems. An applet is a little application that can be downloaded to your computer along with a World Wide Web page. The applet can make your computer do things like animate objects on the Web page, make sound, play games, and perform calculations.

Almost anything you can program a computer to do can be downloaded with a Web page in Java, as long as your Web browser is Java enabled. Hot Java is a Java-enabled Web browser from Sun Microsystems. The 32-bit version of Netscape for Windows 95 can do Java, and Netscape is working on Java enabled Web browsers for other platforms. Microsoft has licensed Java for use in the Internet Explorer.

You can learn more about Java at http://java.sun.com.

Jamba

Jamba is Aimtech's Java authoring software. A Jamba toolbox makes it easy to enhance Web sites with multimedia and interactivity. Jamba objects include picture push buttons, check boxes, list boxes, combo boxes, and hot spots. For more information, go to http://www.aimtech.com.

Shockwave

As you learned earlier in this chapter, Director is the state-of-the-art animation program for multimedia productions. Shockwave is the name of Macromedia's Director plug-in for Netscape. Like Java, Shockwave code gets downloaded and runs on your computer when you view a Web page with a Shockwave-enabled viewer. For the latest information on Shockwave, visit Macromedia's Web site at http://www.macromedia.com.

ActiveX

ActiveX is the name of Microsoft's applet technology, which the Internet Explorer supports. Like Java, ActiveX lets you download little applications that run on your computer to bring a Web page to life. You might wonder why Microsoft licensed Java when Microsoft is pursuing its own ActiveX technology. The reason is because Java got released sooner than ActiveX, and Microsoft licensed Java to calm the fears of customers who worried that they might not have access to Sun's applet technology in Microsoft products.

Applets are an emerging technology that will undergo rapid development over the next few years. For the latest information about Microsoft's applet technologies and the Internet Explorer, visit http://www.microsoft.com/ie/default.asp.

Animated GIFs

There is a simpler way to animate Web pages. Animated GIFs provide an easy way for you to create frame animations without having to learn the complexities of Java programming. When this book went to press, only Netscape supported animated GIFs, but by the time you read this, other browsers should support animated GIFs as well. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. The GIF file format is the most widely used method of storing bitmaps on the World Wide Web. Animated GIFs are a special kind of GIF file (known as GIF89a) that may contain multiple images intended to be shown in a sequence at specific times and locations on the screen. Netscape supports the GIF89a looping option. When an animated GIF appears on a Web page, Netscape keeps looping the frames in the GIF file, and you see an animation.

Animated GIFs are very efficient; they are only downloaded once, then cached from your hard drive as Netscape loops the images. Some users don't like the constant disk chatter. You can be the judge by trying the animated GIF on the HBO home page at http://www.hbo.com. Another clever use of an animated GIF is found at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/conf, where Microsoft uses animation to show the different options available in its NetMeeting software.

There is a shareware application that you can use to create animated GIFs. The name of the package is GIF Construction Set. You can download it from the Web at http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html. For a tutorial on creating animated GIFs, visit http://webreference.com/dev/gifanim.html.

Multimedia Tour of the Web

You can take a really cool multimedia tour of the Web at http://ftp.digital.com/webmm/fbegin.html. Created by John Faherty of the Digital Equipment Corporation, the purpose of this tour is to demonstrate new Web technology and enable you to assess it. Faherty's tour is a great way to experience what's out there and get what you need to take advantage of it.

This Web page was created by Fred T. Hofstetter, Professor and Director of Instructional Technology at the University of Delaware. Send comments to fth@udel.edu.