Writing HTML "from scratch" vs
using a webpage layout program.
There are several popular programs that you can use to layout your webpages that won't
require you to know anything at all about HTML. The two most commonly used programs are
Microsoft's FrontPage program and Adobe's PageMill program. Both of these programs are very
good and very comprehensive. If you just want to layout a simple website for yourself and you
are always going to have one of these programs available to you, then all you really need to
know is just how to use whichever program you decide to get. If on the other hand, you want to know how to add special features to your website that might not be supported by the
program of your choice, or if you need to revise or fix a problem with your site and you are
at a computer that doesn't have the program you used to create your site with resident on
its hard drive, then you will need to know the basics about HTML in order to make the
necessary changes to your site.
There is nothing wrong with using a webpage layout tool, and in fact it can save a person a lot
of aggravation and time when setting up multiple pages. To have the best of both worlds, it is
wise to learn the basics of HTML when you are first learning how to develop a website, and
then once you are familiar with how everything works, use a page layout program to do most
of the work for you after that.
You do not have to memorize everything about HTML. You simply need to understand the basics
of it and be able to determine what you need to copy from one file and paste into another, and
know how to customize the codes to fit your own needs. There are very few people (if any)
who have every HTML code memorized and who never need to go back to other files as a
reference. In my personal opinion (which doesn't always count for much), anyone who has
that much about HTML actually memorized, needs to walk away from their computer more
often.
