Need web design advice - html & css editors etc

[Kimbh 0]

Hello, To start let me saying I know html and have had several business web sites for 10 years now using html or article manager cgi based software which is not longer available. But the world moved on to CSS which I am really struggling with. So I bought artisteer to use make a few google blogs and to help me learn which I do now understand how it works. The css controls the look and I can tweak the codes some for design. Here is where I need advice on. I have a ton of unused domain names which I wanted to make some small general info pages which will not be updates very often so I really do not want to get a CMS for them mostly because I have no time to keep up with patches, etc. With artisteer I can export the design as HTML but I can't figure out to edit the index.htm or add pages of the exported files. I looked at firebug and coffeecup html editing but I still very lost. I been working on this for two months now and not getting any where. Can anyone suggest an editor to help me, I still use frontpage a lot to tell you have far behind I am on these skills. Or possible a easy to use article manager that php or cgi based that support an html type file that I will not need to be getting patches all the time. My web site where hatched some five years ago and I moved to a Rackspace so I have good hosting. The only reason I am not making an simple html web page for this is I wanted the more modern css layout. Thank you in advance for any advice.Kimber

[chibineku 0]

I use ConTEXT to edit my HTML, CSS, PHP, etc. etc. files in. It's a text editor with language-specific highlighting. You need to hand-code everything, but having tried editors like expressionweb I think hand-coding is the only way to go. Firebug helps you a lot because you can see the effect of your CSS changes quickly and you can export your styles to your text editor for saving. There's nothing else for it, I think, than to do a few tutorials on w3schools.com or from a good book and to get stuck in. GUI development environments create a plethora of useless, throwaway classes because they don't have the subtlety to generalise your rules. You get hefty, hard to maintain code from them.Good rule of thumb with CSS: start with the big picture and work your way down, so that your styles will cascade in an efficient and logical fashion.

[Synook 47]

I use PSPad, and highly recommend it… but there are lots of options, many of which are quantified in our Favourite html editors... thread.

[Kimbh 0]

Thank you both for the advice. I had a bad feel there was not way around hand coding the html files but this confirms what I was thinking. I will check out the editors listed then start blocking an hour a day to play with an editor and see if I can learn how to do this.