Why on earth would a scholar in the humanities or social sciences want to write HTML? Isn’t that just for truly serious geeks? (Not that social science and humanities scholars can’t be geeks, but it’s not usually the first adjective one thinks of to describe people in those disciplines.)
Well, no. Plenty of people in non-technical fields might have good reasons for needing or wanting to write HTML. In my own case, for instance, it’s helpful to know some HTML in order to make writing posts here at ProfHacker a little easier. Besides, I just like to know how things work. Getting to know HTML helps me better understand why a post (or any other web page) looks the way it does. (Thus far, I’ve found that HTML is kind of like a language--and I think languages are pretty cool, too.)
Here’s the catch: I really don’t (yet) know HTML, though I’m in the process of learning. What’s helping me along are some handy tools for learning the language. One is our own Julie Meloni’s Sams Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours. The other is an HTML editor.
An HTML editor might not be necessary for experienced coders. For those just learning, though, it can be a godsend. I can tell the editor “I want to insert this,” and it will do it for me, even if I don’t know the correct tags. Then I can see the tags it inserts, so I’ll have a better idea of what to do the next time, without having to ask the editor for help. Some editors will even color-code the document you’re working on (as in the image at the top of this post), so you can easily find your way in the text.
There are a few HTML editors I’m aware of (please feel free to call attention to others in the comments):
Which editor should a person choose? Whatever best suits one’s needs and budget, of course. I’d heard of Espresso, and gave it a try. It wasn’t very intuitive for me, though. It seemed to assume more knowledge of HTML than I already had. The price was good, as was the licensing. It’s a single user license, so you can install the software on multiple machines as long as you’re the only person who’ll be using it.
But in the end, I went with Taco HTML edit. The licensing isn’t as friendly as that for Espresso: you can only install it on one machine, so you’ll need to buy additional licenses if you need to use it on multiple machines. Since I only need to use it on two, and the price is about half that of Espresso, cost made little difference for me. The deciding factor was that I found Taco HTML edit more intuitive and newbie-friendly. For me, that made it the better choice.
Do you write HTML, or are you interested in learning? Why? What tools have you found useful for learning or working with HTML? Please share in the comments.
[Image by Flickr user iStylr / Creative Commons licensed]