Creating web pages (HTML)

Text editors

The easiest way to create web pages is with a text editor. The chances are, you've got one on your computer already. If you're on a Mac, you can use SimpleText or TextEdit. For Windows users, Notepad is the best option. It's probably not a good idea to use Microsoft Word as it has its own ideas about what HTML is.

If you're going to be writing a lot of HTML, it might be worth investing in a dedicated HTML editor. They can do things such as colour your code to make it easy to understand, find mistakes you might have made, and finish tags for you. There are a lot of different editors out there, many of them free. A good place to start is BBEdit (there is a freeware 'Lite' version) for the Mac, or EditPlus for Windows

WYSIWYG editors

WYSIWYG (pronounced 'whizzy-wig') stands for What You See Is What You Get. Some designers use these kinds of editors to create their web pages. They can make some jobs easier, but you won't learn anything if you start out with one of these. The two most popular WYSIWYG editors are probably Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Golive.