An English-speaker who wants to master a Romance language for a career as a translator, would, of course, need to learn French, Portuguese, or Italian. However, to ensure linguistic expertise in any Romance tongue, it would be advisable to also learn Latin, which was spoken in ancient Rome.
The Marine motto "Semper Fi" is Latin for "always faithful," but this age-old Tongue that Caesar spoke has fallen into disuse. Even the Roman Catholic Church, known for its dogmatic ways, has abandoned exclusive use of Latin during Mass. Nevertheless, Latin is the root of all Romance tongues, and knowledge of the original language is essential for mastering any dialect derived from the mother tongue.
One could argue HTML is to the Internet what Latin is to Romance languages. Like Latin, HTML can seem to novices like arcane, indecipherable lingo. On the other hand, HTML editor software programs are to the Net what Spanish, and other living Romance languages are to Latin. In this article, AVN Online provides an overview of HTML editors, and of the manual vs. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) debate amongst programmers and coders.
What is HTML?
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language (David Levine, President of Convergence, Inc. (www.wcool.com) believes HTML is derived from SGML, Standard Generalized Markup Language, a pre-Internet computer language).
"Every single site on the World Wide Web is created using HTML," says Kymberlee Weil, webmistress/owner of Volcanic Lab (www.volcaniclab.com), a website design, development, and hosting company. "There are many software programs available nowadays that allow you to build websites. And what's going on in the background is the HTML language is determining how each page will look. But what you see is just the graphics, the text, the animation, and things like that. When looking at a Web page, one can choose a button at the top of their browser called 'View,' and then choose 'Source' from its pull-down menu. This will bring up the HTML language, which is behind the page itself."
A major reason why Convergence's Levine turned to e-commerce was to own a business without employees. Levine outsources some business operations, but keeps HTML editing in-house. "One of the greatest parts about HTML is that when you make a change, it immediately updates to the world," he says. "And making those changes is very simple. I get a lot of feedback from customers through e-mails - things happen, and I can just go in, make the change, and it's immediately updated, rather than having to contact a programmer and pay $100 for their time, and wait until they get around to doing it. It allows me to have a quick conversation with the customer - if there's a problem going on, we can immediately address it. I get those e-mails every day. If I have to pay a programmer for every stupid little thing that it takes me two minutes to do, it adds up. And then I wouldn't have the incentive to make little changes and adjustments.
"One of the reasons we've been successful is we built the whole website on lots of customer feedback," he asserts. "We give clients who e-mail us about errors a $5 shipping credit. I really feel that webmasters with personalized sites, who do it themselves, and make it more customized, are the ones who make money."
HTML Editors: Front Page and Dream Weaver
"Many people put in hours and hours, and weeks and months to learn HTML," states Weil. "You have to be into programming and code. It's not very pretty or intuitive, it's basically looking at code, one line after another after another."
Which is why, although Weil can read and write in HTML, she finds HTML editors to be more efficient, easier, and faster to use. "HTML editors are software programs which basically write the HTML for you," she explains. "So you don't have to learn the HTML language, know exactly how it works, or have to write it at all. An HTML editor does that in the background as you create your Web page, place graphics on the page, type text on the page... You'll actually be looking at the page as you're creating it. If you color the background of your page pink, it happens immediately, right in front of your eyes. Not only that, a great feature of HTML editors is that by pressing one button, you can instantly preview what your page will look like in a browser, such as MS Internet Explorer, or Netscape."
Back in the primordial ooze of the adult Internet, in the Paleolithic mid-1990s, Convergence's Levine went online with his adult store, www.sextoy.com. The Boston-based webmaster's epic quest for an HTML editor suggests Jason's search for the Golden Fleece: "In the very beginning, I didn't even know of an HTML editor, and I tried to type the stuff in Notepad myself, which was very tedious," he relates. "By early 1995, the only [HTML editor] was HTML Pro, by Softquad. Then, Netscape was all the rage, and they had an HTML editor that could be downloaded free.
Netscape Gold had more features, because the Netscape browser then was the leading browser, with about 90 percent of the market and lots of tags. At first, it was cool and super user friendly, and it looked like Netscape would rule, but then it fell behind the times with editing. I wanted a browser that wouldn't die on me - each editor has certain quirks, and if you convert to a new one, it can screw up certain things on your pages. So, about two years ago, I went with Microsoft [Front Page] - they're not going out of business, and will stay with whatever is the latest and greatest."
Weil, too, says good things about Front Page; she particularly recommends it to the novice: "This is a very good, basic HTML editing program for starting out, when you're first learning how to build a Web page. In this program, you can create a Web page in minutes, and a whole Web site in half an hour or more, depending on the experience you have, or if you have purchased books or videos to help you learn the software. You can add buttons to your Web page for navigation, background colors, etcetera, without knowing the HTML code at all, and be up and running very easily."
Thus, the advantages of an HTML editor become clear: "We primarily provide turnkey video-streaming packages to some of the Net's largest adult websites, like Kara's Adult Playground and Cybererotica. We also accept members to our own pay site," says Robert Pipkins, CEO of Dreamzotic Communications (www.dreamzotic.com). "We have thousands of videos, and the site's updated every single day. You can imagine how much of a pain it would be to manually create new pages daily. The movies are all in the same format and page layout; only the titles and running times are different. It saves a lot of time if you can just use Front Page to keep a template. Using the template, for each additional page you want to create, you just go back [and copy] the one you already did. There's no reason to generate that whole thing manually."
But Levine points out: "MS Front Page kind of has a mind of its own. It wants to format things - what it considers to be the proper format. But we might have a custom program that requires a certain HTML tag to be on its own line, and Front Page wants to consolidate it and sticks it on a line with something else. So, a lot of things I do, I can't use Front Page for, I have to do HTML editing by hand."
Webmaster David Eisenberg of SexTracker (www.sextracker.com), a Seattle-based firm which provides analysis, hosting, and other webmaster services, is also somewhat critical of Front Page, noting that the program has been criticized for producing "messy" code. Eisenberg considers Macromedia's Dream Weaver to be the best WYSIWYG HTML editor, because it outputs the cleanest code.
Weil also prefers Dream Weaver (v3), which she regards as a step up from the new Front Page 2000. "Dream Weaver is one of, if not the, premiere programs around right now. This is a high level HTML editor. You can build a Web page or a whole site. Although it's not as intuitive as Front Page - you need a little more experience in working with it, and in creating sites in general, in order to use it."
She notes, however, that Front Page and Dream Weaver share similar tools. "Both software programs allow you to create navigation bars, for linking within documents," she says. "For example, linking from a home page to an 'About Us' page. Front Page comes with many canned examples.
So you don't even have to be a graphic artist, or know how to create the graphic buttons. You can just search through Front Page's options, and choose from the buttons they have available, and add those to your Web page. On the other hand, Dream Weaver does offer some templates to refer to. But since it's a step up, a higher level, you would want to add graphics you've created in another graphic editing program, into your HTML editing program, for the buttons. You can use some of the examples Dream Weaver gives you, although it is more for the advanced Web master who creates buttons, images and artwork from scratch.
[With] Front Page, you can choose what's called a 'Theme,' and you can set the theme for your website. It will automatically give you a background color or texture, background pictures, buttons... You can change the colors of your buttons. It will give you headers for the pages - you can change the colors of that - and forms that are already set up and ready to go, such as for collecting data. Dream Weaver, on the other hand, you need to create the form more from scratch. So you have to be a little bit more experienced."
Weil adds that, regardless of which program is used, both allow webmasters to manage their sites much more effectively. "They allow you to manage the files within your site, which is very, very useful and helpful," she says. "For example, you can have a folder for all of your images, and another folder for your actual HTML pages. Maybe you want a home page and an 'About Us' page. By managing all of your files in one easy-to-understand, hierarchical manner - basically just knowing where things are - it really helps with your work flow."
HomeSite and Other HTML Editors
Sharky is a Cybererotica webmaster with five years experience, who helps develop and maintain the seven Cybererotica pay sites (including www.cybererotica.com), as well as free sites. "I use HomeSite 4.0, which comes from the company Allaire.com (www.allaire.com)," he says. "HomeSite has been reviewed and ranked number one. Mainly, I use HomeSite for its toggling feature, for switching back and forth. It provides quick access to your Internet Explorer browser; it's almost built into their interface. Using the toggling tag on the Web page you're editing, you can click a button and see it on the browser right there. That's easy, so you don't have to save the page, and then go and view it in your Web browser. It's a pretty easy process. It's got quick keys at the top of your screen, the most commonly-used HTML tags. Rather than typing out 'BR' - break - every time, you just click a button and it'll put it in there for you. HomeSite also has certain scripting features built in, a lot of Java Script features, including forms and tables helpers."
Sharky also uses HTML editing for his Internet radio program, Sharky Live, a free talk show (www.sharkys.com) for webmasters via the Windows Media server, heard 4:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Pacific Time, Mondays and Wednesdays. The show includes a Java-based chat room and Internet Relay Chat for questions, plus phone-in guests. "I developed the show's website using HomeSite. I prefer to not use an editor - the only reason I use HomeSite is it makes my HTML easier and quicker to use. I can toggle back and forth. Overall, it's more convenient than anything. It'll turn a half-hour job into a 15 minute job," Sharky states.
Sharky started out using Hot Dog Pro, which came with the book he first read to learn HTML editing. The webmaster praises the program, which he says has features similar to those of HomeSite. "As opposed to WYSIWYG, both programs have geared themselves to What You See Is What You Need - it's more for the person who knows HTML, and likes coding things by hand, and does it quickly. It gives you quick tags, references - there's even an HTML validator, which corrects the HTML you typed out with the click of a button. I would give it five stars."
Actor/director Luc Wylder is CEO of the video e-storefront www.fallenangelsxxx.com, as well as webmaster for www.alexandrasilk.com, a free site which includes photos, video, and streaming live audio-video with porn star Alexandra Silk, who plays the bailiff on Playboy's cable TV show Sex Court. "We use a program called Ultra Edit, because we can cascade our HTML language inside it, and it'll highlight certain tag lines," Wylder says. "It's very easy to read, make corrections, and check your work on. The prerequisite for using Ultra Edit is that you actually learn HTML."
Other HTML editors include Adobe's Go Live, which Weil says is a relatively new, sophisticated product. Page Mail is another Adobe product.
Macromedia's Flash Dance and Metacrawlers
There are software programs that work in conjunction with HTML editors to add further refinement and sophistication. Weil specializes in Macromedia's Flash 4. "This allows you to create a movie for your website," she says. "In Flash 4, there are scenes plus a timeline for your movie, and you're creating animation over time. Again, that's a whole other step up from Dream Weaver, in that you can't just easily sit down with the program and create wonderful websites. This is similar to doing a movie. Any time you develop a website using Flash 4, you have to load it into an HTML document. For anyone to see it on the Internet, it has to be loaded into basically a shell of an HTML cage. So, bringing everything full circle, it all comes back to HTML."
Weil adds: "Within your HTML scripting, you can add different effects into [the movie], such as sound. HTML editors will allow you to do that very easily - again, without knowing the coding. You can use the menus within your HTML editors to add sound, video, and animation."
SexTracker's Eisenberg says: "With Java Script - a more advanced scripting language, which allows you to add a more advanced functionality than HTML offers - you can detect whether the surfer coming to your page actually has the Flash plug-in installed. If he doesn't, you can utilize HTML to redirect him to a non-Flash version of the information you're presenting.
"Metacrawlers - spider search engines sent out to automate the process of indexing the content of Web pages - are controlled by HTML. If you have an amateur site, and you want to make sure the search engines come through and pick up the tags, this is contained in the head tag of an HTML document," Eisenberg points out.
Hand Job
There is another form of HTML editing that is an alternative to WYSIWYG software programs. SexTracker's Eisenberg says: "I'm somewhat of a purist. What I've used primarily is Notepad, Kiko, or VI. I would open up Notepad, the built-in text editor that comes with Windows. Notepad allows me to directly hand-code the HTML itself - you literally write it all out by hand - and simply open up the HTML file in a browser, such as Netscape, and take a look at what I'm doing while building the Web page itself. At SexTracker, we use a program called BB Edit, sort of the Mac version of HomeSite. They're editors built specifically to deal with the code itself."
Levine also reads and writes HTML. "First of all, it's not that difficult, there's not that much to learn," he offers. "And I know most of it, although framing and tables are a little complex. 'P' for paragraph, 'B' for bold - it's not too hard. In fact, if you look at the source code for most pages, you can figure out the HTML yourself, without even knowing anything. It's pretty simple."
Eisenberg agrees: "It's not rocket science. There's just a few basic rules to learn to get the fundamentals down, such as using the body tags at the top of every Web page. Then, you're only limited by your typing speed and imagination. Honestly, HTML is a lot easier than it sounds. Don't be intimidated by the source code."
Fallen Angels' Luc Wylder adds: "Many are apprehensive about learning HTML, but once you master usage of its basic tag lines, you can create pages. People shouldn't be afraid of the HTML language. It was really designed to appeal to and be understood by the masses, not just a select few."
Hand Coders vs. WYSIWYGers
The "WYSIWYG vs. Hand Coding" debate is the Internet's other Great Digitial Divide. Levine defines WYSIWYG as: "When you're editing, what you see on the page is not HTML code. You're looking at what the page is going to look like on the Web."
The greatest advantages of What You See Is What You Get software programs are probably that they're faster and easier for webmasters (particularly newbies) to use. "WYSIWYG enables you to design a Web page simply by pointing and clicking," says SexTracker's Eisenberg. "There's a debate right now over which method is preferable. It's sort of the Great Divide, which stirs lots of passions, similar to the old Mac vs. PC debate. You have the hand coding camp, and the WYSIWYG editor camp, where essentially you can open up a program such as Front Page or Dream Weaver, and lay out an entire Web page without having to touch the HTML code itself. Historically, WYSIWYG editors have not done a very good job, in terms of writing clean code. This is detrimental because, specifically in the adult Web, there tends to be a lot of content on pages already. They're pretty long downloads, and many surfers have slow modems. Not having the extra code speeds up download times, by having your code as optimized as possible. You really want to cut corners wherever you can... By hand coding, you can remove all the fluff from the HTML and extra tags. Increased speed directly equates to increased sales.
"WYSIWYG limits you to the built-in feature sets of whatever editor you are using. Particularly in the adult Web, people are doing a lot with Java Script. For example: consoles or disabling right-mouse clicks. Unless you really have familiarity with how HTML works, and how pages are put together, you're locked out of implementing these types of features, unless your editor can handle it. Also, in a collaborative work environment, such as at SexTracker, where we have a team of designers, hand coding is the way to go."
Eisenberg also argues that intimate knowledge of HTML enables the designer to go in and dig down to the source of any problems, no matter how idiosyncratic or obscure, especially for cross-browser issues.
Mark Ishikawa, CEO of BayTSP (www.baytsp.com), a company which protects Internet intellectual property and websites from having their HTML Web-jacked, stresses: "When people use HTML editors to generate their Web pages, everything starts to have the same generic look and feel. If you use Front Page or other programs, they all end up looking like they come from the same cookie cutter template. If you're in the 'Me Too' business, you won't be able to drive traffic to your site and get the stickiness. The only way to really make the big splash and impact is to go out and write the thing from scratch."
Some coders prefer a combination of the two HTML editing methods. Dreamzotic's Pipkins, who reads HTML, Java Script, and Perl, says his video-streaming firm uses Front Page 80 percent of the time, and Notepad the rest of the time. "WYSIWYG is good for the layout of the page and doing just the basics. But when you want to get into more sophisticated things like Java Script, pull down menus, frames, more technical stuff, you want more control over that. So, you just save it, the way Front Page does, and then go into your text editor, to get control so your pages come out exactly the way you want."
Levine points out that Front Page has a tag on the bottom which, when clicked, shows the actual HTML, allowing the editor to show Web pages in both WYSIWYG and HTML.
Mark Tiarra, CEO of the Web design and consulting firm Tiarra Corp. (www.lumyr.com), and Executive Director of the Global Internet Association, reads HTML. "Everybody who works for me as a designer is required to do the HTML through just a regular text editor," he says. "Some use Hot Dog or HomeSite, where you type the code in, but it has some shortcuts built-in for you. I don't let anybody use Front Page or anything similar to that, because it writes the code for you. When you're trying to write websites that have to integrate across many platforms and older versions of browsers, and a lot of the sites we work with use things like exit consoles, you have to manipulate the colors in such a way so it's looks good on all the sites. When you use things that write the code for you, you tend to get sites that look good on one browser, but not on another."
Volcanic Lab's Weil concludes: "It does help if you do have experience using HTML, because you can get into the code, if you want, and switch things around. The best of all worlds would be to have an HTML editor, plus experience knowing how to code in it."
The Write Stuff
What are the attributes needed by a person who does HTML editing? "One quality of a very good HTML editor is attention to detail, because small errors in HTML can completely destroy the way Web pages are laid out," Eisenberg states. "Most designers use HTML for design as a very powerful tool. You control all of the look and feel of a website, beyond the graphical images itself. The way you lay out text, how things are aligned, the color schemes, borders turned on or off. It controls everything except the graphic [images] themselves. SexTracker looks for people with a very good design sense, who are proficient with HTML, to carry that final vision through to actual Web implementation."
For those interested in becoming HTML editors, Volcanic Lab's Weil advises hands-on learning: "Creating a website can be easy, but creating an outstanding website is a lot more challenging. The best thing to do, for anyone who wants to develop a Web page, is to get started, beginning with one for yourself or a friend. From there, the more experience you have, the better you'll get, and the faster you can turn out these Web pages."
Weil, as well as Tiarra, recommends a series of useful, easy to follow books called Sam's Teach Yourself, especially Sam's Teach Yourself HTML 4 and Sam's Teach Yourself Microsoft Front Page; each book is updated when HTML versions are updated.
Wylder calls N. Smith, webmaster of www.creampie.com, his guru. In addition to his mentor, the porn director also recommends Dave Taylor's book, Creating Cool HTML for Web Pages. Wylder also points out that any search on the Internet for HTML will reveal sites that are tutorial in nature.
"Don't be afraid of the Net. It's designed for everybody," he advises. "And everybody can create their own website and do business on the Net. It just takes vigilance and perseverance, like any other career."
Many home pages for HTML editors also include tutorials on how to use them. As a general reference, Pipkins recommends the tutorial at www.zdnet.com, which he studied when Dreamzotic began in 1996.
Latin Lovers
Ideally, the person who actually does the HTML editing is able to impose his/her vision and will on the material in order to create as efficient and original a site as possible. The more he's able to do that, the better the site will be, and the easier the process becomes. In order to do that, most sources interviewed for this story recommend cracking the code of the HTML language itself - similar to our English-speaker who would do well to learn Latin in order to become a U.N.-caliber interpreter.
As Marlon Brando said in Last Tango in Paris: "Quo vadis, baby?" - where are we going?
