This is the third part of a four-part series comparing four different methods I used for creating this web site. (You are viewing the results of the fourth method). Part I dealt with the use of a third party for design and development. I concluded that third party development required an unsatisfactory amount of interaction and iteration. Part II describes my adventure using iWeb, Apple’s WYSIWYG site builder. I concluded that the iWeb capability is best suited for personal use and small networking , similar to Facebook. That did not suit my needs. The third approach would be to build one from scratch. This would be more difficult than either of the other two approaches. Did I want to invest the time and resources to program my own site? That would mean I must learn the HTML and CSS programming languages.
It might be worth a short discussion of my software programming experience. In my very early years I scratched out a few algorithms in Assembly Language. Those algorithms were placed in satellites where memory and bandwidth were at a high premium and Assembly Language was mandatory. Later, I designed my five patents using Fortran, a programming language tailored to scientific applications. For a short while I worked in cognitive recognition and learned a little LISP. For the last number of years C++ was the language of choice. Having said all this, I was never a software programmer of any ilk. In physics, software is a tool to solve scientific problems and implement algorithms. Physicists prefer to work from first principles, make theoretical models, and predict outcomes. I find software too much a try-this, try-that bailiwick.
Nevertheless, thus armed with my limited software experience, I decided to learn HTML and CSS (self taught) and program my own web site. From reading the internet reports, I chose Adobe‘s Dreamweaver as a tool to help learn the languages and build the site. I signed on for a 30-day free trial of Dreamweaver and headed to the bookstore to load my cart with the Dreamweaver Bible by Joseph Lowery and Dreamweaver: The Missing Manual by David McFarland. Total investment $65. (I would have preferred to buy used books but could not find used editions that supported the latest software versions.)
My experience with Adobe is that their user interfaces are opaque and proficiency in their products is a vocation. Dreamweaver did not alter the statistics. With Dreamweaver I quickly found I could split the windows and use WYSIWYG in one window and the associated HTML (or CSS) would apper in the other. This was so useful that all interactions gravitated to WYSIWYG. Of course, one would know this would happen since I did not know the languages. I was back to the same approach I had used with iWeb except with manifold variations on a theme. I will not criticize the thousands who love Dreamweaver, but I could not develop a relationship. My intent was to build a website from scratch using HTML and CSS and Dreamweaver was not getting me there.
Off to Barnes and Noble again. This time $70 got me HTML, XHTML &CSS for Dummies and CSS: the missing manual. I read about twenty pages in Dummies and started writing code. I have always thought the collection of Dummies to be uneven, some good, some bad, probably inevitable with a syndicated series. The HTML Dummies book was both of these, quite good for the first third of the book and noticeably weak for the latter two-thirds. My speculation is that the authors started out on the right path and then got behind schedule. They were in a hurry to get their publication out for the new software version, so they hastily pasted the second two-thirds together: informative and correct, but not to the standards of the first third. Pure speculation based on content. I found CSS the missing manual to be adequate, but unremarkable. Between reading the books and referencing the internet, it took me about two weeks to learn HTML and CSS enough to get a test site up and running.
HTML and CSS are very similar, both high level languages that take only a short amount of time to come up to speed. Did I achieve proficiency? No. Did I become expert? No. Did I make a professional looking and highly functional web site? Absolutely, yes, and better than any WYSIWYG approach I tried. It was loads of fun and unbelievably satisfying.
I tweaked on the site until I had it perfect, getting the header cropped to perfection, smooching the spacing here and there, and finding the best links for my images. It was a blast. Unfortunately, like so many things in a technologist’s experiences, it developed a life of its own. I was reveling in my newly found engine. I envisioned hiring myself out to develop web sites, making millions of dollars and then selling my Web-Site-For-Hire company to purchase the Dallas Mavericks. After a month of fun, I realized that I had forgotten why I was doing this. What I really wanted to do was promote my book and write a blog to help other technologists become staunch communicators, that is, persuasive wizards. It was time to move on to the real purpose.
I needed a platform to launch a technology persuasion blog, a site that would develop interest, be read by thousands, and be effective. That decision and how I implemented it is the subject of Part IV to follow.