(Be sure to use only notepad, Microsoft Word will put in a bunch of formatting behind the scenes that can screw up a webblog)

Man, f’ing Word!!  I got a project at work to archive a bunch of files off some webpages onto cd (downThemAll ROCKS!!!), and need to keep the html index page.  I thought I’d be smart, open them in Word’s html editor (since it wasn’t as jumbled as opening them in notepad) all at once and make the changes.  Damnit if Word didn’t go in and stick the full path into all the file references.  At least it didn’t do it correctly, putting a “/” in front of the “C:\” so it messed up when I tried the links, allowing me to fix it in time.

Yea notepad can make html look really funny.  You have to mess with the “word wrap”, and the window size a lot of times to get things looking normal.  But the nice thing about Notepad, is that even though things look messed up, Notepad keeps the formatting perfectly.  So the page should still look ok once published, because spacing and everything are kept exactly where it originally was.

I thought I had killed my blog about a month after I started blogging when I posted a post that I typed up in Word and copied to the post box.  After that I just typed things up in the post box or Notepad and haven’t had a problem since.

Yeah, but doing a “replace all” in notepad takes you back to the top of the page once it’s done.  Really aggravating in longer html files.  Wordpad is working better for me, it takes you back to where you were (most times) after a replace.  Although it sometimes will dump me way the hell down the page after a replace all.  Maybe when I have the time to spare, I’ll see if there’s a way to get Word to not screw up the html, b/c you can find/replace on all open docs, and I have 5 I’m working with.

What about using an html editor such as a Dreamweaver, Open BEXIT HTML Builder, Personal Website Editor.  Try one of the last two, I haven’t tried them personally, but they look good.

Dreamweaver is really solid - especially if you’re more of a design person than a code monkey.  For straight coding, I like Ultraedit, and some of my co-workers swear by TextPad.  Both are plain text editors that have solid features for writing clean HTML.

If you’re on a Mac, you cannot go wrong with BBEdit.

Give me good old HomeSite any day of the week. It’s by the same folks who bring you Dreamweaver.

In Windoze I like Notepad++ - it has very good HTML color-coding, line numbers, recordable macros, and if you don’t want to do all that, at least it word-wraps very well.  Actually it color-codes many source-code languages.

I have it set as the file association for .txt on my machine.  Can anyone recommend a comparable editor for Linux that has those features, especially the macros?  I am a Linux noob and am chafing a bit with gEdit which, while it’s better than Notepad, seems to lack the finer amenities.

In Windoze I like Notepad++ - it has very good HTML color-coding, line numbers, recordable macros, and if you don’t want to do all that, at least it word-wraps very well.  Actually it color-codes many source-code languages.

I have it set as the file association for .txt on my machine.  Can anyone recommend a comparable editor for Linux that has those features, especially the macros?  I am a Linux noob and am chafing a bit with gEdit which, while it’s better than Notepad, seems to lack the finer amenities.

Is Notepad++ like Wordpad?  I wish Wordpad exposed itself to automation, I have a project where I could use some of its functions that would be easier to automate Wordpad with than to code in my VB.net project (printing color formated text being a big one).  I could automate Word but I need something that is common to most every PC or that is inexpensive to install.  I’ll have to look into Notepad++.

Craig

Notepad++ is very different from Wordpad.  Try downloading it and have a look at the language menu.  It’s free, and it supports VB and lots of other languages.

Les: and you will never have a lost comment again.

‘Never’ should be ‘rarely’.
I usually do the ‘Ctrl A Cut ‘n Paste’ stuff between Word and the SEB box mainly to use the spell-checker cos I sometimes make mistakes with my 2 finger typing.
I usually Preview then Submit and still I lose stuff but, as you say, it’s easy enough to paste and submit again.
DoF, I’m far too lazy to try something new when my current method works well enough for me.
Maybe I’m a latter-day Luddite. 

Wasn’t me, LJ. Webs wrote this entry.

Sorry Webs and Les ... AGAIN.
I must admit I was surprised when you (but not you ) used an absolute.
It jumped out at me and reminded me yet again that all absolutes are dangerous, even this one. 

DoF:  I’ll try out notepad ++. 

It’s on a work machine that I’m doing all this editing, so I do have licensing to worry about.

LJ: I use the absolute here, because once you have copied the text to the clipboard it will not be lost, unless your memory dies on you suddenly, your system crashes, or just reboots on you.  But if any of the latter happens, the least of your worries should be a lost comment.

The preview method works for me, but I should clarify, it is not tested to see if it works 100% of the time.  But if you work on a comment in a text editor and copy it up, as long as you don’t close the text editor before you check if your comment posted, you should never loose a post again.

Oh hey everyone, I almost forgot, Good Ol’ VIM.  This program rocks for any type of text editing, it reminds me a lot of Notepad ++, but it is Open Source.  The only thing, is that you have to know how to use VI already.  It’s very popular amongst Linux nerds which is how I came about it.  And no I am not a Linux nerd… at least yet!

Dreamweaver is really solid - especially if you’re more of a design person than a code monkey. 

Code Monkey would be a great name for a rock band.

I’ve only seen the phrase “code monkey” on one of those killer coding ninja monkey shirts in recent years.  I’ve heard coders refer to themselves as “code dogs”.

Anyone else noticed a lack of females on this thread...?

Anyone else noticed a lack of females on this thread...?

Not any more! 

Anyway, I’ve got Gary Wright’s “Dreamweaver” playing on a loop in my head. It’s making me sleepy, and a bit horny--the song used to be a favorite piece of make-out music (I’ve been told many times that I belong to a different generation).

LH: “Anyone else noticed a lack of females on this thread...?”

I’ve been thinking about the dearth of female representation in science and technology, as this weekend was the ‘Millennium Girls’ conference hosted by State Farm’s world headquarters here in Bloomington, IL.  The purpose of the conference is to introduce pre-teen girls to career possibilities in technology. 

When MrsDoF was in high school, the counsellor told her; “you could be a nurse, a teacher, a secretary or a librarian.”

Then this from Bob Park’s weekly column:

2. WOMEN IN PHYSICS: NEW BOOK TELLS THE STORY FOR THE FIRST TIME.
“Out of the Shadows: Contributions of Twentieth-Century Women to Physics,” edited by Nina Byers and Gary Williams, is an important contribution to the history of science.  It is forty stories of women who made major contributions to twentieth century physics,
written by distinguished scientists who are themselves actively engaged in the areas of physics about which they write. Cambridge University Press, produced a beautiful 500-page volume, and the Sloan Foundation provided a grant that reduced the list price to $35.  It cannot be read without a sense of regret at what the world lost by not having greater involvement of women in science.

Even today, my freshman physics class averages only 10% women.

I’d really like to believe that my lack of technological prowess is not somehow linked to societal conditioning regarding appropriate spheres of knowledge for women, but at the same time I can’t remember ever really being nurtured into any kind of technological learning. It’s very sad; on the other hand, I’m still young enough (twenty-nine) to learn, and I have every intention of making myself more acquainted with all things digital/computer-related.

MrsDoF declared some years ago that she hated computers, and if I died she would put all that stuff out on the curb.  Then she discovered blogging and digital photography.  We quit taking the daily paper when she started reading it online.  The other day I got up to find her giving a friend remote instruction in HTML code.  She says if I died she’d start taking classes.

Now I’m blushing.
I do have my In-House Tech who keeps our equipment running most of the time.  I WOULD have to take classes to do more than what I’m doing now, which wouldn’t be hard to find.  We do have 3 quality institutions of higher learning in the vicinity, and I qualify for age-related exceptions in some cases.

Although I’m still a bit touchy about the afternoon in the cafeteria of the community college and some blowhard thrust a bundle of pages under my nose, so proud was he to be done with an assignment for a computer code class.
I glanced over the top page and asked “Where’s the Navigation Bar?” I didn’t mention two other errors which even my lack of training saw in those few seconds.
He pulled the pages back to himself, flipped through and showed it to me at the very end.
I told him that was bad form, to have the reader work so hard to find the directions of the site.
His Instructor figured the same thing.  The grade was a generous C-.
Did I gloat?  Not one bit.  Yet I never had to tutor any of his other works.