Evaluating the use of a text editor

When creating a website with HTML, using Microsoft word is often easier than HTML typing as you don’t have to key in all of the page formats in HTML such as the size and colour of the writing and the positioning of objects on the page. Instead, you can simply drag objects around the screen and use the toolbar at the top of the screen on Word to format the text and change the objects. This is very unlike typing the HTML, when you would have to type in formats for text and objects, for example if you wanted the size of the font to be “6” then you would need to type in manually; “<font size=“6”>”, and then to end this formatting you would have to type “</font>”. Therefore, in this aspect, Word is a lot quicker and efficient when creating the HTML for a webpage.

Screen grab of HTML created in Word (viewed in Dreamweaver)

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Screen grab of HTML created in Word (viewed in Dreamweaver)

The size of the file created in Word is substantially larger than the one produced in Word pad because all of the automatic formatting in Word is added to the HTML such as the margins and column sizes etc, whereas if you were typing in the HTML you wouldn’t need to include as much information because HTML is standardized; If you began typing in Word the HTML would automatically include information regarding the exact positioning of the writing (near the top of the screen) and the standard Word formats would be included such as the width and length of the page etc. However, if you were keying in the HTML manually then you wouldn’t have to state these formats (unless you wanted a certain design) because it is standardized, the text would automatically be at the top of the screen.

The HTML coding of the file created in Word has a large amount of the automatic formatting from Word, which can be seen in the HTML when opened in Dream weaver.

When the file is opened by a user, the longer the HTML is, the more time it will take for the webpage to load, and therefore a webpage created in Word would take much longer to load by a user on the internet than a webpage typed in HTML.

Screen grab of HTML created in Wordpad – Typed manually (viewed in Dreamweaver)

It would be a good idea to use Word if you aren’t experienced in making websites, and don’t know how to write HTML, or if you need to make a very complex website which would be difficult to write in HTML, however, you would type directly in HTML if you are making a simple webpage or if you are experienced in writing HTML, or if you need to add very detailed or unique formats which aren’t provided by Word. For example if you wanted the text to move across the screen (from left to right), you could type into the HTML “<marquee>” however, this formatting would not be possible to create in Word as it isn’t available.

In total, I think that both typing HTML and using Word would be suitable for creating websites because of their different qualities and disadvantages; Word can create very complex websites quickly and efficiently, however the HTML may include some unnecessary information such as Word formatting which would cause the webpage to load slowly, however typing in the HTML would also be a useful option because it is less limited than using Word and the file size would be much smaller. As well as this, when typing in the HTML, only very simple programs are needed for example Wordpad, but it would be quite difficult and time-consuming to create a very composite website by manually typing in the HTML.