16 January 1998
Note: I use Windows 95.
I've noticed that there are an awful lot of software packages out there
devoted to web development, so, in an Ode to Simplicity, I hereby present
the Software I Use To Make Web Pages.
That's the extent of it. Move along.
Coordinating my background and text colors with my graphics used to be
a huge pain. I'd find a color utility on the web to convert RGB to Hex and
vice versa, only to find that the utility is gone a few weeks later. That's
when I found Spectroscope. Not only does it convert RGB to Hex and back,
but it lets me choose my colors exactly as they'll appear on the web,
adjusts colors to the web safe palette, assembles a ready-made tag,
and generally rocks. I honestly don't know how I survived without it.
Lately I've been in the habit of starting a page with a color scheme, and
this is the first application I open.
Expensive, but worth it. I'm no artist, but Photoshop lets even a novice
graphics hack like myself feel like she knows what she's doing. Without this
program, I never would have discovered the joy of fonts.
Back when I first discovered HTML I did all of my markup in pico on the
shell. Shortly thereafter I was forcibly reminded of how important it is
to keep a backup copy of everything on my home machine, a revelation
which naturally led to creating my pages offline. I tried using Notepad
for a while, but gave it up when I found Programmer's File Editor. PFE
isn't fancy. It's just a simple text editor that doesn't assume to know
what I want and doesn't throw any extra characters into my files. It
probably has all sorts of powerful features, but I prefer not to know.
The very first browser I used in college was Mosaic, followed shortly by
Netscape 1.1. Now I seem to be stuck at Netscape 3.0. Don't get me wrong,
I've tried Netscape 4.0, I've even tried Internet Explorer, but no one
has managed to beat N3.0 yet. When the browser wars get to such a point
that they actually make usable higher level browsers, then we'll talk.
All that work does no one any good if I can't upload, and I've found
WS_FTP to be my favorite FTP utility. It's also free (if you don't want
any of those extra features, natch).