<div dir="ltr"><br><div>Yeah, this is for my personal home page only for family back in Georgia. It'll never be commercial and when it's in full update mode, it gets an update once every 3-4 months. I think the last update as of now is about 7 years ago.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 12:47 PM Steve Litt <<a href="mailto:slitt@troubleshooters.com">slitt@troubleshooters.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 15:30:31 +0000<br>
"Robert L. Harris" <<a href="mailto:robert.l.harris@gmail.com" target="_blank">robert.l.harris@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> Finally looking to update a VERY out of date website. It<br>
> currently uses shtml and CSS pages and I would like to find a WYSIWYG<br>
> tool that'll do complete editing of the site, not one page at a time<br>
> or a page without formatting etc.<br>
<br>
Be careful what you wish for. 1996-2012 I authored Troubleshooters.Com<br>
with a succession of WYSIWYG editors: Netscape Gold, Netscape<br>
Communicator, Mozilla whatever, Bluegriffon. Then, when encountering a<br>
distro lacking in any working WYSIWYG HTML editor, I used Bluefish,<br>
which, as you mention, is just a text editor with zencoding and<br>
autocompletion and a few other HTML syntax knowledgeable helpers.<br>
<br>
And sometimes I had to edit pages made with the WYSIWYG programs, and<br>
holy crow what a mess. Tags thrown everywhere. Wrong tags, wrong use of<br>
tags, long-ago-deprecated tags. I mean really, <a name="whatever">.<br>
What century was that deprecated in?<br>
<br>
And this had consequences. For instance, Google recently boosted<br>
rankings for sites that are "mobile friendly", and business is<br>
business, so I had to make my most trafficked pages (and all new<br>
construction) "Mobile ready". For sites constructed with hand-picked<br>
HTML in Bluefish, it was pretty easy. For sites made with Mozilla<br>
compozer and Kompozer and Bluegriffon and all the rest of the WYSIWYG<br>
nonsense, it was impossible. I had to either not change them, or<br>
rewrite them from scratch.<br>
<br>
Yeah, WYSIWYG helps you get a page created pretty fast. But code in<br>
haste, repent in leasure.<br>
<br>
><br>
> I looked at bluefish but that doesn't seem to load full<br>
> pages/styles. For instance if I load the index.shtml I get the basic<br>
> background and nav bar but no text. If I load the main page<br>
> ( included by index.shtml ) I get no formatting, style, etc.<br>
<br>
Like you said, Bluefish is just a text editor with some HTML smarts and<br>
helpers.<br>
<br>
> It was originally created with VI but I'd rather try out a<br>
> comprehensive tool before I go back to that route.<br>
<br>
Vim has some zencoding plugins that make your task easier, but I'd<br>
recommend Bluefish.<br>
<br>
By the way, I'm coding my pages to Xhtml 4 strict, which in Bluefish is<br>
just a matter of a quick and simple wizard. With an Xhtml website,<br>
which I make sure is well formed XML, I can test with a little XML<br>
checker I made with Python. No matter how well it renders in the<br>
average browser, I don't upload it until it passes that XML check.<br>
<br>
One more thing: As you get more and more used to using CSS for<br>
appearance, and using attribute-less tags, makes HTML coding much<br>
easier and more maintainable.<br>
><br>
> Suggestions?<br>
<br>
<br>
Bluefish is working for me. It's working so well that I just authored<br>
my last book in Bluefish and used a Python program to convert it to<br>
pure, validated ePub:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://troubleshooters.com/twb/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://troubleshooters.com/twb/</a><br>
<br>
SteveT<br>
<br>
Steve Litt<br>
June 2016 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother?<br>
<a href="http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb</a><br>
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</blockquote></div>