There are two kinds of offline editors, you don't have to be connected to the web to use them. that you use on your PC, WYSIWYG and HTML. With these editors you make you pages and store the files on your PC's hard drive. Then, after testing them to make sure they display like you want them to, you upload them and any associated files, like graphics, to your web site. For more details on uploading, please see FTP or UPLOAD FILES in the menu above.

1. WYSIWYG- What You See Is What You Get, which means you don't have to know HTML to make web pages. You can move things around on the edit screen and just concentrate on designing your page. Please note that some free WYSIWYG editor don't allow you to drag objects around the screen. The most powerful such editors cost money, sometimes lots of money. For example Dreamweaver costs $399. You can also purchase Microsoft's Front Page for about $100 and up from many online sites.

   Free WYSIWYG Editors - Most people will tend to use WYSIWYG editors as they don't wish to take the time to learn HTML or they think learning the language is beyond their ability. If you are one of these people look at these editors.

   • NVU - This appears to be an excellent, FREE WYSICYG Editor. It, like any WYSIWYG editor, will take some time to figure out how to use it but it will be quite worthwhile. You can also write your own HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT code if you wish. Develop your pages WYSIWYG mode and switch over to the SOURCE MODE to see the actual HTML code (learning tool for sure).

   • SoThink.com - Another combination HTML and WYSIWYG editor. Can only edit one page at a time. See my write up on Sothink

   • IMS Web Dwarf. A little like Page Builder with some added features like Vector Graphics, i.e. make various shapes on your page such as squares, circles, etc. See my write up on Web Dwarf

   • COOLPAGE. Try the free trial version or purchase the product for $28.

   • Trellian Web PAGE - CAUTION: I don't recommend this editor! See my write up on Trellian Web page. A decent HTML and WYSIWYG editor but unable to drag objects around the edit screen unless you 1st create space for them to be put in. You can edit up to 5 pages at a time.

   You can also find many good WYSIWYG editors by going to either DOWNLOAD.COM or GOOGLE.COM and searching for FREE WYSIWYG EDITOR. Also, see Download.com for Free Web Page editors.

2. HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language, which is like a computer programming language but it is used to make web pages.

   In my opinion, the best FREE HTML editor is HTML-KIT. To read about this editor, please click on: HTML-KIT.

   Three other very good free HTML editors are

   • NUV. Another good HTML editor that I have tried.
   • HTML BUILDER 20 - I used this editor for three years before I found HTML-KIT. See my write up on HTML BUILDER 20

   • Arachnophilia. Not as good as the two above.

A LITTLE BIT ON HTML.....

All HTML tags, which tell a browser how to display the page, are denoted by <name>, where name is something like TITLE, IMG, etc. Most HTML TAGS have both a beginning and ending tag, which is just the same name but with / preceding the name, e.g. <TITLE>....</TITLE> to allow the browser to know when to start using the tag to format the output on the screen and when to stop the output, e.g. bold text. Here are some examples with the HTML tags shown in RED

• <TITLE>A Golf Home Page</TITLE> - will place the A Golf Home Page at the top left of the browser window.

• <B>This text will be in bold type</B> - the text between these tags will be in bold type, e.g. This text will be in bold type.

• <P> - will start a new paragraph, e.g. <p>. The paragraph tag doesn't need the ending tag but you can put one in if you like. The <p> will cause a blank line between the previous text and the text that follows the tag:

  The paragraph tag doesn't need the ending tag.

• <A> - is an anchor or link tag, i.e. you use this tag to link to another page on the web, generally one of your other pages. For example, to go back to the introduction of my help pages you would use

  <A HREF="helpintro.shtml">My introduction page</A>

  where the HREF, a attribute of the <A>, tells the browser what page to display when the link is clicked on. It would look like this => My Help Introduction Page. Use your browser's back button to get back to this page if you click on the link.

I recommend that you take some time to learn HTML. It really is not that hard to do. You can try these tutorials:

• My HTML Tutorial - an easy step-by-step introduction of the language.

• HTML Goodies - an excellent reference source

• Page Tutor - another excellent source of html related material.