What program to use when teaching web site authoring

The question has been asked, "when teaching IGCSE Information & Communication Technology (ICT), what is the best program to use for creating web pages?"
Until recently I used front page, however I have now changed to Expression Web 1 (EW1).
My reason for changing was based on two factors:

1. Front page is now 5 years out of date
2. Front page produces code which is based on the Internet Explorer engine and as such many things do not work well (pages do not display correctly) in other browsers like Mozilla, Opera and Safari. So while Front Page is capable of creating pages which fill-full the basic requirements of the IGCSE ICT syllabus (with a few html edits) it is not a programme that would be recommended to anybody who actually wants to create a half decent web site.

I looked at several "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) web site authoring programmes, including Coffee Cup 2008 html Editor, Serif Web Plus X2, Dreamweaver CS3, NVU, and Komposer.

Naturally Dreamweaver stood out as the leader in the industry. The cost is $399 (about R3200) so purchasing even one licence, let alone 20, simply made this a financially impossible solution. I did look at the educational licensing options; however, it appears that Adobe does not believe that there are schools in Africa! Be that as it may for USA and Canadian schools the cost is $199 (about R1500), still way out of my budget.

Serif Web Plus X2 was a consideration. The retail price is $79.99 (about R650) and they offer excellent educational licensing options. I downloaded a trail version, however it proved difficult to produce the required code and I found attaching style sheets nearly impossible (it may be possible, I only played around for a couple of hours).

Next I looked at Coffee Cup HTML Editor 2008. It costs $49 and produces clean code which easily lends itself to manual editing, however it worked better with internal style sheets than external. It also did not appear to have a style editor (may have and I just never found it).

Considering the cost of the commercial packages I decided to see what the open source community has to offer.

NVU is open source; however, it has not been updated for several years. It does not have a style editor, but as it costs nothing, the options of teaching the kids to create their own CSS files (something I do anyway, although weaker candidates experience great difficulty memorising everything) or having them use a separate css editor application are easy work-arounds. The steep learning curve required to master this application put me off.

Komposer, the unofficial NVU update is a lot easier to use, however once again it has been a few years since it was last updated (2006) and some features do not work properly.

I also considered having the students create web pages using only notepad, however I felt having students memorise code (for instance the standard html header) unnecessary. I have done a little web page design myself and while I tend to use coffee cup free html editor (not WYSIWYG) I copy and paste a lot, especially standard headers, which is not an option during examinations.

I then looked at something I already have, Microsoft Expression Web 1 (EW1). Our school purchases an annual Microsoft volume licence which includes EW1. Sadly it is already out of date, however EW2 is now available. Like all Microsoft products it is expensive, $299 (about R2500).

As an aside, schools should look into Microsoft volume licences. For 20 computers we pay about R5000 each annum for a license which includes the latest Microsoft operating system, office suite and a few other things.

I eventually decided to go with Microsoft Expression Web for the following reasons:

1. EW produces code which is fairly compliant with current web standards and works in most web browsers
2. EW supports external and internal style sheets
3. EW allows for easy manual alteration of the html code
4. Students who have learnt to use EW will be able to use Dreamweaver without to much trouble

As is my custom, before teaching a new programme, I first ensure I can use it myself. I have always felt the best way to learn how to use a programme is to have a project.

As the ChouseLive web site grows the need to move it from Google Page Creator (GPC) to a regular web hosting option is becoming more apparent. I decided to use this for my project.
My idea was to replicate the ChouseLive web site in EW so that when I get around to signing up a web hosting account, I will have the site ready to upload.
As GPC is an online web site editor and the base templates form part of this application I needed to build the site from scratch.

EW has proven to be an excellent application.

At first I was a little concerned that EW would turn out to be nothing more than FrontPage's big brother. I had no need to fear as it soon became apparent that EW is a whole new programme more similar to Dreamweaver than FrontPage.

Once I got the hang of things I started experimenting with css layouts. Previously I have always used tables to layout my pages, however I decided it was time to change.

I have a copy of the Html, XHTML, and Css Bible - 3rd Edition. I started reading through this but after about two minutes became bored so instead went online. While there are many excellent CSS tutorial available online (Google lists 13500) I also became bored with these and resorted to downloading and experimenting with different templates from the freecsstemplates.org web site.

Once I got the hang of how these templates work I set about creating my own css file. This proved incredibly easy. EW allows one to do anything! The style editor is easy to use and sets out the code in an easy to read format that allows for optimal tweaking as is required.

Next I built a basic page. Once I had linked my style sheet this too proved easy. I abandoned the design view and simply set things out using the html view. EW interacts superbly with the style sheet, providing time saving drop down boxes listing the different styles you have already defined in the style sheet.
I am delighted with the result.