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Anne Weiler writes:
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I know many people have been asking about HTML editors recently, but I
haven't seen this exact question. We're creating a series of internal web
pages to keep track of company projects, procedures, and policies. Since
we're a relatively small company, no one person has enough time to be
"webmaster" and therefore each group, from finance to programming, needs
to maintain their own page. As a result, we need a *really* simple HTML
editor/Web page designer that can be easily and quickly learned by those
who may have no online documentation experience. Although individuals may
choose their own tools, I need to recommend a simple tool as a corporate
standard.
I've looked at Adobe PageMill and it looks quite easy to use/learn. Does
anyone have any experience with this or other tools?
My A$0.02:
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Hi Anne
I thought you may be interested in our experience...
I'm a tech. writer in an R&D group. Everyone here is pretty computer
literature, but nobody except for me and a couple of the programmers know
one HTML tag from another. We have an extensive internal web site comprising
information that is maintained by each work team within our project.
We use Internet Assistant for Word 95. It's not dead simple, but we've found
it pretty good. Most people got the hang of it fairly quickly after a brief
half-hour training session from me. In a nutshell, if you understand styles
and bookmarks you can't go too far wrong. If one of us is browsing someone's
page and notices a problem (eg. incorrect link or weird table formatting),
we just email the author and suggest that they fix it.
One of the tricks to making it work for us has been establishing standards
and templates. We have templates for meeting agendas and minutes, work team
home pages, weekly status reports, functional specifications, design
documents, and so on. We also have a library of standard GIF graphics for
things like logos, icons, etc. The work involved in setting this up is worth
it, because it overcomes initial resistance by letting people just "fill in
the blanks".
The other thing that's made it work for us has been competition between
groups. Once we got a few groups on board everyone else jumped on very
quickly because they didn't want to be outdone by their colleagues.
Going back to your actual question, perhaps FrontPage is worth a look.
There's a free beta available from Microsoft's web site at the moment. I
haven't tried it yet, but I've heard some good things about it.
Hope this helps.
Stewart
------------------------------------------------
Chancery Software
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot." -- Anon
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Stewart Walker
User Assistance Specialist
Computer Power Education, ITS R&D Project
L4, 493 St Kilda Rd Melbourne 3004
Australia
Ph: +61 3 9243 2343
Fax: +61 3 9820 2010
E-mail: stewart -dot- walker -at- cpe -dot- com -dot- au
Check out our ever-improving web site at http://www.cpe.com.au
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