Posted by Andy Dingley on 10/02/06 10:04

Jim Scott wrote:

> My ISP these days is quite happy with FP extensions and provides me with heaps of
> webspace so I can see no good reason why I should not use FP with all its bells and
> whistles.

Wrong question. Don't ask "What's the easiest editor to use?", ask
instead "What do I want to make?" and then "How can I best make what I
want to make?"

What _do_ you want to make? HTML-slurry, or something decent? It's
your call - neither is ever wrong (the web is a broad church, and long
may it remain so). However there are advantages to doing it right.

If you don't care, then use whichever editor is easiest and prettiest,
and ignore the comments about its output. You've already decided that
for your site then it just isn't going to matter (MySpace is an
indication that you can build a very big and popular site this way).

If you do care, then immediately rule out any and all editors that
aren't co-operative. There's no point in trying to meet standards, then
using a tool that fights you all the way. This rules out most known M$
offerings. It shouldn't need to, but practical measurement suggest M$
just don't care about standards as a design goal. We're hardly short of
alternatives either.


FP Extensions are also poorly thought out, unreliable and a damn
nuisance on a big, multi-developer or long-term site. You'd be far
better served by rsync, or even a decent ftp program and good bandwidth
(obliterate the lot with vast duplicated copies from your dev server
that are at least simple to trigger).

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