November 15, 2006A. St.Denis Nvu: a web authoring tool {An example of a Technical Topic Presentation in ELM4701}

November 15, 2006A. St. Denis Background: Why do we need website authoring software? Students are required to communicate their ideas about their design in various ways. Websites are a great way to share your information with the world. Web pages and entire web sites can be created using the ‘HTML’ files, but this can be quite confusing and involved.

November 15, 2006A. St. Denis What is HTML?

November 15, 2006A. St. Denis Creating a Web Page in HTML: Is a lot like writing a program Requires that you learn the language (HTML) Requires a lot of planning, both in designing each page and designing the site Is not as visually rewarding as a WYSIWYG approach

November 15, 2006A. St. Denis How else would you create a Web Site? Word Processors (like MS Word, OpenOffice, and WordPerfect) can save to HTML. Web page editors (like Composer, MS FrontPage Express, HomePage) Web Site development/authoring systems (Dreamweaver, FrontPage, and Nvu)

November 15, 2006A. St. Denis Why use a web site ‘authoring system’? It is specifically designed to make it easy to lay out the site and create each page It ‘hides’ the HTML from you It provides WYSIWYG tools; allows you to concentrate on visual issues It provides the ‘publishing’ tools

November 15, 2006A. St. Denis Why use Nvu? It is cheap!!! (it’s free, go to It appears to be quite intuitive Available for many platforms

November 15, 2006A. St. Denis Resources Learning to build your website: Nvu user’s guide: Nvu tutorial: Lots of books, e.g.: “ Webmaster in a Nutshell” By Robert Eckstein…, O’Reilly Nutshell series

November 15, 2006A. St. Denis Questions? (what grade did I get?)