In this first part of a series about web authoring in Linux, we will look at the most basic methods first, methods as simple as selecting File, Save as… HTML to create and publish your web pages without going into the details of HTML editing.
We will start our web authoring series with basic end-user applications and then progress to the more advanced ones. In this first part, we want to look at the applications that allow us to save and publish our pages in HTML with just a few clicks of the mouse. This means that the actual composition is done in the application and little specific knowledge about HTML editing is needed.
OpenOffice.org Writer
Users familiar with using Microsoft Word in a Windows environment may already be familiar with Word’s ability to save the current page as an HTML page. The same capability exists in OpenOffice.org Writer, the popular Linux office suite.
With OpenOffice.org Writer, you basically compose your text and format it the way you like in an intuitive and familiar word processing interface. You can insert tables and images, change the font and text background colors, and make other customizations. When satisfied, go to File, then Save As… which brings up the dialog below. Select HTML Document (OpenOffice.org Writer) (.html) and choose the directory in which you want to save your .html file. And that’s it. You’re done.
OpenOffice.org's Writer is best suited for people who are not much into HTML editing and who are more concerned about the content of their pages than the design. I would recommend using OpenOffice.org Writer for
- composing pages without learning too much about web page design. You do not need to care about <DIV> tags, opening and closing <table> tags and the like. You simply compose and save.
- writing documents as easily in a word processor and saving them in one place. You can create several articles, import them from text files or from another word processor, apply some formating, and save them in a directory. Then you can simply link the files to each other and upload them to your web site.