Go to start menu, select "Run", type notepad, hit enter. Voila.
But seriously, I wouldn't really suggest using notepad for making a homepage, especially when you haven't done any before. There are plenty of good software for that purpose. I have always favored Dreamweaver
I'm an html noob too. When I first learnt it about 6 years ago I only used notepad. Then I stopped doing webpages, apart from silly ones on the uni intranet which I did in dreamweaver for speed.
But my last html efforts for the Vixen Challenge were entirely created in notepad. Far far better than dreamweaver, and it actually teaches you what stuff does, so your site end ups much better.
I agree with the ppl who say text editor + guide is enough. It's better to understand how pages work before moving on to Dreamweaver (and after the trial if there is one, it's not cheap for a couple of pages for your home page.. ). PHP Designer 2006 is a good free editor (does HTML among all the other things) if you like colours and stuff.
Non-free closed source single platform, puts icon in start menu without consent and while doing so fails to add an uninstall shortcut. :chairs:
Looks alright tho
If anyone happens to be interested in using SciTE, heres my slightly customised SciTEGlobal.properties file, as a unified diff. It just makes SciTE play [more] nicely imho. Apply with
The "better to understand how pages work before moving to Dreamweaver" is a pretty odd statement, since Dreamweaver has a neat feature which shows you the html code as you change the page in the WYSIWYG environment. Therefore you will LEARN html better as you are using the program, since you see what each change does to the code instantly. It does everything that notepad does, and of course, more. Sure basic html knowledge is always good, and I agree that you should learn the basic tutorials before doing anything.
I have never bothered to make (nor learn how to) pages with only a text editor, and I've been making homepages for 8 years soon (since I was 12). If you'll be making homepages for more than just this one time, buy Dreamweaver. It'll save you lots and lots of headaches.
Dreamweaver makes making big stuff easy, the problem is that it may lead into getting overwhelmed by choice. When I began learning HTML, JavaScript & PHP I preferred to keep it simple and do the work myself instead of letting the program do it. Maybe it's just me (likely), but typing out even the simple stuff and figuring it out instead of dragging some boxes in Dreamweaver always taught me better. In general, I just think that actually doing the stuff several time over from the absolute scratch makes it stick better in ya head.
Ah well, might be just me too, since I suck at coding/scripting anything at general. The pages I've made with DW have always worked at all browsers completely and haven't been messy, and that has been good enough for me.
So to sum it up:
If you want to do it easily: Dreamweaver or any other good WYSIWYG software
If you want to go the hard way: Notepad and lots and lots of tutorials.
I'd say go for some headaches, once you've cured most of them you'll be able to actually use the technology, instead of looking for a button which might do something you might like, or part of it, and find it only works in internet explorer, and it doesn't look the same as it did in dreamweaver.
I haven't done much, but I've used Dreamweaver as well. I used it at work trying to learn a bit creating a webpage for the engineering department. I also created this page using dreamweaver (my motorcycle site). Not much, but...
IMO notepad is a bit of a sad choice. The trivial things like syntax highlighting and indentation get to be a bit of a chore after a few thousand lines.
It's best to go for something with at least these two features.
There have already been a few decent ones mentioned, although my weapon of choice is VIM. Insanely powerful for a text editor, but really hard to get your neck around at first.
I never have got on with WYSIWYG editors much. The code they produce in most cases is... well naff IMO. Dreamweaver is probably the best, but still not perfect. The standards I play by are pretty high though.
I rather spend more time actually designing the webpage rather than writing line of codes, Learn dreamweaver and flash, then you can already make a pretty professional flash based website.
You still have to know some basics of the HTML stuff.... but really, I see a lot of people here suggesting stuff for coding the site... and when it comes to design, in my opinion it is completely different than learning code to develop page structure. If you want to design... as in... make it look pretty... you should learn CSS and use a program that designs sites and has some graphics abilities too. But there really isnt a program that does everything. I use Macromedia products for anything web-related. Dreamweaver and Fireworks work very close with each other, and are an excellent combination to learn. Don't bother with flash on your first tries or even first year of learning this stuff, as that will only ruin your chance to learn the general skills to make a website (because flash is a shortcut to make menus and all the other fancy stuff, which should come last).
I use HTML and will do for a long time to come. I see little or no need for creating a lot of flashy looking stuff that visitors will look at once and then click past as soon as they get a chance.
Good looks doesn't mean it's better. It loads slower and not everyone are connected with 2Mbit or better. Quite a few are still on dial-up, and let's face it, they love plain HTML.
SCORE is not the best looking site on the net, but it's clean, fast and easy to navigate. And when you press a link, it loads the page in a blink even if you are on dial-up. It's all HTML and it's all made with CoffeeCup HTML editor, witch works for both newbies and advanced editors.
). PHP Designer 2006 is a good free editor (does HTML among all the other things) if you like colours and stuff.