HTML - handcoding hell in Notepad :)

I resisted all tempatation to open up my program HTMLPad and 'hand on heart' I did not use it. Instead I fell back to searching online and mostly for some pretty basic HTML commands... which got me thinking about what I thought I knew. More on that further down.

Here is a screenshot of the page I did:

When I first began learning HTML it gave me a great sense of achievement and creativity. It felt like I was programming, coding, being like a geek. Cool.

I picked up most of my basic HTML knowlege with the help of these three sites: BigNoseBird.com, BoogieJack.com and W3C

It was shocking how much I could not remember while trying to code in NotePad. A great exercise though, because I didn't realise how much I relied on software to think for me.

The end result of HTML and Blogging is very much the same.

Blogging is like using a word processor (i.e. MS Word), you select text and click a 'B' button to make it darker. It's very user friendly and requires no knowledge of HTML to create a page.

HTML requires some learning as it is a special language for creating web pages. It creates the same effect as a Blog but from the source code e.g. <b>Some Text</b>

I'm 50/50 on HTML and Blogging... I like both equally as I would use each for a different purposes. I'd Blog because I can write, paste and link to websites very quickly inside a ready made page/site. Blogging feels like I've got an identity online, separate from my offline world. I would use HTML to create a page or site from scratch, that looks how I want it to. When I write using HTML, I can control all of the resulting look and feel of a web page. Coding gives me a sense of creativity and creation.