I''m currently working on designing a game for a Webpage. The game would be played directly on the Website (coded in HTML and reling on a data base for game engine data). I''m hoping somebody here here may be able to give me some directions into which tools would best fit this project. I''m currently using FrontPage 97 and looking to update to 2K but i''m hoping to get a tool that will allow me to get more flexability out of webpage designing. The game is a strategy game and requires the screen to be updated once per 10 mins.

Try notepad if you want more flexibility...
if you go to www.tucows.com, and then find a program called 1st page 2000, its a better HTML editor, and it comes equipped with various java-scripts that may be usefull...

Notepad sucks! It''s the worst text editor I''ve ever seen!

Ultra-Edit 32 rocks! But it''s a shareware (not very expansive though). Check it at http://www.ultraedit.com/





Prosper / LOADED corporation

Thanks champs! I''ll check them all out. Your help''s very much appriecated. If there''s any other comments please don''t hesitate :-)

Paul

Long Live Notepad.
Notepad is great. Before I got my MSVC 6 compiler,
I was using DGJPP and all my .cpp and .h files were done in Notepad.

"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time"
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

By the way, I don''t think you can do a game in PURE HTML, you''ll need something "dynamic". I know 3 tools which would all be fine :
- ASP (Microsoft dynamic HTML)
- PHP (kind of ASP for UNIX/LINUX/WINDOWS)
- JAVA (applets, I think you know what it is)

I used PHP and it''s very easy to learn. But you should use the Linux/Unix version since the Windows one is quite buggy.

Check it at the official PHP web site

Have fun!



Prosper / LOADED corporation

Don''t bother with Frontpage 2000!!! I have to use it at work. If you''re on a budget and don''t mind just working with the code, I recommend Textpad (www.textpad.com). You can use Clip Libraries to insert tags quickly and easily. If you have the money though, get Dreamweaver as that produces nice html from its WYSIWYG window and yet won''t mess with anything you code directly.

Why do I say not to use Frontpage 2000? Read on...

When you delete a line or block of text from the main edit window, it has a tendency to scroll the text below it up half a line too far, corrupting the display. You have to scroll whatever is visible right offscreen and then back again to see it clearly.

You can sometimes make alterations to the code, click the ''close'' button, and it closes automatically with no prompt to save your work. Re-open the document, and it wasn''t saved.

There is no Save All button! There is not even such a command hidden deep within the toolbar/menu customization facility. Since it will not always prompt you to save your changes, the only safe way to exit the program is to click save, close, save, close, etc for every window.

Just like many other programs, Frontpage features some sort of site management where, upon renaming or moving a file, all files with links to that file will be updated with the new link. However, this update does not work on pages you currently have open and in HTML view. It does not tell you that it has failed to update the pages until it has successfully updated all the others. You then have to either rename the page back to what it was originally, or try to fix all the broken links yourself.

Frontpage''s ''normal'' view often bears no resemblance to what Internet Explorer displays. One would expect some discrepancy between Frontpage and a 3rd party browser, but not between Frontpage and its own browser.

Undo sometimes inexplicably doesn''t work. Other times, it seems to undo an action done a long time previous, leaving all intermediate changes intact, and often with it not being clear just what exactly it changed.

Saving a file often results in the edit window scrolling up or down, meaning the user has to scroll back to whatever part of the document they were looking at.

Selecting a block of text that includes long lines causes the view to jerk from left to right, as the focus follows the end of each line selected.

Has been known to insert a tag inside another tag (eg. >) when elements are dragged around with the mouse. Also unhesitatingly creates overlapping tags.

Unlike nearly every other tool you pay money for, it features no check or indicator for overlapping or unmatched tags!

Help system is slow and unconventional, involving resizing of the Frontpage window as it docks against the side of the screen. Pointless help entries such as "To learn more about pages, click the graphic." Along with the graphic (just an icon), that was an entire help page. Why not just show the target page immediately? Only Dreamweaver manages a worse help system, but at least that is in the name of platform independence (web browser-based Java help.)

Sites in Frontpage are called ''Webs''. (See also: directories being called folders.) There seems to be no reason for this other than to try and set Frontpage apart from the norm and lock in its own standard jargon, complicating the migration to other editors.

Can''t select more than 1 file at a time in the ''Folder View'' window. If you wanted to move half the contents of a directory, while taking advantage of the automatic renaming facility, you would have to do it one by one.

Did I mention that it sucks? "Freedom to Innovate"? More like "Freedom To Irritate".