Website builders are the tools that allow the construction of websites without manual code editing. They fall into two categories: online proprietary tools provided by web hosting companies, typically intended for users to build their private site; and software that runs on a computer, creating pages offline and which can then publish these pages on any hosts.
The first website was created in 1990s. These sites were hand written in a HTML. Later software was written to help design web pages and by 1998 Dreamweaver has been established as the industry leaders; however, some have criticized the quality of the code produced by such software as being over blown and reliant on tables. As the industry moves towards W3C standards, Dreamweaver and others were criticized for not being compliant. Compliance has improved over time, but many professional still prefer to write optimized markup by hand.
Open source software for building websites took much longer to become established, mainly due to problems with browser compliance with standards. Open source tools were typically developed to the standards and made fewer exceptions for the then dominant Internet Explorers’ deviations from the standards. It is the management tools W3C started Amaya in 1996 to show case Web technologies in a fully featured Web client.
On line website builders typically require customers to sign up with the web hosting company. Some companies provide samples of what a fully functional website made with their website builders looks like. The range of services varies anywhere between creating basic personal web pages or social network content to making complete business or e-commerce websites, either template based or on the more flexible platforms, totally design free.
The main advantage of an online website builder is that it is quick and easy to use, and does not require any experience. Often a website can be built and be up and running living in the internet quickly. Technical support is usually provided, as are how to video and help files. This makes online website builders ideal for the beginner.
Sites are generally created using either HTML or Adobe Flash. A site that was created via HTML is the HCG diet plan site that has a really cool template. HTML is a standard format supported by all browsers. Flash has a growing popularity, but is proprietary and is not supported by all browsers and has the disadvantage of not being seen by web crawlers such as Google and Yahoo, and thus may not be indexed. In addition, it is more resource intensive. HTML tools are divided into those that allow editing of the source code and those who only have a WYSIWYG mode.
Off line website builders cater to professional web designers who need to create pages for more than one client or web host. Modern off line website builders are usually both WYSIWYG and allow direct editing of source code and cascading style sheets (CSS) styling. They generally require a least basic understanding of HTML and CSS code. They are more flexible than on line web builders, but may be expensive to buy. There are some open source web builders which may be downloaded free of charge.