I don’t know how your impression on that matter is but I’ve the feeling that there are less and less nice HTML editors available on the market. I’m not thinking of highly developed professional applications like the Adobe Dreamweaver, which probably can’t be used at all without a thorough training. No, I’m thinking of easy little applications that support normal people (= teachers!) to get their content on the web.

In times of Web 2.0 there are of course numerous online services that allow people to create blogs, online content (Google pages), wikis or a lot more. These online applications allow collaboration, sharing, commenting and much more. And still - I quite often need a simple HTML editor to create simple pages, e.g. for a Webquest, that I can put onto my school’s computer network, copy into a moodle course or give someone on a USB stick. As soon as there’s no internet connection available, those funky colourful online services no longer glitter as much.

I think what matters most are the good didactic ideas in eLearning, the skilfully crafted lesson plans and not high technical competence. Of course one could learn to encode HTML and eventually create such simple pages in a text editor. But even for an experienced programmer typing in all those tags and commands takes longer than just typing in the pure text, clicking on a colour like in a text processor and then pasting a couple of pictures next to the text. And a less experienced programmer should rather spend their time in thinking about methodology rather than about HTML-encoding, I think. At least for me, creating a HTML page myself is a waste of time - although I do know some technical bits and pieces.

To round off what I wrote in the beginning - after a couple of years with many promising HTML editors (Yes, I think in terms of learning and function also much hated MS Front Page had its purpose), there seems to be a drought at the moment. But I have recently rediscovered a software I loved many years ago when I created my first webpage - then called Languagelab.at. (I had to give up that name because hardly anyone could type it in correctly, but that’s a different story …) This application recently came out in a new polished version: The Namo WebEditor 8. There are some bugs and users complain about the company’s poor support, some even call it a dead horse. But basically the software perfectly does what I want: Quickly create a set of simple webpages, connected with a navigation, that I can fill with my content. And - it features a couple of interesting tools to create interactive quizzes for students.

I like you, Namo - may you have a long life!