Blackbox - Website Documentation

I built a couple of text-based websites about ten years
ago using the old Norton Editor. Both included graphic
images, neither contained videos. I have long since
changed over to the CoffeeCup HTML editor to do the
annual maintaince on one of these sites. For this
project, I decided to use the CoffeeCup Visual Site
Designer for the first time. This has been a true black
box experiment.

For me, at least, there has been a steep learning
curve. And, like so much software today, a hard copy
of the documentation is not available. Typically, on-line
help expects the user to already know how to use the
software (at least the lingo), and I do not.

The "designer" writes an overhead file, and writes out
html files to upload to the website. If everything works,
the software works fine. However, everytime the code
is recompiled, the entire code is recompiled and new
files for every page are rewritten. There is a bug in the
current version that inserts a return (sometimes) when
text changes from italics to plain font.

Another issue I found is that what you see is not what
you get, and I had to diddle with the vertical placement

of object boxes (photos, videos, buttons, etc.) relative
to the text boxes. Aargh! Also, the text expands after
being compiled. Now I understand why CoffeeCup
does not include any vertical or horizontal rulers on the
layout pages.

Another real learning experience I have had is with the
videos. I use Adobe Premier Pro and QuickTime Pro
and am even more bald trying to discover the most
practical tradeoff between file size and picture quality.
Kudos for Real Time for its menu that easily allows the
user to select an expected download speed. Then
there is trying to upload large video files to the server...

Frankly, I would rather write the code for a digital
oscilloscope in assembler than for website in HTML,
especially if a "designer" is coding over my input. I
want to be able to see what it is doing, right or wrong,
and fix it once. Maybe I just should have chosen to use
the plain HTML editor.

Blackboxing is educational. Within that education I
discover (or confirm) the things that I really like to do
(or am good at doing) and those things that are really
not even on the list.