

Ask HN: Recommemd an HTML CSS editor for an 8 year-old Girl? - jamesbressi

So one thing I can have my 8 year old daughter learn tomorrow for "Bring Your Child To Work Day" is how to code HTML and maaaaybe CSS to build a website--which I believe is an essential skill to learn for her generation.<p>My Question is what do you think would be a great editor that will show code and results (design/WYSIWYG) for her to learn (and hopefully free)?<p>I know I can find some great beginner tutorials, but curious for suggestions on a kid friendly editor that allows for actual hard coding.
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jheriko
Notepad + some browser.

Best to start with the simplest and most transparent tools IMO, + its not
really difficult to save, switch windows and refresh the browser.

I say this because a lot of HTML design tools take away the necessity to
actually learn what goes on with the HTML and CSS, sometimes in subtle ways.
If you want easy use MS Word and save as ".html" or FrontPage or whatever, but
that won't teach her much about HTML or CSS directly...

(EDIT: Also they are free and available on every computer with a Windows on it
since 2000/ME I believe.)

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apsurd
Ok I'll bite. I think you should make one for her.

Maybe not the answer you wanted but I've never been a fan of wysiwyg editing
if you you want to learn how to _program_ websites. What I mean to say is that
it's good to be tied directly to the code and understand exactly what's going
on through an actual development workflow. So having her sit in a text editor,
then reload the browser page gives her that rawness. This also acts as a test
to see whether shes is into the whole idea of being hackerish. I can tell you
that writing "color:red" and reloading the page to see the color turn red was
the catalyst that got me down the word to being a programmer. I never got the
same feeling from using photoshop, which I think is a good analog to using a
wysiwyg editor.

No offense to designers but I think this approach _eventually_ pays off a lot
more than being handicapped by dreamweaver.

Best of luck to you.

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jamesbressi
Geez, I thought by now someone would have chimed in. Yes, I searched around,
but sometimes my HN family is more reliable than Google ;)

