His Way and Her Way: Two Ways to Build a Home Page

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His Way and Her Way
Two Ways to Build a Home Page
by Nelson and Pauline Nott · Mesa, Arizona · married since 1956

In July our granddaughter Rachel came to stay for a week, and before she went home she signed us up for a free GeoCities.us home page and said, "There. You each get half." Nelson announced that he would build his half the real way, by hand, typing it himself. Pauline announced that she would build hers the sensible way, with Page Builder. We have been married forty-three years and have never once agreed on the right way to load a dishwasher, so you can imagine how this went.

This front page we built together, which means Nelson typed it in Notepad and Pauline stood behind him and told him what to type. His half is on the left in brown and hers is on the right in blue. Each of us wrote our own column, and neither of us was allowed to edit the other's.

HIS WAY
Notepad and the File Manager

HER WAY
Page Builder 2.0

I taught shop at a high school here for thirty-one years. The first thing I ever taught a boy was to read the plans before he picked up a saw. So I went to the library and checked out a book on HTML and read the first five chapters before I typed a thing.

Then I opened Notepad, which comes with Windows, and typed my page one tag at a time. Every time I saved, I looked at it in the browser. When something was wrong, I found out why. By the third evening I could make a table. By the sixth I could make it do what I wanted.

When it was done, I uploaded it with the File Manager, which lets you send up to ten files at a time right from the browser. I only had one file. It went up fine.

My half is about our Airstream and the trips we've taken in it since 1986. See his page.

What went wrong: Notepad saved my first try as his.html.txt, and I spent most of an evening finding out why the browser showed me my own typing instead of a page. Then I left the closing tag off a table, and the whole thing came up blank. Shop rule: when it doesn't work, the mistake is yours. It was.

I worked at a credit union for twenty-two years, and the one thing I learned there is that there's no prize for doing it the hard way. So I used Page Builder, which GeoCities.us gives you for free. You drag your words and pictures where you want them, press Save, and your page is on the Web.

It needs Java turned on, and it takes about a minute to load over our 28.8 modem, so I put the kettle on first. Then you pick a design. There are more than twenty. I picked Family Album, which is pastel and has a place for everything, and changed the colors to match the bedspread in the guest room.

The clip art is built right in, so I had hearts and flowers in two clicks. The hit counter took one click and so did the guestbook. And it has a spell checker, which caught "grandaughter" nine times. My half is about our six grandchildren. See her page.

What went wrong: Gail called while I was working, the call-waiting knocked us off the Internet, and I lost twenty minutes of typing I hadn't saved. And Page Builder had its own ideas about where two pictures could go side by side. I let it have its way. It's only a page.

THE SCORECARD
(kept by Pauline, checked by Nelson, argued about by both)

	Nelson	Pauline
Time spent	Eleven evenings, about 29 hours	Two afternoons, about 5½ hours
Tools	Notepad, the File Manager, a library book	Page Builder 2.0 and a pot of tea
Hit counter	Put in by hand from the clip art digits, after asking Pauline how she got hers	One click
Guestbook	An e-mail link. "People can write."	One click
Spelling	Seven mistakes, found by Pauline with a pencil	Nine mistakes, found by the spell checker, all the same word
Pictures	One. A car.	Hearts and flowers from the clip art library
Could do	Anything he wanted, once he'd figured out how	Almost anything, as long as Page Builder agreed
Couldn't do	Spell	Put two pictures exactly where she wanted them
Had to ask for help	Asked Pauline to proofread, and how to get a counter	Asked Nelson what Java was and how to turn it on
Who won	"Mine works in every browser and loads in four seconds."	"Mine was done in two afternoons and it's prettier."

The verdict. We put it to the grandchildren over the telephone on Labor Day. Rachel, who started all this, said Grandpa's was "very Grandpa" and Grandma's was "very Grandma," and she wasn't going to say any more than that because she wants to keep getting birthday cards. Benjamin said Grandpa's had more about the trailer. Patricia said Grandma's had more about her. Noel asked if either one had a game on it.

So we'll call it a tie. Nelson says it is not a tie. Pauline says Nelson has said that about every argument since 1956.

If you're trying to decide which way to build your own page, here is our honest advice, the one thing we both agree on. If you like to know how things work, do it by hand. If you just want it done so you can get back to your grandchildren, use Page Builder. Either way, it's your page, and nobody can tell you it's wrong except your spouse.

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Write to both of us: [email protected]
(Pauline reads the mail. Nelson reads it after.)
Last updated Saturday, September 18, 1999