Why does it take a Web developer two hours to re-type two paragraphs of text?
Laying out text in a Web page is nothing like laying out a page in a word processor. In a word processor you can set up tab stops, format columns, wrap text around graphics, overlay text over graphics, overlay graphics over graphics, and a whole bunch of other useful tricks. None of these options is available in HTML documents! The HTML specification was originally written for the purpose of transferring large amounts of textual information in the shortest possible time. No thought was ever given to formatting that information to be visually interesting. Because of this, laying out a Web page is a tedious, time consuming job. Something as simple as indenting the first line of every paragraph can require a full line of code in every place where you would have just typed a tab in a word processor. Then, if you wanted to change the indent from .5 inches to .4 inches, you would have to go back and change the width of each indent individually. The fact that a Web page is viewed on many diff
