"someone who knows HTML [note correct capitals!] could (given quite a lot of time I'd imagine) cut the KBs down again considerably,"

Not as much time as you might think. Actually it would be easier with most of those programs to just start from the beginning with a clean slate - and a PLANNED [on paper] Layout.

"The CSV course I did here was just level 1, and we learnt web-design with Word."

AAAAAGGGGGHHHH! I'm disgusted people are paid money to brain damage others with that rubbish! :-) It's NOT 'HTML' it's just an error ridden "word porncessor"! I mean it F***s up the HTML...


"FrontPage ... there's still lots of unnecessary html in there."
"when I find a spelling mistake or suchlike, FrontPage makes it quick and easy to fix"

Ah! If you want to speak French fluently, you don't think in English and translate everything - you learn to THINK IN FRENCH! If you want to write good compact correct HTML, you WRITE GOOD CORRECT HTML DIRECT! If you want, you CAN write it with just notepad, but I used NotePad Plus (even PAID for it!) under Windoze - I am looking for something else to run under Linux. The program colour coded all the correct open & close HTML 'buckets' if the syntax was correct, or it just showed black text starting where there was a problem. It also could load templates for any programming language. It thus picked up any HTML syntax spelling error instantly, while typing.


"more-and-more have broadband and are used to heavier sites from using myspace"

Ah - but people still PAY for the VOLUME (with limits), so that argument is just as hopelessly weak as the one about 'big files just load slower on dialup' - the MacroCrap Argument... just ask John in Kansas about Microsoft .... :-) I HATE 'MyCrapSpace' - and I use all sort of tools to shut off most of the graphics to speed it up, unless it is something I really WANT to see... :-) When I save a 'file' from places like there, I also get umpty dozen files of pointless useless crap in css & js files as well, that usually just DUPLICATE all the 'standard HTML defaults' anyway! ... which means that 'the author' (or their manager) doesn't really know the theory of what they are doing...   KISS! There's also less to go wrong then...


"also, there's the keyboard and recorder fingering to more than 50 tunes to learn and, ideally, get into my head"

Hmmm, you REALLY need to think, if learning tunes always seems so difficult, are you really a 'muso'? :-(

50? 50 ?!! 50??!!!!! Only 50 !!!!? I play about a dozen different instruments, and never bother about learning things off by heart, after all I learnt by 'the classical method' where it is usually expected that you will have the dots as a mainly unlooked at 'security blanket' anyway. That said I can play thousands of tunes (different ones on each instrument) without music, but the hassle is remembering the way they start... :-) Of course I can also extemporise endlessly, as I used to do on Pipe Organ instead of playing from sheet music during the Walkout - wait on, I mean after the service finished! :-)

Of course, we all have to start somewhere, and the first few years are always the hardest...