Web pages, like any document, have to be created somehow. There are TONS of ways to do this, and some are a lot easier than others. One can get college degrees in this subject alone! The main "controversy" (for lack of a better word) among web page designers is whether to use one that is a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get. WYSIWYG editors are typically very easy to use because you are actually viewing the web page as you create it. Die-hard power-geeks shun this concept, arguing that memorizing zillions of arcane tags and codes gives them more control over that offered by WYSIWYG tools. The most popular WYSIWYG editor by and large is Microsoft Frontpage, which runs about $150-$200 off of the shelf. I use and endorse a competing product called Nvu. It gives me all of the same functions as Frontpage (at least the ones that I use) and is open source, which means that it is free (free of charge; free as in beer AND free to be modified; free as in speech). It also has a text-based non-WYSIWYG editor built-in, in case I do need to do some dorky power-editing.
Nearly all spyware, malware, viruses, etc. etc. etc. are designed to exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer. This does not mean that IE is a bad product (despite what many Firefox proponents may tell you). It is simply the target of all of these attacks because it is the most widely used browser in the world. Firefox includes nearly all of the same features and functionality as IE, plus a few that MS pointedly neglects for some reason, and is also open source. I use Linux for most of my day-to-day work, but I do have to use Windows, like the rest of the world, sometimes. When using Firefox in Windows, I simply don't have most of the concerns about syware and viruses that IE has sadly become synonymous with. It's true, I do have to use IE sometimes for stupidly coded pages that don't work with anything else or recognize the browser and refuse to load in anything but IE, but not if I can help it! You should try it! I wrote this site to work in ALL browsers, but you will find that it functions best (along with most other sites) in Firefox.
I wish there was a short way to explain this. I'll do my best. Although the latest versions of Windows are excellent operating systems, they are not very flexible or customizable (relatively speaking. they beat the pants off of what came before) and suffer from the same syndrome as Internet Explorer: >90% of the computers in the world are running Windows, so dangerous software like spyware and viruses are designed to exploit their specific vulernabilities. They are also expensive. Even if your computer came with Windows preinstalled, you paid for it in the price of the computer. Most software for Windows costs money, too. The world's most popular office suite, Microsoft Office, costs hundreds of dollars! Suse Linux and most of the software for it is open source. It is totally free of charge (and free to be modified without upsetting the programmers who wrote it). Linux also sprang from Unix, a massive operating system created in the 70's to run on big univeristy and government supercomputers and minicomputers (your desktop is technially a microcomputer) with several users logging in at the same time. Security was always an issue and has always been an itegral part of the OS. Windows sprang from DOS, a single-user environment designed for microcomputers that sat all by themselves (not on the internet or connected to other computers in any way) and didn't have the ability for more than one person to use at a time. Security wasn't as much of an issue. Linux has always had good security built-in at its core. Windows is still playing catch-up. Linux is free, secure, stable, and extensible. There is a learning curve to make the switch, but it is worth it.
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