best web design software

See what I mean about Homesite, left out again :(

I've never really known anyone to use QuarkXpress to do web design?

Dreamweaver, because it's the only WYSIWYG HTML editor that does not mess with your HTML code. Before dreamweaver I always used a plain text editor.

I agree that HomeSite should be in the poll. Moderator, please...

JD

Quarkxpress is for DTP isnt it?

Originally posted by Angel78
Quarkxpress is for DTP isnt it?

It is.

EditPlus... Dude... it's l33t :D....

HOOOOOOOOOOME SIIIIIITE! heh :)

Seriously, it'd be my pick too.

Dreamweaver all the way. It is a bit expensive.. but IMO the only html editor which will give you professional results in the least amount of time..

Why would you pick notepad. It is simply a waste of time. It does not make you 'better' or 'cooler' to spend your time doing things that dreamweaver or frontpage can do for you. It's like programming without using ANY libraries!

Actually, HomeSite is now owned by Macromedia and comes built into Dreamweaver MX. During the install process, DWMX actually asks you if you want the HomeSite interface. But, at one point it was separate so I understand the need to have it listed in the poll. I voted for Dreamweaver, though.

Originally posted by IT Hosting
Why would you pick notepad. It is simply a waste of time. It does not make you 'better' or 'cooler' to spend your time doing things that dreamweaver or frontpage can do for you. It's like programming without using ANY libraries!

Why? Because it gives you more creative and logitical control over your layout and design. Yes. It does do the stupid stuff for you but, it doesn't allow as easy implementation of server side coding such as PHP..... I'd rather be free-writing HTML and throw in a few PHP phrases then, construct an entire page in dreamweaver and go back and peice in the PHP where it should go then have everything go screwy when the tables don't format correctly. I've done both and I still prefer hand coding...

Dreamweaver is the best WYSIWYG around. Personally I use Visual Studio.NET though :)

dreamweaver, i did swap to frontpage for a while but its really inflexible and of course dreamweaver is good for flash plugins and stuff like that.
I was supposed to get dreamweaver 4 and fireworks 4 when i won an AOL web building competition last year but i never did get it :-(:bawling:

I use Dreamweaver Ultradev 4 and Allaire (now Macromedia) Homesite 4.5.2 - they compliment each other well, even before Homesite became a Macromedia product.

I did try the beta products of the latest versions, but I still rather the older versions.

Notepad (or Pico sometimes in my case) is good if you want to do some quick editing of HTML without launching a full-blown HTML editor although for anything more, it's generally a waste of time (in my opinion). I like the fact that Homesite highlights parts of code (especially when working with PHP), etc. - this makes it much easier to work with raw html.

--Shaun

I use Front Page Express 2.0 to get my general layout (tables and such) then I run it through Ariesoft and hand code the rest. I also use Ariesoft for php because of its syntax highlighting feature. Nice program for being free. :)

Anyways, the "best" program is the program that *you* are comfortable and competent with... What may be the "best" for one person isnt the "best" for someone else. IMO... :)

Notepad by far... I'm not smart enough to work out those other sophisticated editors :mad:

Originally posted by Studio64
EditPlus... Dude... it's l33t :D.... No doubt. I wouldn't use anything else.

Something that I've never quite understood is how you guys use these WYSIWYG editors. Other than the fact that the mjority of the code they produce isn't compatible with my choice of browsers, they're unbelievably confusing.

I've played around with both Frontpage and Dreamweaver before, and I didn't understand it at all. It was all so much more confusing than plain old hand-coded HTML to me. :eek:

UltraEdit anyone?

me~
Notepad

The good thing about dreamweaver is its a WYSIWUG editor and also a basic html editor. And if you click on an object on the WYSIWUG editor and then look at the html view it highlights it so you can easily change the permteres without going through the WHOLE script looking for it.

Whats your favorite web design software

Better to say ...favorite HTML editor, cause Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Homesite etc. can be hardly related to DESIGN.

Nevertheless, I use Dreamweaver to get a general layout and EditPlus to correct it if needed.

Originally posted by markblair
Actually, HomeSite is now owned by Macromedia and comes built into Dreamweaver MX. During the install process, DWMX actually asks you if you want the HomeSite interface.
Yeah, but that's not HomeSite, it's a dumbed down crappy version of HomeSite.
Originally posted by dgessler
Dreamweaver all the way. It is a bit expensive.. but IMO the only html editor which will give you professional results in the least amount of time..
No, it won't. Dreamweaver will give you a jumbled mess of code soup. It may turn out all right in IE, but unless you're really careful, the code is crap.
Originally posted by IT Hosting
Why would you pick notepad. It is simply a waste of time. It does not make you 'better' or 'cooler' to spend your time doing things that dreamweaver or frontpage can do for you. It's like programming without using ANY libraries!
Yes, you're right. I doesn't make me "better" or "cooler" but it does make my pages "better." Why would I need the library when it's all in my head? Why look up stuff when I already know it?

WYSIWYG software is for a) people who shouldn't be producing websites or b) people learning to code their own pages. I hope all you WYSIWYG people fall into the "b" catagory. Learn how to actually code HTML. When I'm writing a letter, I learn the language, so learn HTML. It's really not that hard, and your code will be the better for it.

And learn about standards for God's sake (because most of us live in "one nation under God", so make God happy).

I'm editing this because I thought, maybe I made a mistake, maybe Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors are good, then I looked at the websites of most of the people who said they used a WYSIWYG. What do I see? Bad code soup.
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This is what WYSIWYG, a hand coder would just put <p></p> tags around the paragraph because indicating that that's a paragraph makes sense!
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b><font color="#666666">Coming
soon...</font></b></font></p>
<p><b><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2" color="#666666"><a href="index.html">&laquo;
go back </a></font></b></p>
Good, we got <p> tags now, but doesn't that seem redundent. I mean, with CSS and hand coding, I'd just put the font, size and color in CSS and it would be applied without those repetitive tags.
<b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="/images/digitaldutchlogo.gif" width="97" height="50" alt="Digital Dutch" border="0"></font></b>
A bold image in Arial? I didn't know you had to specify fonts for images. Guess I need to change my pages...
<ul type="square" style="color:808080">

<li><p align="left"><font size="1" color="#808080">50 MB Webspace</font></li>
<li><p align="left"><font size="1" color="#808080">1 GB/Month Bandwidth</font></li>
<li><p align="left"><font size="1" color="#808080">Unlimited Email Accounts</font></li>
<li><p align="left"><font size="1" color="#808080">Unlimited FTP Accounts</font></li>
<li><p align="left"><font size="1" color="#808080">PHP, CGI, mySQL</font></li>
<li><p align="left"><font size="1" color="#808080">Control Panel Software</font></li>

</ul>
Can easily be changed to
can be changed to
----[external stylesheet]----
ul {color:#808080;
list-style:square;}
li {font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif;
font-size:11px;
color:#808080; }
----[end stylesheet]----
<ul>

<li>50 MB Webspace</li>
<li>1 GB/Month Bandwidth</li>
<li>Unlimited Email Accounts</li>
<li>Unlimited FTP Accounts</li>
<li>PHP, CGI, mySQL</li>
<li>Control Panel Software</li>

</ul>
And there's 6 repetitions of this on the page. Look how much you save and how cleaner it is.
<font color="#FFFFFF"><b><font size="2" face="Verdana">

|

<u><a href="http://cp.kjph.co.uk"><font color="#FFFFFF">Login</font>
Bit redundent. This site also has tons of links that have a white color, somehting that could easily be done by applying color:#fff; on a through CSS.

I'm just trying to show you that WYSIWYG creates horrible, redundent code. I used to use them too, but then I realized how messy my sites were.

For $139, you get a product that in many ways rivals Dreamweaver. It has all the same basic functionality, plus some nice little extra tools. And, it is more straight forward with a shorter learning curve. I have both, but generally find myself going to Namo because I can simply do what I want to do quicker. I strongly encourage anyone to download a trial from their site.

www.namo.com

I have found I like to do the big stuff with dreamweaver, and do tweaking with Notepad.

Notepad, is just one of those products microsoft left alone, and it still works... :)

I HAVE Frontpage, but don't love it.

Occasionally I'll play around with coffeecup HTML, which is cute, and 1stPage 2000, which is quite nice as well...


Steve

Originally posted by Santoman
I have found I like to do the big stuff with dreamweaver, and do tweaking with Notepad.


same here :)

Well, Dogma basically covered it.

In conclusion... nothing can compare to NotePad. There is no other way to go as far as I'm concerned.

Personally I'm a die hard homesite fan.

I really don't understand how poeple that use WYSIWYG programs call themselves "coders."

Back in the days ('95-'99) i did all my HTML work in Emacs. Now though... I use InterDev since it comes with Visual Studio and since I do lots of ASP dev at work. I don't care for WYSIWYG editors, which in some part InterDev provides but I don't use that part of it -- I just use it to type my HTML/ASP code myself plus I like it for the text coloring and intellisense for ASP dev.

dreamweaver3/fireworks3

no need for 4 versions
and mx, well no thanks

and as for frontpage, well i know hosts that use it

and they make alot of money, ie 6-10k/month

the end justifies the means, while dreamweaver makes it easier and cleaner, business know how is really where the money is at..

Front Page is clearly the "easiest", but lacks many features.....the only question is - Do you want to pay for Dreamweaver?......that is for u to decide.

with frontpage you need extensions. And most servers you either have to pay more or they dont support fp 2002. Also its bad for designing complicated layouts. I used it for a year and then switced to dreamweaver and notepade. MUCH easier.