What is the best software to use for web design?

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gzervali2006

[H]ard|Gawd
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So tell me you computer savy people out there, what is the best program for someone relatively new to web page design. i have been hearing frontpage and dreamweaver but dont know too much about either..
 
Personally, I say learn the "right" way right away (people will probably argue over the right way ....). Getting your coding right spot on in a basic text editor (such as Notepad++) helps you understand whats going on, and makes it much easier to produce clean readable code.

Programs like frontpage or dreamweaver expedite the process, however, they make code that can be very messy and difficult to maintain. If you really do want just a simple site with a limited scope, this may be best. however, if the site you are creating will become more complicated, or include alot of PHP scripts or something, I have found programs like dreamweaver only complicate the process.

again though, notepad++ and some good tutorials are the best start IMO...

good luck! :)
 
is there a particular site you would recommend to learn better and more efficently I am a pretty quick learner
 
thisperishedmin said:
Programs like frontpage or dreamweaver expedite the process, however, they make code that can be very messy and difficult to maintain.
Click to expand...

sigh.. please don't put FrontPage and DW in the same boat. DW has been generating very clean markup since 3 versions ago. I do agree though that you should first learn how to do it manually (using a plain text editor) in order to fully understand what the code is doing. A solid understanding of web coding will actually help you realize the full potential of DW.
 
Frontpage is horrible, ugh. Though I use Homesite 5.5 and on occasion DW. For me it's simply due to the fact I started coding on Homesite and have just gotten used to it. Though I can use notepad just as easily. I agree with the others above who say use a plain text editor first, to get the code itself down, before you worry about production flow.
 
I have always used Dreamweaver for all my websites and found it to be the perfect mix between ease of use and cleanly generated code.
 
Thanks for the info, I purchased a tutorial video on Dreamweaver to get more familiar with it.. I also have been doing a lot of reading and will start getting into it tomorrow hopefully it will be easy enough for me to pick up on again.
 
This is almost everything you need to learn: http://www.w3schools.com/

I do like Visual Studio's intellisense. Not optimized as best web program, but I like it nevertheless. Notepad++ is a must in life, whether you have dreamweaver or not.
 
Frontpage is a joke. For half the stuff in FrontPage you need special extensions on the server hosting it..... Dreamweaver is alright now. Before it generated ugly code, but like a previous poster said, Dreamweaver been posting clean code for a while now (think since Adobe took over).

Im a ASP.NET person myself and Visual Studio just excels at that.

I also agree though, if you are learning, learn the right way and write the code manually so you understand it. Then get into Dreamweaver where it generate alot of the code for you.

Basically you learn the code first, then either get into Dreamweaver or Visual Studio. Use Visual Studio for ASP.NET, Dreamweaver for the rest.
 
Personally, I create a site mockup in Photoshop so that I can get my layout and color palate correct. For me, getting the design together is 95% of the work- from there it's somewhat trivial to take the PS mockup and then hack together the CSS with dreamweaver.
 
Dreamweaver...but lately everything I've been doing is in JSF so I've been using RAD/Eclipse.
 
thisperishedmin said:
Personally, I say learn the "right" way right away (people will probably argue over the right way ....). Getting your coding right spot on in a basic text editor (such as Notepad++) helps you understand whats going on, and makes it much easier to produce clean readable code.

Programs like frontpage or dreamweaver expedite the process, however, they make code that can be very messy and difficult to maintain. If you really do want just a simple site with a limited scope, this may be best. however, if the site you are creating will become more complicated, or include alot of PHP scripts or something, I have found programs like dreamweaver only complicate the process.

again though, notepad++ and some good tutorials are the best start IMO...

good luck! :)
Click to expand...
Ditto. Programs like Dreamweaver and Frontpage do most of the work for you and you won't learn much by using them. It will take a lot of time to understand all of the controls etc. too. Get yourself a good HTML and Javascript book and have at it. Learn by looking at source codes for other sites.
 
FZ1 said:
Ditto. Programs like Dreamweaver and Frontpage do most of the work for you and you won't learn much by using them. It will take a lot of time to understand all of the controls etc. too. Get yourself a good HTML and Javascript book and have at it. Learn by looking at source codes for other sites.
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to disagree here since it all depends on how you use the tool. I do all my coding by hand- I could use notepad, but dreamweaver will automatically complete code, close tags, etc, all of which allow me to complete a fairly complex page relatively quickly. Eclipse can do these same things too (and it's free), so if you use notepad to do your html now, you might at the very least check out Eclipse.

Also, like someone said before, please don't lump dreamweaver and frontpage together.
 
Frontpage is gone...expression web is the replacement and MUCH better. It makes very very clean code now and uses the latest standards.

I use expression web and dreamweaver both quite a bit. Expression web is simpler, but that is better at times. Dreamweaver is more advanced, and that is better at times.
 
Me personally, I use Photoshop to design the site and slice the graphics, then use Notepad (or gedit in Linux) to code the rest.
 
I don't like being the one to do this, but this topic has been asked a million and one times over again.

In fact, there's a near identical post right below yours: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1328595

But to not be a total jerk; I use Photoshop and Dreamweaver for all of my web design and development. If I'm feeling lazy, I'll use notepad/wordpad for quick updates.
 
Frontpage is horribly horrendous and horrifyingly horrible.

Use either Notepad or Dreamweaver's Code View. There is no other way.
 
Don't use frontpage, if anything use dreamweaver.

If you happen to have access to a mac, try iWeb. That is THE easiest way to setup a site IMO, however, it is limited to what you can do with it.
 
Any of these would work:
Visual Studio Express
Dreamweaver
FrontPage
Eclipse

Reading through the thread, it looks like you've already made your decision on Dreamweaver for now. Since nothing has really been mentioned about the hosting environment, I'll just assume this is HTML pages with the chance of CSS and JS.

FrontPage and Dreamweaver is fine to learn with in the beginning. I'll agree that FP is not the best choice of the two, but just consider this as a stepping stone on your development path. Their WYSIWYG interfaces have their high- and low-points, but either will give you a good start on taking the markup learned in books/online and just playing with the markup to see what you can do. Plus, there's a side benefit of the "instant gratification" of seeing your changes immediately without recompile.

Feel free to post questions and code snippets, there's a lot of people [H]ere to help.
 
For web design I use a combination of Dreamweaver + manual hand coding + markup validator services. Dreamweaver CS3 has been churning out some decent code. I've had to do very very little hand corrections to the code it generates.

You want to see something that churns out the most awful code ever? Try creating a website with Google Sites. It's a horrible experience.
 
I haven't seen any post for anything other than Windows IDE, although Eclipse is pretty much "cross-platform", if you have Java installed.

As far as the OSX goes, I think TextMate is the IDE to use. It is great for Ruby programming as well as other web and script programming (HTML, PHP, JS,...)

On the Linux / Unix side of things, I think that Quanta Plus is the best IDE. It is dependent on the KDE window manager, but it is a very solid editor, like Notepad++, but better and allows you to connect to remote sites via FTP, SFTP, Samba,...

Also, as far a Quanta Plus goes, you will soon be able to run it on Winodws due to the porting of KDE programs and libraries to Windows and OSX :)

My 2 cents anyway
 
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