What web design software? 6

[Novexx]

I have just purchased some commercial webspace, and have managed to get an basic "under construction" page up while I try to learn a bit more about web design/HTML and all the rest.

I dont have any web authoring software at the moment, and did my first page with MS Word 97. Word already seems to be pretty limited in what it offers, so I would like to get some "proper" software.

I am in a bit of a quandary here, I use(for good or bad)MS
apps most of my working day, am used to them & now find them pretty intuative and easy to use. The first software that came to mind was MS Frontpage, but my host uses Apache
and clearly states that certain Frontpage items will possibly not work correctly.

I have also looked at Adobe Go-Live, which my host seems to promote. Problem is that I have had a few hours on Go-Live &
the interface is not second nature whatsoever, and I could do without having to get used to Go-Live before starting on design.

Which do you recon on? And also do either offer the option of creating the HTML in the backround (initialy anyway), or is this a bad idea.

Thank You.

 

[YNOTU]

Alright guys, get a new room to argue your points of view please.

Let's not continue this chicken of the egg blah blah....

 

[TruthInSatire]

Another vote for DWMX. I was a sworn frontpage user for years. DW4.0 sucked very badly, I think MX had an entirely new design and development staff for this product. front page does fine if you want to do basic html pages know nohting about html, and don't want to know anything about html. if you get into the nitty gritty in coding javascript or anything it bombs. color coding code is almost non existant and doesn't do much with css. mx does good with css, i've heard mx2004 is better though i haven't tried it yet. the best part of dwmx is its unmatched support for ASP, JSP, coldfusion, and php coding. both in color coding the code and creating dynamic code for you.

http://thereptilian.com/

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Oh yes - and never, ever use Word or Powerpoint to create web pages...

I think with all the problems they might cause, it'd work out cheaper to hire an infinitre number of monkeys, laptops, and caffiene, and set them to work ;o)

Dan

 

[MichiganRon]

Excellent thread ladies and gentlemen. However, I have one question which hasn't been asked or answered yet; Does anyone know when Macromedia generally release it's new products? I mean, I don't want to go shell out $400 for MX 2004 if MX 2005 is due out in a month.

Any idea?

-Ron

We all play from the same deck of cards, it's how we play the hand we are dealt which makes us who we are. -Me

murof siht edisni kcuts m'I - PLEH

 

[BabyJeffy]

I haven't seen a roadmap for their planned releases (I'm sure they have one... but I'm equally sure they shift as much as most goal posts).

Usually companies offer a programme where if you purchased within X months of a new release, they will offer either a free upgrade or a subsidised upgrade.

I've not heard plans for a new suite from Macromedia in the near future anyway.

Cheers,
Jeff

 

[Guru7777]

There's probably at least 6 months or more until DMX 2005. I am in class today with a Macromedia Trainer and I asked him that question and he said that he hadn't heard any date or any rumors about the next release.

He said they get about 6 months notice for a new product so they can learn it and learn the material.

Hope that helps.

 

[MichiganRon]

Thanks guys. I don't think I want to wait that long. I guess, if you want to look for the silver lining, when new products are released they are usually a bit buggy. MX 2004 has been out long enough for most of the bugs to be fixed.

Thanks again.
-Ron

We all play from the same deck of cards, it's how we play the hand we are dealt which makes us who we are. -Me

murof siht edisni kcuts m'I - PLEH

 

[Sensibilium]

When I first began coding in HTML, I used FrontPage but only because it came free with Office 97 at the time. As I used the WYSIWYG editor I would skip over to the raw code and examine what FP had done to create the effect I needed. That way I was learning HTML via the editor. I soon learned that 80% of the code created by FP was completely and utterly unnecessary, and began slicing and dicing the code as much as possible while retaining the original design.

In those days of course, I knew nothing of the W3C or web recommendations or even any browsers other than IE5 and NS4. I am glad those days are over as those browsers really were a pain to design for, not that designing for the latest browsers isn't a pain, but at least it's less so.

I soon moved onto Dreamweaver and Fireworks and sonn started producing some of the sexiest sites I had ever built prior to that (or at least I thought so at the time), but again these were still in the days where everything was held together by very messy nested tables.

A while later I discovered the wonders of CSS, and jumped at the first chance at getting away from those nasty tables, I have never looked back, and with thanks to those early days of WYSIWYGging, I learnt how to hand code HTML (it's is possibly the simplest 'programming language' in the world, there really iusn't much to it whatsoever).

I now use TextPad and sometimes EditPlus for my hand-coding (including CSS, PHP, and HTML) for nothing other than line numbering (although some other features are handy such as indent and outdent).

Hand-coding is the only way to do it if you want to create cross-browser and web compliant sites, but until yu have learnt HTML code, stick with WYSIWYG. Just don't expect to have a nice tidy site underneath!

Ahdkaw

http://www.sensibilium.com/