Whats the best software for web design

[yorkshirelad]

I've always been interested in web design and know the basics, I've used the familiar software packages such as Dreamweaver, but i was wondering what the professionals use, what is the best software out there?

Thanks any info would be much appreciated.

 

[biffo1]

Theres a few mate ,
Coffee cup

Macromeadia dreamweaver 8

 

[little_pob]

The professionals use Dreamweaver, its the industry standard.

Other options include:
NVu (pronounced N-View) - free open source WYSIWYG website software.
WebPlus 10 from Serif
notepad++ - is like the code view on Dreamweaver but has no page view (HTML experience required)
Or hand code the HTML in notepad or other text editor.

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

Theres a few mate ,
Coffee cup
microsoft front page
Macromeadia dreamweaver 8
Homestead SiteBuilder

very simple ones the kids use picar

Most of those are not professional (especially frontpage).


But anyway, yeah, pretty much all web design companies will use dreamweaver.

 

[yorkshirelad]

Cheers guys, i thought they might of been something else other Dreamweaver, it's what we used at college and thought it was just a good package to introduce you to web designing, oviously not.

Thank you anyways.

 

[tanvirbutt]

I agree with TheWakeUpCall on that, beacuse u can use dreamweaver to code almost anything, html, asp, php, jsp, java, xml, coldfusion......

If u are not familiar with html then they have design view too.

 

[GILLY168]

Dreamweaver is the choice of editor for the company that design our company website. However, I personaly like to edit the code after its created it through notepad as like most editors it can add rubish code and not always the best to read afterwards.

 

[Kris]

Notepad

Funnily enough, first website I built was made entirely in Notepad and it won an award in an internet survey for ease of use.

I'd probably go for Dreamweaver. I found it difficult to use in the brief time I tried it out though but that was only about 30 mins. Just found the number of features overwhelming but pretty much everything I imagine you could need.

 

[fizsparky]

Dreamweaver is ok but it requires a little experience.

 

[BillyBobAZ]

Dreamweaver is what most professionals use. Loads of plugins, some free, some not.

Dreamweaver is now part of Adobe so it has good integration with their other products.

Lynda.com / vtc videos are very handy for learning s/w packages.

 

[wsm1972]

Web design in Dreamweaver is like driving a car. You don’t need to know how the engine works to be able to drive.

With Dreamweaver it is possible to create web sites without actually understanding the code that is being written in the background.

Im a multimedia developer and we use Dreamweaver to quickly setup sites, but I can also do hand coding so I can go into what Dreamweaver produces and tweak it to suit my needs.

If you want to do web development “properly” get yourself a good book on web development (personally I like the Sams ones). Then you can code using any text editor, even Notepad (as has been mentioned). If however you just want to design and quickly implement sites, get yourself a copy of Dreamweaver.

Hope this helps

 

[simpsons344]

dreamweaver all the way it is realy easy to use i have done a couple of sites on it and found it quite easy

 

[karym6]

to be brutally honest, I use either ultraedit or textpad to create my pages.

i dont tend to need dreamweaver all the time, so I just use it for CSS stuff and some content stuff, however that is rare. most of the things i do with web pages use a database, so i dont need to be able to import fireworks stuff etc.

have you considered using something like joomla to publish your site? its free and very powerful, you need to have PHP and mysql installed on your server to use it.

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

I use dreamweaver for its coding view, it is the easiest thing to write code in with all the colour coding and the way it lays it out and everything.

 

[karym6]

if you are after just simple coding, and no graphical stuff then you will be better off with something like ultraedit or textpad. They both use the colour coded syntax for writing with dynamic languages like php, asp etc.

one of the biggest problems i have had with dreamweaver over the years is the fact after it has been running for a while, windows totally seazes up (no idea about using it on a mac). so, if its just simple text work you are doing my recommendation is a text editor.

also, dont forget joomla, its a complete cms that is open source. with it you can create very professional webpages simply and quickly and it is very powerful.

 

[halt]

Use emacs, get used to it, then you can use it for everything. Never underestimate the power of a good text editor.

 

[karym6]

Use emacs, get used to it, then you can use it for everything. Never underestimate the power of a good text editor.

totally agree with the above - if you are on a linux machine emacs rocks.

it is a little strange at first, but its small and quick and quite possibly all you need in that environment.

 

[halt]

totally agree with the above - if you are on a linux machine emacs rocks.

it is a little strange at first, but its small and quick and quite possibly all you need in that environment.

There is a Win32 branch of emacs also, it is not just for GNU operating systems. Yes it is "strange" at first, but that is the price you pay for power.

Congratulations, you are possibly the first person in history to refer to emacs as being "small":

-rwxr-xr-t 2 root root 7.4M Jul 19 13:00 /usr/local/bin/emacs

Compared to notepad.exe being 68KB. This is not to mention the elisp scripts involved. But it gave a chuckle anyway

 

[karym6]

lol, compared to win apps of the same ilk, that is small. I think ultraedit weighs in over 10mb, and textpad at 8mb

I have no idea about Jedit, which I have just been told is also quite popular.

i would suggest anyone who needs a powerful text editor to take a look at emacs - as halt says, it is a little odd at first but you will get used to it over time

 

[halt]

I did not mean to be pedantic about you post. I was merely referring to the 43M of elisp modules which provide emacs with its powerful functionality (although, to be fair this represents both ASCII scripts and byte-compiled scripts). 43MB (elisp modules) + 7MB (emacs binary) >= 50MB.

But, this is off-topic. I apologise.