Quote from Ollie180 :

Frontpage or dreamweaver?

even tho i dun know jack bout coding in HTML, from wha ive seen, FP is the worst thing to be released as a HTML writing program..

DW for the win if ya dun wanna learn how to code..

Use Frontpage/Dreamweaver to make quick 'n dirty webpages.

Use a text editor to learn HTML.


If you actually want to know what's going on then you won't come around using a text editor. If you write the whole stuff by yourself you actually learn coding HTML, otherwise you only learn how to use a web page editor.

My advice: learn HTML first by using a text editor and one of many tutorial sites on the net, then you can still learn using a web page editor afterwards.

When I learned HTML I tried to do as much as possible from my own knowledge in a text editor and if there was something I didn't know, I fired up Frontpage, put the element on an emtpy site and then looked at the HTML code to find out how to do this. Considering current W3C standards this may not be the best way to do it today, though.

I'm currently an ASP.NET programmer and I still don't use the WYSIWYG editor for most stuff because I have much more control of what happens when I do it myself.

Quote from Anarchi-H :

There have already been a few decent ones mentioned, although my weapon of choice is VIM. Insanely powerful for a text editor, but really hard to get your neck around at first.

VIM is nice, and at least its not EMACS

But if you do use either vi / vim or emacs, then watch out for "stallman finger". He even has to use a low impact keyboard now, after all these years.

well, from the sounds of things i might try the dreamweaver demo. but the only version i saw for sale was $399. OUCH.

i'm not looking at doing it for a career so being able to slap something together seems like a good idea to me.

thanks.

speedfreak227

You could always try and get a hold of Dreamweaver by asking some students at a webdesign college, lol!

Good luck with the demo then. And search around for tutorials so you can learn the stuff right away. The time would expire probably by the time you learn to do something in it :zombie:

Quote from X-Ter :

I use HTML and will do for a long time to come. I see little or no need for creating a lot of flashy looking stuff that visitors will look at once and then click past as soon as they get a chance.
Good looks doesn't mean it's better. It loads slower and not everyone are connected with 2Mbit or better. Quite a few are still on dial-up, and let's face it, they love plain HTML.

SCORE is not the best looking site on the net, but it's clean, fast and easy to navigate. And when you press a link, it loads the page in a blink even if you are on dial-up. It's all HTML and it's all made with CoffeeCup HTML editor, witch works for both newbies and advanced editors.

Get it at www.coffeecup.com and try it.

of course of course, loading time and ergonomics are of great importance, but using dreamweaver alone doesn't mean you will end up with excessive graphics and loading time, that's why I said I rather spend time actually "designing" the webpage itself.

When I was in secondary school we were still using HTML and it was quite a pain, although things that I learnt back then are indeed quite useful even nowadays, you know being able too see a page structually.

Anyone tried using Adobe Imageready for making webpage? it does quite some stuff with a familiar graphic interface and is quite easy to tweak around.

Quote from the_angry_angel :

If anyone happens to be interested in using SciTE, heres my slightly customised SciTEGlobal.properties file, as a unified diff. It just makes SciTE play [more] nicely imho.

SciTE is the Daddy, that's what I made my website with.

I was taught to create HTML pages in notepad (and PHP :S), so it's not showing off, it's the best way to learn it. It totally depends on you actually seriously wanting to learn the language, or just create some webpages quick and easy.

Hm Im using notepad ever since, it rocks.
I have never tried something like Dreamweaver. It makes only crap code afaik

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Just to bust a common misconception: The point is not, really, to use the DIV tag so much as it is to use more appropriate mark-up and employ CSS to style that mark-up. With CSS you can do the same stuff with a heading tag, or a list item, or a label, etc. as you can with a DIV. Given that DIV has very little semantic value, it should really only be used for splitting arbitrary sections of page content.

Agreed.

CSS can be a pain in the short term; especially to get your head around after using tables, but long term it saves you a lot of time.

Quote from Bob Smith :

SciTE is the Daddy, that's what I made my website with.

Another beer for Mr Smith please!

Quote from Bob Smith :

I was taught to create HTML pages in notepad (and PHP :S), so it's not showing off, it's the best way to learn it. It totally depends on you actually seriously wanting to learn the language, or just create some webpages quick and easy.

I totally agree, and imho that, dear sir, the crux of many computer matters. An appropriate analogy would be that you could write a kernel every time you wanted to use a PC, but most people don't want to In my experience, those who understand the code, generally produce better designs, understand more about usability, and are generally nice people.

As a sweeping generalisation (I know, very rare for me ) most designers don't understand the code, produce pretty but unusable designs, and are orange-sunglass-wearing, kilt loving, mac using, photographical, post-post-prehistoric-post-marital modern nutters I'm sure that kernel developers see the rest of us mere humans in the same way (with the exception of jon masters)

ROFL

This is so true

A webdesigner has really a tough job, if one person makes it all. You need programming experience, design skills, be able to write good content, know about accessibility, etc etc, and specially you must make any of those live together with the others.
Many CSS websites look more or less the same, thus javascript is coming back. Both can nicely work together

I think the best combination is a bit of everything.

i use dreamweaver for all projects, it has a script window so you can change the "bad code" it produces sometimes. it's alot quicker than notepad or textPad etc...
i'm still using tables but i try to keep them limited, i need to learn CSS when i find some time.
i dont think there is a big panic on CSS, it will be the way to go in the future but so long as you dont have tables in tables in table you'll be fine for a while.
like kev says i NEVER touch content anymore either! i did for a few clients but i used to get emails everyday and it was a mega pain in the ass.
made my own CMS and i now sell that with everything i do.

Well, as Im not a professional webdesigner, Im only making the content for my page and the zockertempel website
I guess it must be insane to also write content for a client, if your a professional webdesigner, who earns his money with that.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Yeah me and a mate made our own CMS too, and that's now pretty much all our business. It's got full ecommerce functionality, CRM features, it's multi-user, got its own XML doctype system for the content so that's fully customisable per-client, and plenty of convenient hooks for adding bespoke code without having to resort to using (and - more importantly - maintaining!) a forked codebase. It's quite nifty IISSM.

owww!! fancy pants!
mines not that sophisticated! they can add/edit/delete text and change pictures, i'm working on an XML writter so they can do RSS feeds.
i'm still a little off the e-commerce side of it! lol! maybe in a year or so.

Quote from ORION :

I guess it must be insane to also write content for a client, if your a professional webdesigner, who earns his money with that.

Not only that, but usually clients are vile bastards who change their opinion/wish list every half hour or so.

That's why you either write them a CMS so they can make their crap themselves, or work after a squeamishly defined customer requirement specification.

If you don't take the time to write down what you will and what you won't do (and let that sign by the client), then you will end up with about 1500% of the work you initially thought of. For the same price, of course.