What software do you use to design websites? eg: Dreamweaver, frontpage etc

Notepad.

I seem to remember seeing other threads asking this question, treetops, but I can't remember where i saw them. You might want to search this forum to see what other people said.

Webuilder from www.blumentals.net ...

I use Photoshop to design and do all my image work and then develop my sites by hand coding. I use HTML Kit as my code editor, bit have used others on and off. No WYSIWYG editors for me though.

I use dreamweaver just because the auto close tag, and auto browse/finish tag for the CSS and IMG/HREF tags speeds things a long easily.

I wouldn't use any WYSIWYG editor, but anything to increase my productivity is very important.

i also us dw.it's a powerful tool.

dreamweaver all the way along with its sister 'fireworks 8'... brilliant

Dreamweaver, produces very clean HTML code, and very easy to work with.

I'll agree and disagree a little etech-martin. I'll agree that Dreamweaver produces the cleanest code of any WYSIWYG editor, but I disagree that it produces clean code. The only way to get truly clean code is to hand code. All WYSIWYG's by their nature produce redundant code and depending on how you use them can leave a lot of empty tags inside your files.

Dreamweaver though does produce the best code of the WYSIWYG's so for anyone using one DreamWeaver is my recommendation.

I'm a Dreamweaver user and enthusiast, I love it. I like the DW interface. Another reason is that I develop a fair share of ColdFusion and DW is a great tool fror CF. The best way to code is by hand. I used to, but I have become lazy. I usually go about 50/50 now. I layout a page with DW even a lot of the css. Then I go in by hand and fix things.

I like to layout a page using Dreamweaver and then go in and tweak it by hand. When you start using more and more css we find that wysiwyg doesn't hold up. YOu need to do things by hand because much of the css pos

Dreamweaver also enables me to keep track of quite a few sites easily. It's site control is pretty good. FTP, etc.

For graphics I use Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks..

Dreamweaver. Probably better to start of with rather than directly coding but you should stil brush up.

You can start to learn hand coding right from the start. You really can learn the basics of HTML in an afternoon. Like I've said I'm not a WYSIWYG person for several reasons, but there's nothing wrong with using on as long as you still have an understadning for the code behind the scenes. If you want to be a webmaster you really do need to learn the code.

I think Chip is using DW in the right way. For him it's a production tool as it is for many others. Chip still knows how to get into the code though when he has to in order to fix things here and there and clean up the code.

I have been planning on buying a website builder myself. I have been told by many people that Dreamweaver is wonderful! and very easy to use also.

use Photoshop or fireworks to design and do all my image work ,
use dreamweaver to design my site and edit the code by hand

Sometimes i use Notepad,forntpage,flash...

mostly people use dw but fireworks does so much better. its good for graphics, slicing & so on. but wen it comes to html,php,css,perl,asp,soap,xml,whml & everything online scripting related - its Adobe Golive. -this is one powerful program u cant even begin to imagine.

Hi treetops,

There is a thread on this subject at http://www.webmaster-talk.com/websit...ml-editor.html

Dreamweaver is pretty good, but if you are looking for free software try Alleycode http://www.alleycode.com/ as it has most of the useful features of Dreamweaver without all the useless bells and whistles that anyone who knows about web design would not touch anyhow. Look a the code produced by any WYSIWYG editor (especially Frontpage and Dreamweaver) and tell me you aren't horrified by the messiness of the code....!

Website design uk

Hmm I'd agree with vangogh, if you are going to design properly then it has to be hand coding, and I'd also say with minimal (if any) use of javascript and definitely no Flash splash screens as index pages. Sites that do rely heavily on Flash and javascript might look pretty (and you can develop them quickly by using Adobe GoLive, Dreamweaver and Fireworks), but in the UK now all websites are subject to the Disabilities and Discrimination Act and you can (and people do!) get sued rather heavily for them if they are inaccessible to blind people... !

Any text that can't be read by search engine spiders and screen readers is worse than useless. We all occasionally embed text into images I know, but surely if we all coded by hand there would be less of this? What tool you use to do all this with is irrelevant as long as the code is good and clean, well structured and doesn't have too many validation errors (although they do creep in over time sometimes...).

Perhaps I'm getting old, but I thought that the web was invented to share information by a bunch of scientists at CERN... seems hard to do that when people miss the point with all these tools to 'write websites' using technologies that not everyone uses...

I too started out using Dreamweaver at University, and I still use it occasionally (in code view) as a text editor, but as you probably can see, I get a bit flustered when people advocate using WYSIWYG editors to design websites - it's turning the whole industry into a 'bedroom business'... and I didn't study for all these years to be part of that.

Website design uk

I can understand why you get frustrated with all the people using WYSIWYG editors. I do too sometimes since I've spent a few years teaching myself to understand what every line of code is really doing behind any site.

I think WYSIWYGs can be used to save people time or to help people who like the visual aspects. I don't think there's anything wrong with them as a rule, but I absolutely agree you should still understand the code behind the scenes. All WYSIWYG editors leave excess code laying around and while the site might look the same to the end user it's not the same.

I think far too many site owners think the way to a good site is in the eye candy and I also think that's why so many sites fail. Ultimately it's going to be your content that makes a sale or keeps people coming back. That doesn't mean the visuals aren't important. There's a tripping point you need to be above, but the extra flash and animations is often counter productive to a site's goals.

If you learn what you are writing with dreamweaver, the html, hen you will gather a better understanding of web design and become a better webmaster.

I loooove Dreamweaver!