You'll get a variety of answers on this, so here's mine based on over 14 yrs web design experience...
1. NEVER use FrontPage - it throws in 100's of useless lines of code, causing your site to load slower and won't display properly in all browsers; not to mention, your code will never validate.
2. Dreamweaver is okay, but it too does many of the nasty things FrontPage does.
3. Try several free HTML Editors until you feel comfortable with one and stick with it!
4. Once you settle on an Editor of your choice, strive to learn how to hand-code your HTML & CSS -- and, most important ... validate all of your code(s) until it's 100% W3C code-compliant, as this will ensure proper display in all browers.
5. Using templates are the preferred method currently -- but, again -- I strongly urge and encourage you to learn hand-coding first so that you'll know what you're doing when editing pre-made templates!
Here's a few for you to download and experiment with:
FirstPage 2006 and 1stPage 2000 -- take your pick
HTML Kit
Alleycode
Although support is no longer offered, this is the Editor I personally have been using for many years as it serves me well, and comes with a "Preview" option where I can see my site as I create it before loading to the server -- Arachnophilia 4.0 |
