47 replies to this topic

[Prelude76]

Welcome fellow web designers.What do you use primarily when creating a website?  It should give us an overall idea of what kind of expertise we're dealing here in our great bunch of web developers.   p.s. - I'm a Dreamweaver semi-pro myself.  Use it in conjunction with Fireworks.  I'm using an older version at the moment (version 4), but i'm hoping this forum will give me the push i need to jump into CSS coding and perhaps even XML programming.

[havnblast]

Homesite and Dreamweaver together, been getting more into Dreamweaver tho.

[volunteer]

Prelude76, on Nov 13 2003, 07:48 AM, said:

What do you use primarily when creating a website?  It should give us an overall idea of what kind of expertise we're dealing here in our great bunch of web developers. 

I hand coded a simple website.  I have tried HTML-Kit (free) but never really spent enough time to learn all the features.  I'd like to learn some of the more advanced features like CSS.

[teacher]

Gee, I don't know where I fit in.  Adobe GoLive is my all-time favorite.  CSs is easy in that.   I used to teach all Adobe products so after four years of teaching it, I guess I know that one.  I primarily use Dreamweaver now but I teach a class in html using Notepad.  I frequently go to the hand-code tabs and put things the way I want them when in Dreamweaver or GoLive.  I need to learn more obout Dreamweaver.  I took a workshop on it last spring and then did not touch it again until this fall.  When I get stuck I just switch over to hand coding or GoLive.  At home it is GoLive/Photoshop and at work it is Dreamweaver/Flash etc.  I have been messing around some with the Linux tools as well.   That said, have I confused the issue even more?  Just put me down as Dreamweaver/GoLive/HandCoding/on-line sites/anything that works!  

[LilBambi]

teacher, on Nov 13 2003, 09:29 AM, said:

Just put me down as Dreamweaver/GoLive/HandCoding/on-line sites/anything that works! 

Anything that works ...definitely!I really think it depends on the situation and what's needed. A tool for every moment .. whatever works and helps me get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible.I use handcoding mainly, but make use of many tools to help in the endeavor.I have used Dreamweaver and Frontpage ... I love Dreamweaver best of the WYSIWYG site builders; but even then I always have the code window open tweaking by hand.

[Peachy]

Well,I currently use Dreamweaver MX 2004, which IMHO is the best darn WYSIWYG web editor!   The new MX is a melding of Dreamweaver 4, Homesite, and Macromedia UltraDev (a suite of utilities for writing embedded server-side scripting in web pages). If you want to write ColdFusion Markup Language, PHP/MySQL, ASP.NET then MX 2004 has some very good wizards that make writing embedded scripts simple. The code is clean, perhaps not optimised, but for quick and dirty queries/form/tables it works quite wonderfully. I used this to demonstrate web server technologies to my students and they were totally amazed at MX 2004's power.That being said, Notepad and WordPad are my second and third choices. But, the thing that made me upgrade from Dreamweaver MX to Dreamweaver MX 2004 is its near-perfect rendering of CSS in the design view and default XHTML DOCTYPE for new documents. I don't think Microsoft FP 2003 is even in the same league.

[Temmu]

  hand code in notepad  or eversoft's firstpage (similar to homesite)   graphix in paint shop pro v7 (to buy v8, later)   javascript, psp, mysql - little to none    want to put up a site using cssgeneral process:get ideasdraw concept page(s) in paintshop prorevise / approvegenerate graphics (most already done for drawing, above)code the pagerevise / approvepublishsample site here

[RobertM]

I'm mostly a hand-coder but occasionally use Mozilla Composer. I'm also a semantic HTML/XHTML and CSS freak, so be careful what you say around me.    

[SonicDragon]

I hand write all my stuff.I use HTML-Kit for my editor, but i probably haven't tried 1/5 of its features. I just like the syntax highlighting, file pane, spell checker, etc.Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 for graphics.

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draw concept page(s) in paintshop pro

I had never done that before, or even thought of it, and one day, i saw the web designer at work do that. What a good idea! It can be very helpful!

[LLfan]

Other...My old tool of choice was Notepad but since I have now moved on from M$ I use Kate.  Dreamweaver used to be my favorite but it produces such poor and sometimes unecessary code.Oh, one of my favorites for rollovers was using PS7 to create them and chop 'em up and Imageready to create the rollovers.  

[Corrine]

I had to vote other because I maintain the website at work using Domino R5.  We converted our intranet site from Front Page to Lotus Notes R5 (Domino) this year so that is my primary tool.  A primary reason we use Domino R5 is because of the security features available through Lotus Notes.  I've had basic training in both Front Page and Dreamweaver and feel that Dreamweaver is, by far, the more diverse and most powerful.

[SonicDragon]

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My old tool of choice was Notepad but since I have now moved on from M$ I use Kate.

Kate is a great program. I really like how it has the shell on the bottom. Have you looked at Quanta for linux?

[Peachy]

LLfan, on Nov 13 2003, 08:22 PM, said:

Other...My old tool of choice was Notepad but since I have now moved on from M$ I use Kate.  Dreamweaver used to be my favorite but it produces such poor and sometimes unecessary code.

Try the 30-day trial version of Dreamweaver MX 2004 and you will discover that it does XHTML/CSS quite well. No unnecessary tags, everything validates according to the DOCTYPE you choose in your page. Eric Meyer was a consultant on the CSS parsing engine for Macromedia.

[LilBambi]

I tried it Peachy! It was awesome! Now if I could just save up enough to buy it!  

[LLfan]

Peachy, on Nov 13 2003, 10:43 PM, said:

LLfan, on Nov 13 2003, 08:22 PM, said:

Other...My old tool of choice was Notepad but since I have now moved on from M$ I use Kate.  Dreamweaver used to be my favorite but it produces such poor and sometimes unecessary code.

Try the 30-day trial version of Dreamweaver MX 2004 and you will discover that it does XHTML/CSS quite well. No unnecessary tags, everything validates according to the DOCTYPE you choose in your page. Eric Meyer was a consultant on the CSS parsing engine for Macromedia.

I used Dreamweaver MX (2003) and it rendered garbage beautifully.     I will have to give 2004 a go.  

[nilson]

Ugh! I hate editors!  The only time I ever used a editor was when I was brand new on the web, didn't know the difference beween HTML/Javascript  and had never even heard of Mozilla or Linux.Now all my code is done by hand, and it complies to the W3C standards.

[teacher]

I was working on switching all the old junk on my school's section of the district web site yesterday to CSS.  I noticed it is the MX version of Dreamweaver I am using.  I found I did most of it in the coding half of the page with it set up to view the top half of my screen as coding and the bottom half as a WYSIWYG view.  Very handy. I about have our pages done.  Just need to get the images up to date but I plan to put the whole site up at once rather than FTPing it page by page.  The only problem I ran into was I got to about my 8th page and DreamWeaver crashed.  I was glad I had just saved the other seven pages!

[Prelude76]

i should've put 2 categories for Hand-coding:- Hand-coding because i'm in Linux and Linux's options are lacking.- Hand-coding because i'm a neat person and want every code to be perfectly neat.   i'm actually shocked that Hand-coding is giving Dreamweaver a run for its money in this poll.  i learnt HTML the hand-coding way, and since i switch to Dreamweaver, i cant imagine doing some of the advanced sites with multi-tables, multi i-frames, javascripted codes, and have everything centre beautifully on any screen resolution.  but to be perfectly honest, many linux websites where the webmaster is a strong hand-coding advocate are, ummm, whats a good way to say it, ....   extremely lacking in any design style.      as in, those site look more like extracts from a plain book.

[Teffy]

I use HTML-Kit.  I am constantly delighted to find new features within it and pluggins for it.   I am, however, curious about what a WYSIWYG editor could do for me, so I downloaded a trial of the new Dreamweaver.  But it has been hard for me to force myself to figure out how to use it when I am so comfy with HTML-Kit.  I want to know how other folks strike a balance between WYSIWYG and handcoding - I will start a new thread on the topic.I cut my HTML-coding teeth on AOL-Press.  Does anybody remember that one?Teffy

[Temmu]

don't laugh.yahoo has a free downloadable wysiwyg editor that obviously uses at least dhtml.you could also download hundreds of graphics and several themes.free.can't seem to find it on yahoo, but downloaded all of it about a month ago.(mostly for the graphics...)anyone know where it went?

[epp_b]

Primarily, I use FrontPage 2000 for website development.  I particularily like its strenghts in table development, site and content management.Before I started using WYSIWYG, I used a very simple, but powerful text editor, Araneae.As with any WYSIWYG editor, you can't do everything in "easy mode" (or as I call it "lazy mode" ).  I find myself still using Araneae for a lot -- especially PHP programming.

[Prelude76]

epp_b, on Nov 17 2003, 09:45 PM, said:

As with any WYSIWYG editor, you can't do everything in "easy mode" (or as I call it "lazy mode" )

i never understood why so many (not just you, epp_ keep considereing WYSIWYG HTML editing to be 'lazy' and not as true as hand-coding HTML, yet we never see people using Wordperfect DOS, or even Typewriters anymore, now that we have MS Word and other WYSIWYG text editors.    what's wrong with being able to see what the page will look like as you design, in real-time?  or the way i describe it, why walk when you can drive?   Hand-coding HTML is easier to get a grasp off then a full-fledged program like Dreamweaver;  i mean, using Bold tags and Italic tags and http: weblinks as we all do on this forum and you're halway fluent at HTML already.  

[havnblast]

That is what is nice about Dreamweaver - split screen - hand code above and see how it looks below in real time including flash and other plugins.   I've slowly been converting myself to DW since it can do the hand coding like homesite.It's nice to see at least two other people use Homesite  

[Prelude76]

havnblast, on Nov 17 2003, 11:23 PM, said:

That is what is nice about Dreamweaver - split screen - hand code above and see how it looks below in real time including flash and other plugins.   I've slowly been converting myself to DW since it can do the hand coding like homesite.It's nice to see at least two other people use Homesite 

Macromedia owns Homesite now, doesnt it?the latest Dreamweaver has 3 options for its GUI, dreamwevear 3 style, new DW style, and also Homesite style.  did you try running Dreamweaver with the Homesite interface?  how close is it?

[havnblast]

Macromedia bought out Homesite a couple years ago now - it's different from using it in DW vs. Homesite - in DW you have to select which toolbar you want - whereas in HomeSite it has pretty much every thing you need at the top.  It just takes getting use to doing some things a bit different, but it's easy to adjust too.  DW has Homesite beat for inserting your plugins - that is one of the best features.