I know that the gods of webdesigning revere dreamweaver as the best wysiwyg editor, but till now i've been using fp. when i heard dreamweaver was nice and tried it out - it freaked me out for the first time. agreed, it's powerful, but macromedia could've made the interface more simpler, like they have in photoshop. so out of your personal experience, which do you feel is the best? i'd go for fp.

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I found FP makes pages sluggish, because it produces very poor code. I agree that DW is scarey at first, but giv e it a try, look up a tutorial if you have to (the Macromedia site itself is wonderful for that one). I found DW meet all my needs, though I admit to using TopStyle Lite for editting CSS for IPB Skins (just is smaller and starts up faster)

For simple sites, I just stick to Notepadd ++ which is like notepad but offers syntax highlighting for a lot of langauges, ConText is equally good btw. I just dislike FP a lot, and even though I have the full Office Pro with FP, I never install it. I once did, to write a tutorial on how to FTp your site to astahost from within FP, but I hate the program.

When i had classes in webdesign, HTML first. We had to WRITE the code on PAPER so we had to learn the tags etc. THen we were allowed to move to Glimmer, Vim, Vi, Emacs even LOL, or Gedit. (All text editors in Linux, but Emacs, it's an environment.) After a while we could use what we wanted for building sites, but on the finals Glimmer or Vi had to be used. I prefer Vim still Our final was this : recreate the slashdot.org site with everything, you can copy and reuse the graphics. But the site has to be hand coded (the teacher had copied ALL graphics, made a tarball out of them and we had the tarball and a screenshot of the site)

 

 

 

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For me, I have only used FrontPage once in my life. Dreamweaver is my editor of choice and find that the application can be overwhelming at first, but I feel the learning curve isn't too bad. I started out learning HTML and then moved to Dreamweaver to code it all. In my opinion, its always good to have a good background on what you're doing cause if something doesn't look right, you could always check the HTML. Dreamweaver has a very good reference section that explains the different tags for HTML and other languages. The reason why I like Dreamweaver is because the user interface is not intrusive in any way. Every panel can be hidden so all you see is the workspace and the reason why I like this is because I can open up and edit multiple files at a time and still be organized. In the end it's what you're most familiar with that will get you the best results.

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I have never been a fan of WYSIWYG editors because everything seems simpler to me when i use just the simple notepad to edit and create HTML files. My knowledge of web design started with FP when i attended a class on it. Pretty fascinating for me at that time coz i was like 9 back then and the internet was still a blur for many people.

But i really hated it when all you do is drag and drop images or text into a screen like making slide with powerpoint. I wanted more freedom, which is why i moved on to Dreamweaver. The beginning versions looked pretty crappy and keeping all the necessary windows open at one time was very problematic because of lack of space. So i just played along then i realised that there is a whole other part to coding and began to learn it myself with HTML tutorials on the web.

Believe me, I've NEVEr taken a HTML class before. I've asked a few of my friends who've attended it what is was like and they told me what he learnt and i realised that full $300 for a 3 hour lessons is actually worth 3 months of studying HTML yourself online. I never retreat to coding books because i think its a waste of time reading when you can do handson and learn it yourself. Most of my learning is basically assumption...play around you don't get it right try again....

When you use programs like Dreamweaver or FP it totally limits what you can do. Although Dreamweaver has an option where you can switch to the original coding panel, it is really useless because some other php or mysql databases just don't function properly in Dreamweaver and seriously NOT in FP.

So basically:

If you want website done in 20minutes - Frontpage
If you want website done in 30 minutes with more options - Dreamweaver
If you want to mess with your website till daylight - Notepad

Have fun!

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I started out with Notepad. That was good for simple web designing and it gave me more control of the site. Then I started using Frontpage. Don't know why, but I never liked that program at all. I think Frontpage Express is better than that. It's more simple to use.

Next thing you know, I'm using Dreamweaver and have been using it ever since. It's definitely one of the better WYSIWYG HTML programs out there. I guess you have to get used to it first. Notepad still comes into action from time to time, but Dreamweaver is the main software I use for my webpages.

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i have used frontpage mostly, it is pretty easy to use. sure it takes a little to get used to because everything is sorta spread around. but i got the hang of it quickly as i usually do. i put up my first site with frontpage shortly after i started usuing it. before that i was just using notepad and the html skills i had taught myself over the internet.

here is one of my sites...

the one done in notepad

the one that i had done in frontpage i deleted (sorry)

i had known about dreamweaver for a long time now...but the first time i got to use it, it was only for a day. i had borrowed it from a friend of mine. i installed it and imedialtly started making a web page. in about 5 minutes i had made a decent homepage to my site. it was amazing...i didnt even need time to get used to the program, i just sorta installed and away i went. but my friend took the software back, and my trial expired before i could...crack it...but after that i started using frontpage again. it wasnt the best application. but it worked great. i finally got dreamweaver from the library about a year later, i had never actually installed it, it just sat in my cd case. but then the webdesigning class i took started usuing dreamweaver so i installed it on my computer and begin usuing it again. once again i didnt need to get used to the program too much again (just a few different things because this was mx 2004). quickly i had made another new site. this time a whole site and i put it online with astahost. my accounts suspended right now because i went on vacation, so theres no point in putting a link, but i guess i could cause it will be activated again shortly.

website made with dreamweaver

the only thing with that site is that the template isnt mine, i had downloaded it from some site online so that i had one to use while i created my own. but the thing i love most about dreamweaver is the ability to use the other macromedia software along side of dreamweaver. it just makes things soo much easier. and dreamweaver doesnt even take hours to learn to use. eveything is right there. although i will admit that after usuing frontpage for so long, switching to dreamweaver can be a little confusing but only because you expect things to be harder when they are easier.

i think dreamweaver is a lot better than frontpage, easier to use, powerfull...way powerfull. and even my baby brother can use it (i dont have a baby brother, but hopefully that doesnt mean that a baby couldnt use the program)...if you dont arleady have dreamweaver, i suggest you get it.

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I have downloaded about six free website templates now and find that using FP is a breeze to edit, fill with content and graphics and to publish. I find dreamweaver not user friendly. It takes me ages to figure out what to do and find the experience quite frustrating

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FP never used it and never liked it, the code i saw it generates just sux, so much unneeded code, you always need to optimize manually.. i always have been using a text editor for my webdesig, editplus and now am using bluefish on linux, never liked DW, but if choosing from FP or DW, i would really choose DW, besides if you're very expierenced with it, you can make a lot of really good things, the starters who use them usually makes nothing good.

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Yeah i use frontpage alwayz.. not tried my hands at Dreamweaver,

Friends im having a Doubt.. Like frontpage can create html.. Just like that is there any software for php?
As i dont know a word of php, if something like frontpage or dreamweaver it would be great for me! As i wanted to design a dating site myself! i had seen some editors for php but they dont work.. i mean they are too difficult to understand!
wud be glad to know if something like frontpage for Creating php !

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yes i do agree. i love dreamweaver, but i did find it a lot easier to use frontpage to edit templates and stuff. dreamweaver had some problems with spacings and junk. you would move something and it would just go all over the place.




yeah, frontpage does create a lot of un-needed code though. thank god i figured that out a while ago. i was amazed at all the crap they toss into it. dreamweaver is better, but not perfect. it is always best to go over the code yourself.

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