I'm curious as to how you guys put together web pages. Me, I just use an interesting combination. First I go into Microsoft Word and save the document as a blank HTML file, then I add the code in Notepad (that's why I'm able to complete my web sites so quickly). Do you have any interesting ways of doing things?

I just start it up in notepad from a template file I created which has the basic header, body, and html tags set. I also try to use css scripts that are not a part of the html code itself to allow trhe same css format for many documents. Whenever I am doing a site that has a particular color scheme, I always make a new template just for that site. It also allows me to create sites very quickly.

Normally I work in Dreamweaver, which gives you the basics to start off from (talking about HTML here ), I don't know the doctype declarations by heart If I am feeling lazy or impatient, I use NotePad++ which gives you nothing to start of from LOL. But then I or look up the Doctype in a quickie, or don't declare one. The rest of the code I write by hand. I do write out the contents first, before starting a page, so that I can copy paste the contents, I like to keep the contents writing and coding seperate

Even if I had M$ Word installed on my pc (I use OpenOffice - Long live OpenSource ), I would never use it for any sort of web design. It adds so much unneeded code to the source, same as FrontPage, that it actually makes me cringe. Yes, I cringe when seeing poorly coded sites, or horrid colour schemes (ever tried reading bright blue text on a bright red background???). Now I don't mean to sound nasty here, although I can be pretty passionate about my dislikings (I am a woman after all LOL ), If you like the way you design pages, and it is easiest for you, then by all means stick to it

Now the only thing I do in HTML is the outline and contents, the lay-out, look and feel of the site, I declare with CSS. I generally use external stylesheets Which like vizskywalker said in the previous post, makes it easier for multiple pages to look the same. At one point I did toy with WEFT (Web Embedding Font Tool) and since it automatically insert CSS into your page, an external CSS seemed to conflict with it. I stopped using the program LOL besides, you're best off using the standard fonts in sites anyways. (another one of my petpeeves)

Normally I open up Crimson Editor (a very good Syntax Highlighting text editor with tabbed browsing, beneficial for jumping back and forth from HTML and CSS documents) and Firefox to view my website and PHP Expert Editor which has a list of all the functions so I can search through that for my PHP needs.

In terms of speeding things up, I just create a lot of macros such as ones that add the DOCTYPE, html tags and what not, other ones to paste the input text box code etc... I spend most of my time fixing code to work in I.E. that it doesn't matter how much time I can save

Another thing I like to do is test my site on as many different browsers and platforms as possible. To help with this, I found an interesting tool called Bobby. Unfortuantely, Bobby no longer seems to be free, but it does offer a search embedded into the home page that allows one check per minute. And in case you were wondering, Bobby does not like the astahost homepage: http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/bobbyServ...wcag1-aaa&test=.

fieldsfan336, using Word to make your web page is a bad idea... (Although my computer teacher teaches us to do that... Stupid *****...) Word saves all those extra codes that are completely useless. You sound like you know html, so why don't you just use NotePad in the beginning and save it as html?

I never thought of that. Thanks for the tip, szupie

When creating a web page, I prefer to do a little bit of preplanning first. I sort of brainstorm about what colors I might use and the overall image I want to project and the vibe I want to create with a site or page. Then when I actually get down to business, things change as I design it. I come up with new ideas as I'm coding or designing stuff. It's good to get creative while you are designing because it seems that once you get into the creative 'groove' you come up with the better stuff. So I brainstorm for the overall idea and the actual aesthetics of the whole thing sort of come together as I design. This also seems to hold true for whatever graphic design project I undertake. The revision process is another largely overlooked part of designing. If you get too in love with your first design, you are likely to miss out on all the cool ways you could really make your design better by revising it.

Long Live Open Office! love the thing to bits and i wouldn't even consider replacing it.

I also use Dreamweaver as i'm a lazy sod who can't be bothered to code proberbly, and also it makes things easier and look more professional. Dreamweaver is apart from photoshop the most useful program i have and it is well worth it especially since you can code in so many langauges using it. The only problem i find is that it's eaiser to have fireworks as well if you need to edit it, that way you can use the interface between the two programs rather than having to edit it in photoshop then opening all the folders ect to load it. Which is kinda annoying as after you load it you need to postion it then change the soruce so that it matches the location on your page which can be a pain.

The only problems i've had with it apart from a few minor inconviences were that i made a border from a transparent png then added it over the top of my text, it looked perfect in the desgin view, but when i went in to preview (i use opera for this) it had moved about a mile over to the left.

The same goes for frames which are a apin in the arse and therefore i've had to just go without which doesn't look as good.

I always like to have my page validate under XHTML, so I use the validation extension for FireFox which not only tells you the errors but generates a new script with the errors fixed! How cool is that.

The only reason I like validating my pages is because if someone emails me saying that my website doesn't look right and it appears messy then 99% of the time it is their browser rendering it wrong, so I can shift the blame and sleep better at nights. I always aim to get it working in Netscape, I.E., Opera, Safari and of course the Mozilla browser.