For web designing i use macromedia dreamweaver, it's a good creation software, works on both windows and linux"using wine emulator", it helps you to make a good interface that you can always preview without needing to open your web browser to preview your page, also it has much ready-made templates, can save your work directly to css "cascading style sheets" format, importing for most known documents types specially macrmedia flash movies, designing in layers, on the other hand i can switch to coder style when i need to type php, html,.... etc codes, it's really powerful software.
For graphics i use Adobe PhotoShop 7 which is the best "as i think" in that field, specially when you add some plugins and filters to it, i tried GIMP but i prefer photoshop as it's alot of features you can use easily with support to save your work in any image extension you prefer.
i think you should better post this topic including a poll so you could get the results directly.

dreamweaver and coffeecup are pretty good to use.. .but i always use old and trusty notepad... cause you have full control over everything you are doing and have your browser open beside you to make sure it is exactly what you want.

btw having to do all these messages is a bit tedious hey hehehe but it's already as long as the mysql works properly it's all worth it in the end i guess.


but yeh you wont find something that makes your page all up for you.. cause how will it know what you want.. .and if someone already made it.. they'd have it on the net for themselves to make money off... you see what i mean...

When I first started web designing I used notepad and microsoft frontpage and I feared Dreamweaver because it looks so complicated. But when I started using Dreamweaver, it was not that difficult to understand and dreamweaver is much of a fine tool for web design and developement.

When I'm dealing with graphics, I use both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator or sometimes just Photoshop alone. I don't want to shift or use any other graphics tool because I already mastered Photoshop (not really, maybe i'm just a 75% photoshop master lol).

And when it comes to web animation I use Macromedia Flash and Adobe Image Ready for animated gifs.

I prefer to use Dreamweaver i think it's the simply program to design my website for both basic and professional.THi program is easy to use to widely design ur web.



Ps.Thanks soooo muchhh for reply#3 >.< .It's useful for me.

Answer to ur first Question : Best Software for Web Designing

Dreamweaver is probably the best Software for Website Design. Even if you prefer to hand-code your HTML and JavaScript, perhaps especially if you do, Dreamweaver is a tool worth learning. Dreamweaver lets novices apply JavaScript behaviors to create rollovers and other effects, but it also lets JavaScript developers manage and distribute their own libraries of JavaScript behaviors

Dreamweaver has numerous time-saving features including File Check In/Check Out, integration with SourceSafe or WebDAV, and Design Notes for Web team collaboration. Furthermore, its Templates, Libraries, and HTML Styles features speed site development. But you're not going to use those features unless Dreamweaver lets you continue working the way you want to work. You demand the ability to use your favorite text editor to hand-code HTML and JavaScript. You won't tolerate a visual tool writing lousy HTML or changing your code.

Dreamweaver gives you the best of both worlds. You can use its Design view to work visually and hide the underlying HTML, or you can use its Code view to write HTML and JavaScript by hand. Dreamweaver even offers support for server-side tags, including ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, and PHP.

Inshort, I am mentioning several Positive Points of Dreamweaver in a List :

• most popular web designing software for professionals
• liquid design, works in the most possible environments with flexible design and clean code.
• powerful interaction with flash for animation, fireworks for image splitting and pop up navigation
• Includes server-side technologies allowing you to request information from the user, process it and store data on the web server
• Create full blown database-driven, dynamic web applications.
  many extensions available
• It's not necessary to know HTML at all to use Dreamweaver!!
• you can switch back and forth between WYSIWYG and HTML, and make changes either way
• Roundtrip HTML
• WYSIWYG , multimedia & interactive

Apart from this, it supports the following :

• Javascript
• Java
• CSS
• DHTML
• XML
• WML
• ASP
• JSP
• Coldfusion
• PHP
• SQL

*** All Criticisms and Appreciations are welcome for this Post ***

Regards:
Samya Khalid

As probably many did, I have started my first site in Front Page. Was wery proud of it for a couple of month untill realised that it's just junk. Moved to DreamVeawer later on and still am using it. FireWorks for graphics.
But lately I've cought myself more and more using notepad (Notepad++). Somehow it's easier for me to work with PHP code in simple, or better colored text.

Wow, I feel so special - no one mentioned Eclipse as an HTML editor. With WTP, you can code HTML pages in Eclipse, along with other JSP and servlet files. I like it much better because of the tight integration with JSP/servlet development builtin.

As for graphics, I use Fireworks. Though I've never used Photoshop, I heard that Fireworks is a much more vector-oriented (graphics don't distort as much when stretched) application.

By the way, Notepad is nice too when you just want to make a small adjustment (IE opens the source in Notepad automatically).

I totally agree with everyone else who has said Dreamweaver. For designing a website whether a beginner or an expert, whether simple or complicated - Dreamweaver is definetly the best way to go. This is because there are lots of features you can use and combined with an FTP server, it opens up a whole new range of possibilities. The latest version Dreamweaver MX I think, is a great piece of software. I'm not sure if you have to pay for it or not but you can download it from the internet for just over 100 MB. However, there are some disadvantages when it comes to using Dreamweaver for the first time. It may seem a little complicated at first because there are so many possibilities, but when you play around and read a few tutorials it becomes more and more simpler.

Another website designing program, which is not as good as Dreamweaver, is Microsoft Frontpage. Here you create your website layout(s) on a new page(s). I'm not sure how to upload this design to your website but I think that your host will have a Frontpage feature that will let you do this. But don't go along with what I said, just ask around to make sure! Good luck with which ever one you choose.

OK, Dreamveawe seems to achive overall support. Let me throw a stone. What I don't like about dreamveawer.
When doing ASP pages I finally gave up attempts to use Dreamveawer asp features. It's easier to learn ASP then to figure out how to use them in Dreamveaver. So I do it old good manual way. (Luckily, there are not so many options for PHP, so did not waist time trying to use them).
Not sure about the latest Dreamveawer, but the one I have (Do not remember the release, the last one wich did not require activation) does not handle css properly (One more reason why I started to use notepad).

FTP feature of Dreamveawer is stripped off. You could not set it to view hidden files like .htaccess for example.

Yes, it's feature rich, but it takes time to learn how to use it so it does things for you. And in many cases it's easier to learn how to do the same things yourself

I prefer to use dreamweaver and photoshop, they are both very powerful programs that can do alot. I wouldn't recommend Frontpage if your onto your second website, because it only supports html and nothing else that I am aware of.
But it is more or less a matter of opinion and level of skill.