Best website design software

Tom_Jones

My partner has decided she would like to build some professional looking websites for friends/work collegues.

What is the best, and easiest to use/reasonably priced software on the market at the moment.

Thanks for any replies

TJ

wolfman

Most decent packages (like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive etc...) will set you back over £300. You'll probably need a paint program too for image editing, it all gets quite expensive.

If your partner wants to design professional looking web sites then my advice would be to buy a few books on HTML, XML, and XSL, a reasonable paint program (like Jasc Paintshop Pro) and a code editor like TextPad.

There's also a wealth of tutorials on just about anything on the web.

Fran

Why not start with one of the free ones, after all you can pay for the best tools but if you can't use them you've wasted your money. Have a look under FAQ's (sticky at top of this board) then "Own Website".

criminal_smile

I'd have to agree with Dreamweaver for simplicity and ease of use, but Fran has a point. Do these people need an all singing, all dancing site, or do they just want to see their name in lights on the net? Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best, and starting small has it's advantages (i.e. - nothing going wrong!). While surfing, if you / she come across a site you like the look of, right click and view the source. You can pick up some good tips and ideas on HTML coding by doing this, and teach yourself how coding works at the same time.
If she is already well clued up on html, xml etc, and just wants templates do a google. There are thousands of sites offering free stuff, and a lot of it is quite good, enough to rival a lot of the pro packages about.
One tip, use sites like W3 Markup Validator or WDG HTML Validator to ensure that the coding is correct. These sites will also give download times for various connections, scripting errors in different browser types etc.

HTH

VanDeretto

Try Sitespinner - free trial download from https://www.virtualmechanics.com.

I've used it for a couple of web sites I've created. It's very intuitive.

itgirlinuk

I would suggest you download some free software for HTML editing from downloads.cnet.com and try using them.

The simplest way of doing it would be to use MS-Word. Mind you its messy, but if you never want to look at the code, MS-Word is probably the easiest way of getting a page done without buying / learning any new tools / programming.

wolfman

I'd stay away from MS Word as an editor. There are better editors available.

To start, if you want a WYSIWYG editor the Microsoft Frontpage works ok. As you get better though you'll find you use the design (WYSIWYG) view less and the source view more.

If you don't fancy spending any money then have a look at these WYSIWYG editors:

NVU - http://nvu.com/
Mozilla Composer - http://www.mozilla.org
Netscape Composer - http://home.netscape.com/computing/download/index.html

If you're looking to create "professional" websites though I still think the best way is to get your hands dirty in the source code, and read books, web articles etc...

Patr100

For beginners or those who don't want or need to write pure HTML a good WYSIWYG (with optional HTML DIY coding) site makers are
Dreamweaver - expensive - does more than most will need.
Frontpage - I find it more user friendly for beginners - less of a learning steep curve than DW

Net Objects Fusion - You may get an older ( Version 7 ) - free on a cover disk - i did a few months back and it''s very good -

Yes, Word is not recommended for webpages although in theory it can produce them they are cumbersome and awkward in various ways also producing a lot of extra coding or can can inihibit use.


You might have Frontpage with some versions of MS Office.

Huggins

i used dreamweaver and with abit of practise it's a great, simple package to use. See if you can 'borrow' a copy from anyone!

kingpuck

i would never recomend frontpage to anyone, it makes your pages so bloated. if you look at a simple page with a few lines of text written in code and the same generated by frontpage you will understand.

This may not be a problem at first but if she is going to start creating more dynamic sites then this will become a major problem.

Macromedia offer trials on all of their software, download dreamweaver and fireworks and see what you think, in my opinion they are the best route to take.

lellie

Do not use frontpage! Ever. End Of.

Dreamweaver is great if you can afford it.. There's an excellent education edition of Studio MX which is affordable - but only suitable if your wife is a student/teacher/in education in some way..

NVU is pretty good - it's free and easy to use - it's what they made us use at uni when doing a web project - although I just handcode usually with notepad or use dreamweaver when feeling lazy,