Best website design software

Patr100

I know of more than one professional Web site builders who use Frontpage. DW and Net Objects- for different reasons at different times.

Like Dreamweaver has had for some time , the latest version of FrontPage has a HTML Code clean up facility - to remove excessive and unnecessary code - Dont know how effective it is compared to DW - but it's there..

wolfman

I agree too. Frontpage really isn't that bad, and it comes bundled with certain versions of Microsoft Office anyway. Dreamweaver has been known to bloat pages too, and it costs £320!!! For that price you can buy Visual Studio.Net 2002. I personally wouldn't buy Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

Like I said before, if you are serious about creating a "professional" website then WYSIWYG editors aren't the way to go. A few good books and a text editor would be better.

Chippy_Minton

Gotta be Dreamweaver. It impresses the more you use it.

alanobrien

Tom_Jones wrote:

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

Notepad and a good book on HTML.
No i am not kidding, its the best way to learn the scripting language without fancy programs getting in the way.

My wife wanted to learn how to design websites and i persuaded her to go this route, then when she had a good understanding of HTML i got Dreamweaver for her.

By then she knew how to produce websites and dreamweaver became nothing more than a good productivity tool.

She now designs sites for a living so i must have done something right

Spilt_Milk

I'd use a WYSIWYG editor if you are starting out.

You don't really need to become a hard core coder - that's what web developers are for. Dreamweaver is pretty good but you could use anything really. Frontpage got a bad rep 'cause it produced some wierd proprietry Microsoft code. But I'm guessing you couldn't give a monkeys about that. It'll still work at the end of the day. As you start delving in to it you'll pick up the pitfalls and standards of everything. If money is an issue you really can just start out with nothing more than notepad.

Just concentrate on reasearching your audince, uderstand their needs and design a website that will meet those needs.

I've worked for the BBC, ITV and several digital agenices and they all used Dreamweaver and Golive. But then I've worked as an art director on primarily customer facing 'designed' work where quality of design was important. Web designers doing that kind of thing will tend to always work ith WYSWIG because they need to pixel-push their designs to get them just so.

you could always do it in FLASH

Patr100

Basically, if you want a "Professional looking" site quickly then any mentioned will do the job. "Professional" is more to do with the design and functionality of a site to visitors - most won't care how it was made or how much the software cost - Does it do what it is suppposed to do in most common platforms (Eg browsers etc) and look good doing it?
. Do you want to spend £300 + on say DW when you may in practice get the same result for less or nothing. However if you are doing this for paying clients long term you may need to invest time (and some money) to learn much more with a more versatile program. Depends on what the site needs to do eg online shopping
All the WYSIWYG will allow you to write, tweak or Copy and paste additional code eg for Stats counters) While for those who like to created from scratch - ie plain HTML - that can be learned - you might not want to bother with that yet - or ever.
Just as the most expensive camera doesn't produce the best pictures automatically, the most expensive and versatile program can still produce embarassingly awful unprofessional site in the hands of a poor designer.

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