Good program for website design

[ranger]

What are some programs for website design. Probably one that would involve minimal amount of coding.

 

[z-component]

Lots of professional website designers use Macromedia Dreamweaver. Another good HTML editor (arguably not as good as Dreamweaver) is Microsoft FrontPage. These both cost money, however, but are powerful tools.

 

[PerennialII]

Acehtml at some point (at least) had a free version of it available, the pro version costing bitsy something. At some point used it to 'organize' things and felt was as good as any (probably with the exception of dreamweaver for one).

 

[GregA]

One of the big players in web design is as z-component pointed out Dreamweaver...the other two are Flash (same company..Macromedia) and finally hand coding in HTML I believe...(might be wrong...don't actually *do* webdesign myself).

If you want more of a 'design by eye' sort of approach then flash is the way to go, but be aware that it has its own little language which is actionscript. Dreamweaver is heavier on the HTML side but from what I know about Microsoft programs I expect that the degree of control you have either in Dreamweaver or even pure HTML is far greater than you would have in Frontpage. (might be wrong, but the field I work in has shown that most MS office applications can cause severe migraines when trying to wrangle some use out of them).

 

[Anttech]

It depends on what techology you want to use.

 

[ComputerGeek]

What are some programs for website design. Probably one that would involve minimal amount of coding.

you can use the big guys like states above, but you will be limited in what you can do and will create awful code that may cause problems in the future.

All you need is a nice programmers text editor.

though, beyond that, apache with cgi, php, perl, python, webdav, and ssl installed is good as would having a Database like MySQL installed for use in any web apps.

after that, you probably want to get Photoshop (though elements will do you fine and is only 99 dollars) so you can envision what you want and make any pngs you may need for your design. Finally, something like Visio (on a Mac, you can use OmniGraffle... it is awesome) to lay out the physical structure of the sight's interface.

 

[ComputerGeek]

One of the big players in web design is as z-component pointed out Dreamweaver...the other two are Flash (same company..Macromedia) and finally hand coding in HTML I believe...(might be wrong...don't actually *do* webdesign myself).

If you want more of a 'design by eye' sort of approach then flash is the way to go, but be aware that it has its own little language which is actionscript. Dreamweaver is heavier on the HTML side but from what I know about Microsoft programs I expect that the degree of control you have either in Dreamweaver or even pure HTML is far greater than you would have in Frontpage. (might be wrong, but the field I work in has shown that most MS office applications can cause severe migraines when trying to wrangle some use out of them).

Flash is not the way to go to design a website. Flash can add content to the site, but basing the site on flash is stupid because of the problems it created for low bandwidth viewers, blind users, etc. Use flash for ads or for the page title if you want, but the page needs to be written to standards.

 

[GregA]

I ought not to challenge that viewpoint ComputerGeek...I made a disclaimer in my opening paragraph...

I was aiming to satisfy the *minimal amount of coding* caveat...consider that suggestion retracted

 

[dduardo]

For simply designs dreamweaver will do the job, but you should not rely on it to produce clean and standard code.

Personally, this is how I design:

1) Hand drawn mockups on paper

2) Transfer mockups to drawing app (Inkscape, Gimp, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc).

3) Slice components up

4) Hand coded CSS/HTML

 

[wScott]

Well right now I'm taking a grade 10 computer sciences course at my school and I can't really give you any ideas of what to use beides Dream Weaver. I've always used notepad for my web pages; I've learned how to do html, some XHTML, and some CCS on notepad :). My teacher syas it's best to use those programs than use photoshop and hwta not to jazz your site up. One thing he said at the beginning of the course was if you use programs that take most of the work out of it for you there WILL be a lot of loop holes a hacker can get into. SO if you're planning to publish something by use of Dreamweaver or what not keep that in mind. I'm not an expert on this type of stuff, I'm just passing on the advice my teacher gave my class.

 

[AngelShare]

As others have already said, Dreamweaver is pretty good. That's what I used last year for Web Design so it must be relatively easy to use, even for beginners. ^_^

If you don't get the answer you're looking for, you might want to ask http://graphic-forums.com/" ...it's a graphic designing site for pros, newbies, people who are simply interested, etc.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I would vouch for DW too

 

[exequor]

For simply designs dreamweaver will do the job, but you should not rely on it to produce clean and standard code.

I think we should use frontpage as the reference for messy code

I basically use photoshop and dreamweaver, plus a ftp program. photoshop has slicing features and export for web, and although i don't use photoshop's code (way too messy), it could be a quick way to build layouts. Dreamweaver 8 now has code folding, hence no more reason to use jEdit to edit php.

 

[Anttech]

I hear a lot of people diss DW for its messy code, but any site I have developed with DW, has always passed the http://validator.w3.org/ html code validation...

 

[ComputerGeek]

Just because code validates does not make it good code.

 

[-Job-]

Dreamweaver is my favorite as well. It doesn't generate bad code, but it does get messy after a while because if you do too much editing there will be unnecessary tags all over the place, but this is also the designer's fault. The best approach is to use Dreamweaver in "split" mode where you can both see the Layout and the Code. This way you can periodically eliminate any tags that you see that are no longer useful or are just duplicates. But it is an excellent editor, especially the latest one, Dreamweaver 8.
As for Flash, i agree 100% with ComputerGeek. You should use Flash only when appropriate and be considerate with the people that don't like flash and provide non-flash sites. I love flash though.