Is there any other web design software that you guys recommend or use, other than adobe's dreamweaver and cs3 packages? They are pretty expensive. Thanks.
Well for free you could use GIMP, but i've personally never used it. Though Photo shop is expensive, it'd definitely pay for itself if you're serious about web design and providing for your clients. Not really sure of any other software as such, good luck! -nMx
SiteSpinner is an excellent WYSIWYG site creator. It's as full featured and as powerful as Dreamweaver, and it's only $50. The one draw back is that you can't open up sites in it that weren't created in it. I made my homepage in it: http://www.jquindlen.com I've made about 30 or 40 sites in it altogether. You can download a 14 day trial. The days are non linear which means you only lose a day when you use it. Let's say you use it once the first day you get it, but then don't use it for a week. You still have 13 days. http://www.virtualmechanics.com/products/spinner/index.html
I am trained as a Visual Basic / C# Programmer, so I am going to say Visual Studio. The Express Edition is free and there are tons of tutorials. If you are not tied to any one language I would also suggest Notepad++. I love it because when I have to edit php, it is far superior to Visual Studio. It also has the an "auto-tag closer" which is nice.
Very nice design. Did you created all those sites just with that software? Sorry, I am pretty new to web design so I don't know if an individual software is capable of doing everything in web design.
No. I do use Photoshop to create the graphics, but SiteSpinner allowed me to chop up the picture I made in Photoshop and turn it into a web site very quickly. I honestly don't use SiteSpinner very often anymore, as I prefer hand coding in HTML/CSS at this point (and I second the recommendation for Notepad++) In my portfolio, the top 9 were created in SiteSpinner, and then rest below that are Wordpress themes I hand coded in PHP/CSS. Really, the bare minimum you need is a graphics program. Then, you can either hand code the site, or you can use a program such as Dreamweaver or SiteSpinner to put it all together. If you've got the patience, I recommend hand coding. Just make sure you learn how to use DIVs and CSS. Some older tutorials would probably try and teach you web design using tables, but that's a very limited and antiquated way to code sites. Honestly I have looked for alternatives to Photoshop and haven't really found one that I liked. I guess Paint.NET and the Gimp are as close to Photoshop as you're going to get. Still, there's just so much Photoshop can do.
I say the best designs always come from writing the code yourself, All the web design packages I have used has failed me in more than one ways ...
jquindlen How successful have your site been so far I mean the ones you made with that editor? pr gbot indexed all that have they really prospered so far" pm me if its to much of a direct ? thanks
Chios I somewhat agree with you" when you say fail exactly what went wrong? if you you dont mind" I have a couple of sites I created with soft ware and I wanted to know the inside on the basic theory their" you sound like you've been their done that" thats cool " I need to get over that same inclusion"
Its not like I can pinpoint exactly what is wrong with them, but at this point in time where a designer has to consider different browsers (IE, FIREFOX,OPERA,CONQUEROR .... ) with different degrees of support for standards that themselves keep on changing .... I feel its hard to have a piece of software be able to accommodate all the quirks or every browser. The biggest problem with me the design software have is that the code they produce is bloated with unnecessary markup, the javascript the provide is archaic (I would use/learn one of the many javascript crossbrowser libraries), in more than a handfull of situations I have tried to open templates that work perfectly and have clean code (found in places like oswd.org, freecsstemplates.org ...) and the design packages failed to preserve that template after a few changes ... DW in particular has destroyed designs created wholly from its interface after some tweaking from the "WYSIWYG view" You need a little more learning working with just notepad (I use editplus) but after a while of tweaking templates on your own you feel a lot more powerfull and in control ....
Chios thanks for that I mean thats more than a decent comment as well" it was back bone news on why to better my self with code I agree with you although some may argue some of your statement" I wont " have you seen what css can do as far as code is concerned maybe?
They get indexed just fine. SiteSpinner spits out CSS based sites that look perfect in IE, FF, and Safari. I've made PR3 to PR6 sites with it. Most of the sites I've made with it get PR, but that's natural anyway, and has more to do with my link building strategies than the site itself. Sitespinner has all the meta tag options, and really full control of the source code as well. It's a drag and drop, what you see is what you get site editor. Like I said, the only real draw back is that you can't import existing websites. You have to start from scratch. Oh, and I got a free year of VPS web hosting with my purchase. I believe that deal is still intact. The $50 was worth that alone.