Which one is better to use for ease of use? I goto a college that already has frontpage 2003 installed, but who says I can't download dreamweaver trial?
I haven't used frontpage in a few years, but my experience with it was that it blows. Of course I thought the same thing of Dreamweaver at first until I new how to use it. Now I love it.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=22594 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=37331
I have very limited experience using with FrontPage, but looking at some sites that have, the code often seems bloated and often doesn't play well with bots, whereas DW is generally straight forward and clean.
Editplus2, for me. I like to hard code then I now what everthing is doing. I hate using tables too and I'm a CSS and div tag fan.
I use Dreamweaver currently but also have Frontpage 2003 and (ugh!) Adobe GoLive. FP is definitely the easiest to learn to use, IMO. The myth about code bloat and all the other negatives that get dumped on FP are simply not true. They are almost always posted by people who've heard that said somewhere else and have never used FP, or haven't used it since like FP98 or FP Express. I hated earlier versions of Dreamweaver until the latest (DW8). The reason I switched to DW8 was twofold: (1) they finally have an interface I like, and (2) I don't have to worry about maintaining FrontPage Server Extensions on Linux or Unix servers, which I prefer. Of course, if you never want to use FP functions, you don't even need the FP server extensions. If either learning curve or price is an issue, go ahead and get FP2003. It works well and creates pages every bit as good as most DreamWeaver pages. Ultimately, the end product has more to do with the designer/coder than the program used to create it anyway. I totally despise GoLive.
i prefer dreamweaver .. very easy .. but i like making sites out of cms ! , so no use of frontpage or DW
I see so many sites that perform really badly and you look behind the scenes at the html junk and it's all dreamweaver. They tend to have javascript effects instead of CSS, that kind of thing. I don't much like frontpage either being a zend/go live/ editpad kinda girl but if I had to go for either I guess it would be frontpage.
With any of these editors, you really need to specify version number. Before FP2002, the program was admittedly dodgy - and FP2003 was an improvement over 2002. Before DW8, you couldn't pay me to use that program but I love version 8.
Solid points as usual Doc! Admittedly, Dreamweaver has come a l-o-n-g way in the last few years. I liked MX2004 okay, but hands down, you're right - DW8 is one to fall in love with ... just wish I used it to its fullest potential.
You'd be better learning html or php or whatever you're planning on designing your pages on and then using Notepad, Ultraedit or some kind of text editor with syntax highlightning. I've found that both solutions add too much junk to the pages. But if I have to choose between those, I'd choose Dreamweaver anytime.
I like Dreamweevil. No point in listing the ways in which it rocks, as I'm not familiar with recent versions of FP. I like hand-coding too and will occasionally tweak stuff in Nosepad, especially if I'm just opening a page on my hard disk and using [View] [Source] to tweak it or play with ideas. But when I'm doing a real editing session I use Dreamweevil in split view and do my hand-coding in the code pane. It's nice to see instant results in the preview pane. And the preview pane gives you the graphical interface so you can drag images and stuff around and work visually, and see how text fits as you type it. And the file pane is handy for quick moves/copies/renames/uploads to site. OK I guess those would be some of the points that there is no point listing; I imagine FP does similar stuff by now. Summary: "I like Dreamweevil."
I have started out with FP 2003, and have switched to DW 8 recently. IMO DW is a far superior editor than FP, but a little tougher to learn, if you are new to it. FP definitely adds A LOT of extra code into a page, as can be seen here in one of my first projects with FP 2003. Now take a look at the same page with DW and a little css, which DW makes it very easy to incorporate. If you plan to do long term work with web design, or will be leaving a site for someone to make continual updates, I would recommend DW.