Site Design- Your Weapon of Choice

What software does everyone here use to make their sites?

Is there software out there that ranks better with google than others?

I use Frontpage, photoshop, and that's about it. What else should I look into using?

-Hunter

 

Frontpage generates garbage code. Most WYSIWYG html generators output some awful stuff, but Frontpage is the worst. And forget about cross-browser compatibility. We have spent many (billable) hours deconstructing Frontpage sites and rebuilding them by hand for clients that realized that they couldn't do anything with their websites and a lot of users couldn't even see them.

On the other hand, Photoshop's Save for web feature is very cool. We use it all the time. For quick and dirty graphics work, PaintShop Pro is quicker and easier to use than PS.

 

Most WYSIWYG editors do suck, period. Nothing beats hand written markup if you know what you are doing. Plus it will be more efficient.

I use Notepad++ (free Win app) to write all my markup. Occasionally I will open dreamweaver if I have a huge css file.

The only other apps I really use is Photoshop and FontExpert (font manager)

cheers

 

This guy knows what he's talking about.
Notepad++ is my new love.

As for the graphic design portion of the website, Photoshop.

 

PSPad and Photoshop, sometimes Illustrator as well.

 

I use Dreamweaver a lot, later version has great support for CSS. No need to do the same work in Notepad++. Use Dreamweaver and save time!

 

It doesn't save time at least not for me. With auto completion you're just as fast, and produce less junk, especially with cross browser table less designs.

 

I'm a Homesite man. For me, it's much faster than Dreamweaver or any WYSIWYG editor, particularly if you code with WCAG/WAI standards in mind (which WYSIWYG editors are very poor at handling). My only gripe with Homesite is that the developers haven't solved the bug regarding saving in UTF-8 format. I end up having to convert pages later, so the encoding matches the metadata I've used on my pages. But it's a small issue relative to such great text-editing software

For graphic design for Web, nothing touches Fireworks. Its bitmap editing tools do ~90-95% of what Photoshop does (Fireworks handles nearly every plug-in for Photoshop equally well), and its vector tools, interface and process flow are light years ahead of Photoshop. Plus, its rendering engine is a little more precise/efficient, especially when exporting PNG files. Now, if you're doing complex bitmap editing, Photoshop is tops, no question. But for Web graphics, it's such inefficient software.

If Fireworks supported CMYK and Pantone color palletes, I would never need to open Photoshop or Illustrator again

 

The new Microsoft Expression Web Designer is the love of my life.

 

I'm a coder so HTMLKit is my weapon of choice (although I know there are better editors out there now).

 

That would be Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Wordpress.

Started with notepad - still the best really

Tried Frontpage and soory to say but its full of unwanted code.

 

I still love notepad and over several years of despising frontpage to an nth degree can't bring myself to go too near any WYSIWYG editor. I'm also constantly trying to make more accessible sites and tend to have learnt all of the methods for doing this through notepad so tend to stick to it. However, I'm going to try Notepad++ because of the recommendations on here.

Fireworks MX is definitely my tool of choice for web images, however for artwork of bizarre nature I tend to use Photoshop (elements version does everything I ever need above web).

 

Good man. Same software for me too. I hand code using Dreamweavers code view as it highlights your syntax very nicely and has auto completion.

I wouldn't really recommend building a website any other way and Fireworks is just the bees knees.

 

I do it the same way - very rarely use the Dreamweaver GUI (maybe to sneak a peak) and always have it in code view.

 

Dreamweaver is for you, ever since i move from frontpage to dreamweaver it has been alot better. Never going back.

Bloody Microsoft lol.

 

I mainly use Photoshop for layout ideas, Dreamweaver for the bulk of coding, then some hand coding within Dreamweaver so the site validates (W3C)

 

Frontpage and dreamweaver.

 

Dreamweaver and notepad!

 

I can't use Notepad, its' lack of syntax coloring just makes things so much harder.

I am with "the_pm" and I code with Homesite! Photoshop is my graphics program.

To answer your question, no software package determines how well Google ranks your site, it's all in the coding and importance of the content.

 

Hello, riftshighway.
FrontPage is a WYSIWYG editor. You should try alternatives that permit
you to learn coding in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, etc.
Dreamweaver is a two-way editor that lets you work in a WYSIWYG mode or
in a code-yourself mode. Ideally, I would strive for an editor that
lets me work in the code, while at the same time seeing the results in
the page. I have found that AceHtml (from Visicom Media Inc.) is good for
this.
Cheers.