web design software?

I use scintilla text editor, it has code highlighting for many languages, so php, c, c++ html, asp, blah blah blah blah.

If I may ask a related question here:

It seems fairly obvious that we should all be using some text editor for the coding.

BUT, people like myself have a problem. I need to do good looking sites and I am not a graphic designer. I am a coder. Mainly C++ / C, etc, but I obviously also do a fair amount of web coding.

The problem is I really battle / take a long time with doing the page layout in text. So, what would be ideal for me would be to get a nice wysiwyg editor to put the layout together, then I can go in and edit the code with a text editor (including removing all the bloat that's been talked about)?

Does that seem like a reasonable thing to do?

 

photoshop and sitegrinder ... and if i need to insert something or make some changes in coding dreamweaver.

 

i use Dreamweaver

 

With the ++, you have a decent editor, but not one I would class as professional grade productive. Let's say good enough for gummint work.

I will not pile on, as others have already commented on the amateurish approach to web development, and the puerile response to criticism.

The sig linked page seems to be usable in Lynx, and the markup is all right except for a missed closing tag or three that cause a cascade of errors. I think ds wouldn't gore you too badly.

Why would they?

I don't mean to pick on you guys; I'm simply using your posts as convenient examples. It isn't at all helpful to propose editors without offering the reasons you find those to be good solutions. It's like the hypothesis that man is causing global warming. It may be true, but since the "scientists" proselytizing the theory have refused to reveal their methods or raw data, there is no way to know. Now, I'm not accusing you two of collusion to hide the evidence …. I'm just sayin'.

It may seem so, but it isn't. There are two parts to getting your layout. First you take your well structured document, and add the html markup to reflect the structure and semantic values in the document. Then you write the style sheet to present the page's layout and other visual values.

If you don't know the presentation you want to end up with, how will a wysiwyg tool help? Drag and drop? You can get the same results with crayons and a brown paper grocery bag. The wysiwyg editor can only use tables with their bloated code base and expensive maintenance, or absolute positioning and its easily broken, fragile layout and expensive maintenance.

Since you already use multiple programming languages, learning to be productive in a declarative presentation language like css should not be an insurmountable task.

cheers,

gary

 

I believe it is safe to say that each person should choose a method based on their experience level. Using visual editors can help you understand code better if you aren't already familiar with working with code. And makes getting into it a lot easier. Although some of the examples are a bit poor in some cases you can learn how to do it yourself with far less bloating of the code.

As far as open source solutions Mozilla Kompozer, although it is a bit buggy as most visual editors are to varying degrees it can be quite useful when generating mock up layouts and other design elements depending on your personal development style.

If you feel more comfortable working with code, by all means go for it. It's much less bloated, and I can't refute that the editors have their problems but for the majority of people that are looking to get their sites up and don't have the time or the patience to learn a scripting language. It can be a useful free alternative.

Dreamweaver has less bugs from my experience but isn't a free or open source solution if that's what your looking for.

Microsoft Frontpage is one of the worst editors available in my personal opinion but I still see many people use it. But to each their own I suppose.

 

The point might be more like, you know you've written good code if someone did that... because not everyone can see well and not everyone has a graphical browser available and not everyone visiting your site or grabbing information from it is necessarily a human being... and because a good web page (but not necessarily web APP) is perfectly reachable, usable, functional and understandable by any internet-connected machine that can render HTML. That's the only necessary basis of a web page. It only needs HTML. Everything else is a different sort of sugar.

I started out with text editors only. I'm actually normally a very visual person. I understand things visually. I learned numbers as a kid only through colours and the sounds of voices. I know, I know that if I had started with a visual editor, I would have never figured out how it worked. Not that I totally have, but I'm comfortable with the text. I know what it does and why. If I had learned in DreamBeaver in Design View I would have never been able to break out of that. If I had learned in tables I may have never broken out of that.

If other visual learners are like me, it might be the worst thing to get started with a visual editor.

I guess I could substitute some other skilled trade in there, but then again, nobody ever died from a falling web page : ) And for someone's personal cat photo hobby site, does it matter how they got it up and running? But when it's a business, esp one who wants to really reach people via the web, then it starts getting more important that the code behind the site was done well. You don't have to learn any scripting languages unless you want Javascript on your site anyway. CSS is much, much simpler. Look ma, no variables or loops!

It took me 2 years to learn enough to be comfortable making accessible, valid sites. It's certainly not something anyone should do if they just need one website up in a month. But then, how many people do we see coming back to forums asking for help or having questions on more sites? If there's any chance that you'll be maintaining a site, or making more than one site, you will need to decide something: hire someone to do it right or learn to do it right yourself. Either way is an investment, both cost something. A free alternative has a point where it shouldn't even be considered, I think.

I'm still seeing new sites being built in it. I think what happened was, lots of people bought or somehow got a copy. And here they are today, still making sites, and still haven't learned how to get any further. In all likelyhood, they don't know that there even is a "further". And navigating their sites is a pain if you're not the "typical" surfer: sighted, able to use a mouse, using IE6 or 7 on Windows XP with a minimum 1024-wide screen with scripts enabled.

And framesets! Lawlz.

 

Dream weaver , notepad and i am using Visual Studio Tool to design my site

 

If you are in hurry to get the output faster then choose the best WYSIWYG editor Adobe Dreamwaver for web design/coding. It supports a lot of scripting language for editing, easy code generation, Table to DIV and DIV to Table Conversion, menu generation and a lot of easy to use things are there.

Microsoft Expression is also good to start though it is not supporting php editing. But try to know the apps shortcuts for faster work.

Textpad is a good editor for editing because, it is lightweight and faster and highlight the codes, elements etc to work in a easy way. I will recommend Textpad if you really want to dive to the deep of coding and it will help you to bring the perfection and professionalism by writing codes yourself rather than code generators, who gives good and faster output but makes you away from the real knowledge.

 

I use Dreamweaver! Although sometimes if I want to appear all clever and superior and stuff... I use notepad!

 

notepad++ and photoshop with it

 

Use Dreamweaver Its pretty easy to use aswell

 

Agreed, Notepad++ is awesome if you hand code.

 

I love dreamweaver, its a great software for Web Designing

 

I use the free Notepad editor that comes on every computer and I've never had a problem.

 

While plain text editors such as Windows Notepad can be used to write HTML Markup, those that provide more sophisticated editing features (often including writing CSS, PHP, XML, JS code, etc.) are favored by many Web Page authors.

Wikipedia list of HTML Editors

I personally hand code using HTML-Kit which is a free Web page Editing/Authoring facility that provides the following:

* Previewing of page layout in multi graphical Browsers

* Selection of Doctype headers (HTML/XHTML/XML)

* Syntax checking and correction via "Tidy" plug-in "on the fly"

* "Tidy" indented code

* Multiple File type editing: .html, .xml, .css, .rdf, .php, .js etc.

* HTML-XHTML Markup conversion

* Online .html & .css document validation "on the fly"

* Spell checker and Thesaurus

* Search and replace facility for content management

Note: Some text editors (Windows Notepad included) insert UTF-8 signature (BOM) characters at the beginning of Markup coding (just preceding the Doctype) as a Unicode description marker. These characters must be removed when generating UTF encoded pages in order to preclude failed validation and Browser display of a blank line (sometimes with various characters) at the top of the web page. Visit W3C FAQ: Display problems caused by the UTF-8 BOM for detailed information including removal procedures. You can check pages to see if they begin with a UTF-8 (BOM) signature via Richard Ishida's UTF-8 BOM tester utility.

James

 

cofee cup is also a good software i know

 

I save my php and HTML files with the Encoding type set to ANSI. I haven't experienced any problems.

 

I use Dreamweaver in split or code view, plus Photoshop.

 

I'm using phpDesigner (Not only PHP also html,CSS,etc..) it has a great debugger and you can edit your files directly from your host, also i get help from firebug (add on for firefox) to see exactly what i need to edit on my page.

btw

Recently i found a great website name Wix.com to design my website with Flash technology, it uses a Drag & Drop interface, very easy and has great results

 

For web design software click on the link which is given below.
www.coffeecup.com/software/