Use an advanced text editor (notepad++, ultraedit, whetever) but DO NOT use HTML editors. That's for amateurs. There are too many people calling themselves "designers" and using that crap. It's not serious. If you can't code HTML by yourself, man, get another job.
Speaking of amateurs, anyone who can't or won't invest in Adobe Creative Suite really can't call themselves a professional designer. There's nothing out there that gives you the full capabilities of Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Flash. Using a plain text editor is great for learning HTML and Css, but after that Dreamweaver is the way to go. Using it in code view gives you all the features of text editors like notepad++, but you also get the extra productivity of things like built in FTP features, auto fill in, and site wide templates. Amateurs like to brag about how they hand coded their entire site. The true professional knows what needs to be hand coded for validation and what can be safely left to dreamweaver. In terms of productivity nothing comes even close to dreamweaver. If you have a backlog of work and deadlines to meet, it's literally a lifesaver.
Looks like dreamweaver is the editor of choice, but i think alot of people still use the good old fashion text editor. Can't go wrong with text editor...
I've only really used Dreamweaver so i guess I have to vote for that! It's what I need, it's important to only use the "Code View" however, and i find it helpful for autocomplete, find and replace, FTP, code highlighting and line-numbering!!
Expression Web.... mostly in code view. Although I dislike MS, I do like Expression Web a lot. Generates nice clean code and plays very well with css. /*tom*/
My favorite HTML editor is Dreamweaver. However, I still do not know how to use the advanced functions on it.
Notpad++ has autofill in if you want it. So you are saying you'd pay $300 or $400 for an advanced Notepad, which you can get for free :S. Their are tonnes if FTP clients that are better and are FREE.
Does Notepad++ also come with photoshop, flash, acrobat, illustrator, and fireworks? If you want to call yourself a professional designer and collaborate with design firms on projects, you need adobe CS3. They're going to send you files in adobe formats and expect you to do the same. Without having to open another program I click one button and the page I'm working on is uploaded to my site. Along with any dependent files like stylesheets and images. There's no need to configure anything other than login/pass, it just does this right out of the box. Please explain to me how a another FTP client can get any better then that. I still have a regular FTP client for other things, but when it comes to uploading my site, using anything other than dreamweaver is a pain in the ass.
Using dreamweaver since they released the Dreamweaver Version 4.0 in year 2000. Never liked FrontPage (maybe because its from microsoft?). My next best choice would be Notepad.
1. With the exception or Fireworks, none of them have any place with me. I can use Paint Shop Pro, or even GIMp when I feel like a challenge. Photoshop is useless for web design. The PSDs it outputs are mostly done by people who don't know how, or only know the basics of HTML. In the short time I have been doing HTML, I have seen just 3 better than average coded sites which were based off a PSD. I use Fireworks for simple buttons and logos. Flash is absolutely pointless for anything besides games and videos. It is a users nightmare for things like menus, content and other accessible content. Which is why 95% of the time (except when I am on Youtube) I disable Flash because it kills my internet. Acrobat? Again, no place in design. PDFs are very hard to work with, I'd much rather use a word document. If I come across a PD document online, it annoys me too greatly, so I use Google's "View as HTML" if I really want to see it - its just more bloated page size for something which is barely useable. Illustrator - same deal. You cannot use Vector Graphics on the web without using SVG - which is unsupported in IE - or Flash, which has the problems I mentioned above. You'd just save as a normal image, at which point you may as well just use Fireworks (which also handles vectors) or Photoshop. OK, so thats great, but is it worth the money? No - so many other FTP clients can upload the entire contents of a directory in one click too. That being said I do have most of Adobe's products installed, all those you mentioned, plus InDesign, Soundbooth, AfterEffects, Premier, Lightroom and a free trial of ColdFusion. Only one I ever use is Fireworks, and occasionnaly soundbooth when I get bored. If I have to use Adobe CS3 to be a professional designer then, (well apart from the fact you are lying) I am not a professional designer. I have people "under me" who do all the designing work, while working with the coders, using PSP 9 and Photoshop 7. I still pull in a decent enough salary for a 15 year old, indeed it's more decent than most of my friends who work at KFC or the coffee shop, mainly cause I think outside the box. Dreamweaver encourages bad coding technqiues, due to the temptation to use all that WYSIWYG crap. Towards the end of the year I'll have all the myths, facts, alternatives and real ways of doing things on the site I am doing for a school assignment (which I have to make in Dreamweaver). ^^Still working on the logo, though that will be the name of the site (thanks to Deathshadow for the name). You must understand designing and coding are 2 completely different things. Designing the site first is not the way to do it, especially when you have the site in PSD or Fireworks PNG and the tempation to automagically convert it into something that is.....really, really bad. Show me a site you have made using CS3, and I shall bet you it uses either (or a combination of): Invalid or unsemantic code Bloated, badly nested code (almost a certainty) Lacks a print stylesheet, os is inaccessible to those on screenreaders Fails when Javascript, frames,images or flash are disabled Is served as xHTML 1.1 BP
Umm. WOW. Just because someone uses Notepad++ does not mean they don't use Photoshop, Illustrator etc. And just because someone has CS3 does not mean they have to use the Dreamweaver application. EDIT: blueparukia you lost me at that last point. What is wrong with serving a site as XHTML 1.1?