Makin a Website

[MyPistolsIn3D]

What are the best programs to make a website in? At school we are using Dreamweaver and SwishMax, but there has to be other better programs...

[[Gandalf]]

WordPad > All in Windows. Try learning how to actually do it yourself. Makes the result much neater.

[wtd]

WordPad is an exceptionally bad idea. It opens the possibility for saving as something other than plain text.

On Windows, I like Textpad.

[rdrake]

If you have to use a program, then please avoid Frontpage at all costs. It creates bloated pages filled with MS only tags.

Any text editor would work well.

[Tony]

cartoon_shark wrote:

[FrontPage] creates bloated pages filled with MS only tags.

If you're looking for a bloated page that misserably fails W3C validation tests and doesn't work in most browsers - try saving a MS Word documents as .html

Otherwise a text editor of choice. Preferably with syntax highlight if you're scripting something.

[Boo-chan]

Tony wrote:

If you're looking for a bloated page that misserably fails W3C validation tests and doesn't work in most browsers - try saving a MS Word documents as .html

That's too evil for even you Tony!

Basically, any program that automatically generates HTML for you is probably a bad idea unless your prepared to go through and edit the code which usually takes as much time as writing it from scratch.

[Martin]

vim doesn't get any votes? You guys suck.

[Tony]

it's a fair assumption that MyPistolsIn3D's school doesn't run *nix

[codemage]

NotePad in Windows.

Once you've figured out how to code proper HTML, you can learn Frontpage. (It's better than dreamweaver).

Then you can use your HTML skills to get rid of the extra crap that Frontpage creates.

[Amailer]

Notepad or EditPlus 2 which is what I use, though for the PHP syntax highlighting I changed mine a bit to match PHPs built-in highlighting system.

And of course, always test your pages with http://validator.w3.org

[eklypze]

I've always been fond of Dreamweaver because it has a feature to tidy up my messy coding.

Although it is a fairly large program, and loads slowly on my computer. So I switched over to TextPad which loads much faster, and I'm very satisfied with it.

[md]

I use frontpage... but before I get beaten into a pulp it's only because of the syntax highlighting and auto-indentation. I write all the code myself... it's also useful because it's preview window shows what IE will display, and by opening the page in firefox I can see it there too. One I get the layout done and start on the php scripting I usually do away with the preview and just use frontpage for the indentation... if I had something that would do that for me I'd switch in an instant...

[Amailer]

Get the "View IE Tab" extension for firefox... this way all you have to do to switch from browsers is click the "IE Tab" icon on your status bar and it switches Don't even need another window opened...
For you editor just use notepad or something ;D

[MyPistolsIn3D]

Yea... I kinda didnt wanna hafta learn html tho lol.

[rizzix]

RapidWeaver Ownz.. It gets my vote for the best non-dynamic website development application.

It basically requires you to use that tool alone. If you can live with that it's great. If not then I suggest you try something else.