Web design software for "beginners"

[iampaulb]

First off let me say i bloody hate windows, i typed up a lovely post for you guys and my browser crashed!!! so here it goes again...

I would suggest you download Sublime 2 / MAMP / Photoshop / FileZilla / Github - These are the apps i use on a regular basis:

Sublime 2 is an awesome text editor (and its cross platform) there is a great link for videos on how to master it which you can find here

MAMP allows you to run your websites locally, meaning you can test things such as PHP and other backend stuff.

Photoshop well we all know what that does.

FileZilla is a great FREE ftp client, I havent used any others but filezilla does what i need it to do.

Github version control which has come in very handy for me in the past. Its mostly used by programmers working on projects together, but its a great tool and very handy to know. Download the git gui for mac which is easier than learning the terminal commands, but you should really learn theses anyways you can do so here.

Im am all self taught so for training i use TreeHouse & Code School which are both awesome resources. DONT use W3Schools!!

Once you have a good understanding of HTML & CSS - Id suggest you move on to something like JavaScript! Anyways i hope this post helps you out

[praetorian909]

Thanks for the very informative thread (credit to the OP for starting the discussion, and to everyone posting).

I used Dreamweaver back in the day (when it was Macromedia) for very basic webpages, HTML back then and some Javascript. I wanted to get "back in the game" and wasn't sure where to start.

Just curious has anyone used Flux (aka MacFlux) Freecode mode? Does it compare to Coda 2 or Espresso? The only reason I ask is it's on sale at the moment ($35), but I'm now thinking I should just skip it and get Coda 2.

https://stacksocial.com/sales/macflux-4
(+$1 dollar each passing day, not sure what time zone though because it already went up $1)

[iampaulb]

Originally Posted by praetorian909

The only reason I ask is it's on sale at the moment ($35), but I'm now thinking I should just skip it and get Coda 2.

Personally Id go for Coda2 simply because Panic are on top of things, and seem to release regular updates for it. To be fair Coda 2 is pretty awesome, and I would suggest anyone moving from dreamweaver or similar to give it a go. However if you just want a text editor id say Sublime 2 hands down

[samcartwrightz]

Dreamweaver is the best software for beginners. It’s easy to use compared to others.

[iampaulb]

Originally Posted by samcartwrightz

Dreamweaver is the best software for beginners. It’s easy to use compared to others.

Dreamweaver is old hat now, and the GUI hasn't changed for years...its fugly

Coda 2 for a nice easy WYSIWYG editor

Sublime 2 for the best text editor

Thats all you need!

[laurim]

People saying Dreamweaver produces bloated code haven't used Dreamweaver recently. I wouldn't do the "drag and drop into the wysiwyg view" method because positioning in different browsers is so tricky but as a tool for hand coding it's great, especially when it turns css into the shorthand code for you. The only reason to touch the wysiwyg view is maybe to type text in.

For a beginner, Dreamweaver is nice because you can code in the code view pane and instantly see the result in the lower design view pane. Nicer than coding in a text editor and then going to a browser to view it, back and forth, back and forth. Also really nice for instantly seeing CSS changes. BUT, you need to know that any method isn't going to teach you how to deal with browser differences that will break your design. Eventually, you will need to be able to code without a wysiwyg but for learning what code makes what happen, a wysiwyg is the way to go.

BTW- I started learning html with PAGEMILL so that shows you how long I've been doing it.

[joewillmott]

Adobe Muse is far quicker, easier and prettier than anything else for beginners. It would be absolutely perfect for everyone but the code it creates isn't that great (but you don't need to worry about the code if you're just a beginner looking to make websites with it).

[-pete-]

Originally Posted by laurim

People saying Dreamweaver produces bloated code haven't used Dreamweaver recently. I wouldn't do the "drag and drop into the wysiwyg view" method because positioning in different browsers is so tricky but as a tool for hand coding it's great, especially when it turns css into the shorthand code for you. The only reason to touch the wysiwyg view is maybe to type text in.

Did it improve in CS6 because it was pretty awful is CS5? Also I might be lucky in that I don't have to code for IE6 at all and as long things are functional in IE7 I can get away with it but I don't have many cross browser problems these days? There are occasional browser prefix issues with CSS3 but that usually gets sorted with the right bit of JavaScript.

Anyway I think the OP right the right choice, going "full notepad" means you miss out syntax highlighting that is vital when you are first starting out, so much time can be wasted just because of a missing bracket, conversely WYSIWYG editors such as dreamweaver produce horrible spaghetti code that just becomes a nightmare when you start to introduce more advanced features with PHP or whatever server language you choose.

Coda offers a nice balance between these two extremes has FTP and SVN support so it's straight forward to manage your files and is not too expensive, I use a combination of that with PHPStorm for larger projects on a daily basis and have done or nearly a year now and I'm pretty happy with it!

[laurim]

Originally Posted by -pete-

Did it improve in CS6 because it was pretty awful is CS5? Also I might be lucky in that I don't have to code for IE6 at all and as long things are functional in IE7 I can get away with it but I don't have many cross browser problems these days? There are occasional browser prefix issues with CSS3 but that usually gets sorted with the right bit of JavaScript.

Dreamweaver vastly improved its code before CS5, I don't know what you are talking about. Maybe you weren't around when it was really bad. Of course, I don't work in wysiwyg to avoid any automatic positioning code creation so maybe that's the difference. But nothing was ever as bad as FrontPage.

[UTclassof89]

not trying to pick a fight here--I genuinely want to know: from those who say "Dreamweaver writes bad code", can you give any examples? I've used it for years, and it works great.

The only time I've ever managed to make it write inefficient code is when I set it to use the <font> tag (years ago, for marketing emails), and it added a new nested <font> tag each time I edited text.

But it hasn't offered this option in several versions now.

[m00min]

Originally Posted by joewillmott

Adobe Muse is far quicker, easier and prettier than anything else for beginners. It would be absolutely perfect for everyone but the code it creates isn't that great (but you don't need to worry about the code if you're just a beginner looking to make websites with it).

I'm not sure using a WYSIWYG editor that produces bad code is a good idea, it just teaches bad code. Fair enough if someone just needs to knock out a really basic page, and they have no intention of actually learning markup. If you want to learn though there's no substitute for getting used to hand coding with something like Sublime, Espresso, Coda, etc. Then later on using Zencode, it's much faster can fiddling about with gimmicky drag and drop.