What is a good program for a beginner like me to make a webpage?

raynegus said:

Want to keep it simple. Something that won't require me to read a bunch of books (did that already with photoshop, unpleasant) but still make a nice looking page.

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Have a look at Freeway by Softpress

Vanilla

Programs like GoLive and Dreamweaver are pretty simple to use, although you'll never learn anything about how things actually work. I've never tried GoLive, but Dreamweaver is about as easy as it gets. The downside of these programs is in the fact that they don't output the best code, there are a ton of redundancies. Whenever someone at work creates a page in Dreamweaver I end up wasting about an hour cleaning up the code so that it'll look the same on IE6 as it does when I get home and fire up Safari.

Having said that, my preferred method of creating a website is to create a very simple XHTML document and a separate CSS file to actually makes the page look good.

My Programs of Choice
CSS Edit

BBEdit

a followup question

davecuse said:

Programs like GoLive and Dreamweaver are pretty simple to use, although you'll never learn anything about how things actually work. I've never tried GoLive, but Dreamweaver is about as easy as it gets. The downside of these programs is in the fact that they don't output the best code, there are a ton of redundancies. Whenever someone at work creates a page in Dreamweaver I end up wasting about an hour cleaning up the code so that it'll look the same on IE6 as it does when I get home and fire up Safari.

Having said that, my preferred method of creating a website is to create a very simple XHTML document and a separate CSS file to actually makes the page look good.

My Programs of Choice
CSS Edit

BBEdit

Click to expand...

I use Dreamweaver exclusively now but would love to learn a better method. Any web sites you could recommend that would teach me how to design the pages the way you do?

wheelshanna said:

I use Dreamweaver exclusively now but would love to learn a better method. Any web sites you could recommend that would teach me how to design the pages the way you do?

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A couple of great websites..

http://www.alistapart.com/

http://www.evolt.org/

http://www.w3.org/

Open source

Amaya's a decent, free, open source program but runs terribly slowly due to the X11 implementation. I can't help but think that as Apple supports Linux more, there must be a way to bring a newer version of Amaya (8+) to OSX without X11.

I find GoLive faster than Dreamweaver, but GoLive is also rather buggy. No really good WYSIWYG web editors at the moment on either platform - all either too weird, too buggy, too slow, or make too fat code.

I've found Freeway's code to be rather large for general purpose use.

Vanilla said:

Have a look at Freeway by Softpress

Vanilla

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I'd agree - I tried Freeway out at MacExpo UK last year and it's actually REALLY good for beginners - and quite powerful too.

It's a bit like a page-layout program, so you don't have to worry about coding etc.

I think there's a free demo on the web site.

Yes, but...

...we run into the "Microsoft HTML" problem: bloated code.

If you get GoLive CS or Dreamweaver, you don't have to worry about coding either. (Dreamweaver's the really safe bet because GoLive has a few nasty bugs that sometimes require going into the code.) And then you have a professional program already.

An old version of PageMill running in Classic isn't bad to start out with.

Nor is Netscape Communicator 4. The Composer component generates very trim code, and it's easy to use.

The newer versions of Netscape/Mozilla are not hard to use, but the code's pretty bloated with unnecessary span and class tags for everything. If you're a beginner, you can just go wtih Mozilla which is free until you learn more. Then you'll want Dreamweaver unless something else has come along.

UKMacBod said:

I'd agree - I tried Freeway out at MacExpo UK last year and it's actually REALLY good for beginners - and quite powerful too.

It's a bit like a page-layout program, so you don't have to worry about coding etc.

I think there's a free demo on the web site.

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I'm doing what they say you can't do with Contribute, which is build pages from scratch instead of using their templates.

Baloney. For a basic site, it's almost iLife simple. And it's .Mac friendly. Sure, my site is going to be just basic images and text, without rollovers or any of that stuff. But it's clean and it will do what we need it to do.

(it's in progress right now, but here's a basic idea as to where I'm headed with it: http://homepage.mac.com/oaklawnchurch/index.htm )

I have tried Dreamweaver (twice), but it's just more than I can handle in the minimal time I have available. I gave Freeway a test drive, and it seemed pretty nice, but the manual ain't exactly a pamphlet.

Lately I've been encouraging people to think about whether a blog would really suit their needs better. TypePad is simple, attractive, feature-rich, and easy to maintain & update from any net-connected machine.

If your needs are minimal like mine, think about the Contribute or blog options. If they're more extensive... I'm not your guy. Good luck & have fun.

Dreamweaver is a very good intro level program. You can use the "show code and design" function to highlight parts of your page and see the relevant coding to learn a little. It is a bit redundant - but it gets you published - you can clean it up more as you get more experienced.

I'd go with Dreamweaver - and buy the Macromedia book with it - it's excellent.

Good luck!

My personal favorites are Mozilla, BBEdit Lite, and HyperEdit. They are all free, run natively in OS X, are easy to use, and do a good job. I used the 30 day trial of Dreamweaver, but it was a little "bloated". It had a lot of features but it was SLOW and kind of hard to use. Also it seamed to me that with a few free programs, I could do everything it could do.

Beginners i seriously would consider learning instead of using a WYSIWYG editor.. however if you really want one i would think these apps are ok...

RapidWeaver 2 , SoftPress Express

and of course these...

Dreamweaver , Golive ...

But you should really consider again.... using W3Schools and Webmonkey (tho it will die soon ) and a text editor like BBedit, Hyperedit or taco html..or any of the command line editors. vi. pico. emacs

If you can find it, Claris Homepage 3 is a pretty good program to use. It's not up to date, but extremely simple to use.

raynegus said:

Want to keep it simple. Something that won't require me to read a bunch of books (did that already with photoshop, unpleasant) but still make a nice looking page.

GoLive? Others? I can get an educational discount...

http://www.academicsuperstore.com/

( I don't work for them) Thanks!

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If you are interested a great book for begginers is

HTML for the World Wide Web: Visual Quickstart Guide

I have the fourth addition and it was a great reference, but the fifth is even better with XHTML updates and CSS!

HTML is very easy to learn, and its pretty damn useful. I currently use Taco HTML Editor. Its very simple, and works well. I'd recommend it. But just to give you an idea of how easy HTML is: I learned most of it from ebay!

Benjamin said:

RapidWeaver 2

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I second the vote for RapidWeaver, it is the iLife version of creating a webpage.

Depending on how far you want to get into it, you probably should try and learn a bit of xhtml/css and know what is going on behind the curtains.

Nothing nicer than SubEthaEdit