Looking for good web design software and browser

[Chrispy]

Hello all. I switched to mac over a year ago and I used to upkeep a simple webpage for a small computer services business using Frontpage 2003. I still have a Peecee but it is a joke compared to my 15" powerbook so I would prefer to use the powerbook instead. my question is what would you all recommend as good web design software for simple/moderate webpages. I don't know much code other than simple HTML so the easier the better. Does iWok have anything in it that would do something like this? Any opinions would help.

Also, is there a web brower out there that is better than Safari that I should be using? I know I use Firefox on my peecee becuase of security issues in windows and IE. Again, and suggestions would be great. Thanks all!

 

[munkle]

There is an export to html option in pages but unfortunately it's not that great. Not good enough to publish on the web anyway. For simple web design software that keeps you away from the code, check out something like Freeway.

There are plenty of browsers for the Mac platform. I love Safari but some people prefer Firefox. They're both free so check them out and see which one works for you, it's the only way! For power users OmniWeb is worth checking out as well.

 

[wPod]

macromedia's dreamweaver rocks for web design. but its probably a bit pricey for a simple web site. text edit works if you just want to write the html code, but BBEdit is a little more powerfull of a html text editor which is simple but good. www.barebones.com

as for browsers i think safari rocks. firefox is good as well and very similar from the user end.

 

[MadMacs44]

I actually use a shareware HTML program called "CreateText". Very simple and clean. It hgas nice tag and table insertions as well as built in FTP options etc. Look on versiontracker for it.

As for the browser, I am a Firefox man now. It does everything that Safari does, accept it actually works. One thing about Safari that ripped me was that it could not save USER/ Pass for secured sites.

Hope that helps.

 

[Westside guy]

Not Safari, not yet

I'd recommend Firefox as your test browser. It seems to have the best CSS support, and also has some nifty tools for web developers like a JavaScript console and a DOM inspector.

Safari currently has a problem where external stylesheets are not automatically reloaded unless you clear the cache. I was working on a new webpage at work, and it had some problems in Safari. So I began tweaking the relevant .css file (and sometimes the HTML), and then would (force) reload the page. In Firefox I would see the CSS changes happen, while in Safari the HTML would change but not the specific styles.

It is quite possible that this particular bug won't matter to you, given the description of the pages you'll be maintaining - but still with Firefox it's one less thing to worry about.

 

[Bear]

Remember to test your web sites using multiple browsers. The more browsers you test with, the less likely there are to be issues with browsers you didn't test with. The minimal test list is: Firefox (or Mozilla) on both Windows and Mac, Safari on Mac (of course), and IE on Windows. Anything that renders correctly in all 4 of the above browsers should render alright in any other browser.