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recommended web page designer?

msharp

msharp

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 10, 2004
212
9
I used to design pages in frontpage 2003 or xp under windows, now, under Mac, i can't even finish my job because of lack of the web page design softwares~~~~ is there advice on which web page designer is good??

i've tried several software, such as: Adobe GoLive!, Macromedia Dreamweaver(i don't like it either on PC). but neither of them can finish such little goals correctly because they're not good at Table Positioning. I mean, they're not accurate when dealing with tables with small cells(1 pix, for example).

any other good ideas??

thanks!!!!!
 
I don't want to seem judgmental, but what are you using 1-pixel table cells for? There are DEFINITELY more efficient ways to achieve such results. If you're doing a lot of graphics/slicing, you might want to try the dreamweaver/fireworks combo. Fireworks may be able to give you the table handling you're looking for (though you'll usually want to finish things up in Dreamweaver).
 
Also, I'm not sure characterizing Dreamweaver as imprecise is fair. It sounds more likely that you don't know how to fully use it properly. If you choose to use tables, it is as precise as any program.
 
msharp said:
I mean, they're not accurate when dealing with tables with small cells(1 pix, for example).
Click to expand...
There are much better and efficient ways to do things than making 1 pixel cells. I must admit WAY back in the day (1996) i used these types of methods, But with the advent of CSS and dhtml and layers, there is just no need to do this.
I also think that dreamweaver is more powerful than frontpage. I am sure that frontpage is much more simple to use, but I think you will find learning to use dreamweaver will benefit you much more in the future.
 
stealthy said:
Can anyone recommend the best way to go about learning Dreamweaver?

Trial and error? A specific book? Online resource?

Thanks, S
Click to expand...
I would start with the tutorial that comes with it, first, then I am sure any book is ok. I have always like the Visual Quick start books for beginer stuff.
 
Another vote for CSS and XHTML. I don't even use a layout program, just a good old text editor.
 
Recommended Dreamweaver training

stealthy said:
Can anyone recommend the best way to go about learning Dreamweaver?

Trial and error? A specific book? Online resource?

Thanks, S
Click to expand...

Lynda.com has some good training videos that cover Dreamweaver and CSS. They also have videos on other subjects.

Lynda.com videos
 
As soon as you learn Dreamweaver you will notice how much better it is than front page. The trends seems to be going towards CSS but I'm not a huge follower. It has its ups and downs and to create a layout in CSS can take a very long time even for a vetran. Maybe I'm old school, but I've been successful with combo of DW, PS and CSS, but I won't make a whole layout just using css.
 
CSS is the way to go in the future, and is a much better way of designing than tables. I'm sorry if you want to stick to old ways but positioning with tables are slowly but surely becoming a thing of the past.

I'd recommend against using Dreamweaver, since personally I believe that SubEthaEdit and command line FTP are enough to keep a well designed site going. Sure, Dreamweaver may make maintanence easier once you learn how to get around it, and as a WYSIWYG editor it's good. But learning html and css is not a very tough thing to do, and I find that I rather enjoy it. I taught myself the gist of it in several days when I was twelve years old, along with basic maintenance of a website.
 
mms said:
CSS is the way to go in the future, and is a much better way of designing than tables. I'm sorry if you want to stick to old ways but positioning with tables are slowly but surely becoming a thing of the past.

I'd recommend against using Dreamweaver, since personally I believe that SubEthaEdit and command line FTP are enough to keep a well designed site going. Sure, Dreamweaver may make maintanence easier once you learn how to get around it, and as a WYSIWYG editor it's good. But learning html and css is not a very tough thing to do, and I find that I rather enjoy it. I taught myself the gist of it in several days when I was twelve years old, along with basic maintenance of a website.
Click to expand...

If you are going to design a graphic intensive site, then css is not the way to go. Thats a huge market share too. I can't see any need to build a site with just css, unless its for fun. Its just annoying.
 
ChicoWeb said:
If you are going to design a graphic intensive site, then css is not the way to go. Thats a huge market share too. I can't see any need to build a site with just css, unless its for fun. Its just annoying.
Click to expand...

Yeah... CSS is great and all, but there are still a lot of things you can do with tables that just can't be done with CSS alone. Learn everything you can about HTML and CSS, then do your coding by hand with BBEdit. :)
 
ChicoWeb said:
If you are going to design a graphic intensive site, then css is not the way to go. Thats a huge market share too. I can't see any need to build a site with just css, unless its for fun. Its just annoying.
Click to expand...

I disagree, CSS is the way to go. There are is a large number of major sites out there now that are fully compliant to webstandards, css and xhtml, see: macromedia.com, wired.com, mozilla.org, visit weeklystandards.com for more. Even Apple has started to move towards CSS layout: http://www.apple.com/itunes/ the top nav is in a table but the rest is CSS. Table based designs are going to slowly die out and eventually applications such as Dreamweaver will encode sites as CSS and xhtml without any manipulation. CSS design does take a while to master but, once mastered then you will find that production time decreases and modifications can be done in seconds.

I have been designing CSS based sites for clients for about a year now and have been working with CSS for about two years. I can't even image going backwards.
 
zim said:
I disagree, CSS is the way to go. There are is a large number of major sites out there now that are fully compliant to webstandards, css and xhtml, see: macromedia.com, wired.com, mozilla.org, visit weeklystandards.com for more. Even Apple has started to move towards CSS layout: http://www.apple.com/itunes/ the top nav is in a table but the rest is CSS. Table based designs are going to slowly die out and eventually applications such as Dreamweaver will encode sites as CSS and xhtml without any manipulation. CSS design does take a while to master but, once mastered then you will find that production time decreases and modifications can be done in seconds.

I have been designing CSS based sites for clients for about a year now and have been working with CSS for about two years. I can't even image going backwards.
Click to expand...

To many issues with browser compatibility. I picture CSS as more of a BLOG type language.
 
ChicoWeb said:
To many issues with browser compatibility. I picture CSS as more of a BLOG type language.
Click to expand...

I'm not really sure what you mean by this, but CSS is an indispensible tool in web design. You still construct the content of your site using html, or preferably xhtml tags. The benefit of CSS is that you can easily keep your content and style separated, thus making upkeep very very simple, and minimizing the chances that your customer breaks the overall look of the site in any particular page. People are going to begin demanding access to information over many different mediums, not just on their computer.

It's our job as web designers to accomodate the mediums of today and tomorrow, if you create a page with nested tables your end users are not going to be able to access the page from a cell phone or PDA. Whereas if you had created the page using xhtml, and css, you can easily create multiple versions of the overall style of your site, which still draw from the same content.

My point is this, don't plan for yesterday's technology, or you will get left in the dust. Plan for tomorrow.
 
davecuse said:
I'm not really sure what you mean by this, but CSS is an indispensible tool in web design. You still construct the content of your site using html, or preferably xhtml tags. The benefit of CSS is that you can easily keep your content and style separated, thus making upkeep very very simple, and minimizing the chances that your customer breaks the overall look of the site in any particular page. People are going to begin demanding access to information over many different mediums, not just on their computer.

It's our job as web designers to accomodate the mediums of today and tomorrow, if you create a page with nested tables your end users are not going to be able to access the page from a cell phone or PDA. Whereas if you had created the page using xhtml, and css, you can easily create multiple versions of the overall style of your site, which still draw from the same content.

My point is this, don't plan for yesterday's technology, or you will get left in the dust. Plan for tomorrow.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying that CSS is bad at all, infact I use css to accomplish many things, just not to make my layouts. What I am saying is that css is rendered differently across browser platforms. I'm not going to give my client a product that will work in IE but not in Firefox, or Sarfi but not in IE. That simple. Look at ESPN.com, its done with all css, but looks different on whatever browser you choose. Is that good? It is a tool for the future, but its hasn't gotten to a consistent state.
 
ChicoWeb said:
To many issues with browser compatibility. I picture CSS as more of a BLOG type language.
Click to expand...

And what is a blog? A high traffic news site. CSS is ready for today, it is part of the web standard set of tools. Blogs seem more traffic then some of the much larger more well known organizations around.

As for issues, if you are writing compliant mark up and are aware of the issues at hand, it is very possible to create a product that reproduces as expected. Even a table html based site is going to have variations, the only way you can have 100% perfect is either with Flash or image based designs, which both present issues with accessibility, image based having more. Designing a web site does not mean 100% accuracy, there will always be inconsistencies.
 
davecuse said:
I'm not really sure what you mean by this, but CSS is an indispensible tool in web design. You still construct the content of your site using html, or preferably xhtml tags. The benefit of CSS is that you can easily keep your content and style separated, thus making upkeep very very simple, and minimizing the chances that your customer breaks the overall look of the site in any particular page. People are going to begin demanding access to information over many different mediums, not just on their computer.

It's our job as web designers to accomodate the mediums of today and tomorrow, if you create a page with nested tables your end users are not going to be able to access the page from a cell phone or PDA. Whereas if you had created the page using xhtml, and css, you can easily create multiple versions of the overall style of your site, which still draw from the same content.

My point is this, don't plan for yesterday's technology, or you will get left in the dust. Plan for tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Agree!

As designers it is our job to prepare for tomorrow. Design needs to move forward. As well designed web site does not just include visual appearance nor does it only include well written content, it also includes well organized and structured mark up. A well constructed page should work with a visual design as well as without.

To the original poster: here is a short list: Dreamweaver, goLive, BBEdit, the new TextMate (looks really good), both word and apple works can also produce html. You can also use TextEdit, I use textEdit on my laptop when on the go and want to conserve process power.
 
IMO Frontpage writes some of the most horrid code of any WYSIWYG editor, as with all MS products. I've used Dreamweaver for years and swear by it.

I second the CSS+XHTML or DHTML. Much nicer, and more fun.
 
Use the mozilla web editor... there is a new open source project around, it's based on the mozilla web editor, pretty nice, lead by Linspire. it could be a good help in the future. take a look.
 
i'm a music tech major, but in one of my classes we're just now dabbing in webdesign for self promotion purposes. it's one of those things that's always good to know. we use dreamweaver in our lab (it's a Mac Lab), and though i have no webdesign experience and am just starting out with this, i find the behavior of tables, in dreamweaver anyway, to be very disjunct and difficult to manipulate, though i'm thinking that maybe that's just how tables are. interesting thing though to me is that i see certain layout things that i like in websites, and when i try to save them in Safari, to just see how they are done, Safari it seems saves only the html in websites. i'm amazed how little html there really is in websites (and slightly frustraited that it's not helping me figure anything out). so like just yesterday i've become really interested in CSS, because evidently it seems to be resposible for making the nice orderly layouts that i like.

i tried ESPN.com in Safari and Explorer to compare just out of curiousity of that claim that CSS displays differently. maybe Firefox is different, but i couldn't see any difference between the two. i'll have to download firefox again. i'm still waiting till the full release.
 
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