Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Website development & maintenance: Dreamweaver vs. Freeway? Others recs?

B

benross

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 27, 2007
2
0
I used Frontpage when on the PC and liked the easy to use interface. I know it has it's issues, however it was user-friendly. Now that I am (finally) back in the Mac world I want to get a new program to design and maintain my website. I am a professional photographer and am computer/software savy, however Go Live CS2 was a user-interface nightmare for me. I don't want to have to spend a lot of time learning how to use the software; I just want to use to re-build my site and be able to maintain it easily. I do e-commerce on the site, so iWeb is not an option (waaaay to elementary). I need something that is powerful enough to create a snappy site yet one that allows frequent updates and changes easily and one that doesn't take me a couple of weeks to learn to use. I have no aspirations of becoming a website developer for hire. I just want to do my own site and spend the rest of my time doing what I do (ie. photography).

Thanks in advance for your help and feedback.
 
RapidWeaver and Sandvox are both template-based applications that will get you up and running quickly. RapidWeaver is the one I hear talked about more, and it seems to be universally liked (by customers looking for that type of solution). There are loads of plugins available for it that make building any kind of web site a very simple process. I'm not really familiar with Sandvox, so can't say anything about it.

If you don't mind hand-coding but are just looking for an IDE with a decent interface, try the recently released Coda. It's an all-in-one type thing like Dreamweaver, but it's not a WYSIWYG tool; it just combines a few different applications web developers frequently use (an HTML editor, a CSS editor, an FTP client, etc.).

Hope it helps.
 
Coda is good (from my limited use so far (a couple of bugs and stuff, as you would expect from a 1.0)), but I wouldn't recommended in this case.

RapidWeaver may be your best bet, depends how much you like the template route.

If you had money to spend on Go Live, have you thought of giving Adobe Dreamweaver (feels weird writing that!) CS3 a go. You may find the UI more intuitive and if you do ever decide you want to do more advanced things later, then there is plenty of scope.

Most people I have met can pick up the basics in Dreamweaver in a few weeks, so as you are computer/software savy then I wouldn't expect there to be too many dramas.

Slightly unrelated Although it may have been a wrench to tear yourself away from FrontPage (familiarity and comfort are nice with software), it really did produce some awful code.
 
How serious do you want your site to be taken?

How serious do you want to be with regards to HTML/CSS and learning web design?


Id argue NOT to use any template based editor in favor of either a WYSIWIG editor or straight text.

You learn nothing from a template program other than how to use it. It doesnt help you as much as knowing how stuff works underneath.
 
All WYSIWYG editors make crap code. Better off really spending some time learning the code, so your not dependent on a $500 piece of software that doesn't create good code anyway.

Otherwise, iWeb.
 
SC68Cal said:
All WYSIWYG editors make crap code. Better off really spending some time learning the code, so your not dependent on a $500 piece of software that doesn't create good code anyway.

Otherwise, iWeb.
Click to expand...

No, they all make crap code if you use them like a fool.

And, making crap code teaches you what NOT to do, does it not?

WYSIWYG allows a "newb" to see what the code does without alot of fuss.

The person only continues to be a NEWB when they dont clean up the code.

I really hate it when elitist web people demand you code how they do.

Its the FINAL product that matters, not how you got there, jeez.
 
SC68Cal said:
All WYSIWYG editors make crap code. Better off really spending some time learning the code, so your not dependent on a $500 piece of software that doesn't create good code anyway.

Otherwise, iWeb.
Click to expand...

Dreamweaver doesn't produce code which is that bad. It's got some quirks, but it's not bad I would say.
 
rapidweaver is the best app ever! it's perfect for your situation and if you get your rapidweaver site hosted with macdock, you can have an e-commerce part of the site that uses your rapidweaver theme! It is also dead easy to use.

just my 2c
 
Thanks, any more thoughts from others?

Thanks to all who have replied. I am still not certain what to do, so I would like to hear from anyone else who has an educated opinion on this topic. Thanks in advance.
 
Well, Dreamweaver seems to be pretty well liked. Since you are doing photography, you might want to invest in CS3 Web premium which has photoshop as well. What I liked about dreamweaver as macromedia product was its integration with fireworks. I believe with webpremium you get the same thing, but with photoshop instead of fireworks. Web Standard just has fireworks... which is good I think for web graphics, not so great with photography...
Anyway, my vote would be dreamweaver. It's very user friendly, code is not too bad, and does not have many compatibility problems as far as I know.

YT
 
Stay away from Dreamweaver!!!

If you want to code yourself, Espresso or Coda. If you want to do WYSIWYG editing, iWeb or Rapidweaver.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back