Opinions of Web Authoring Tools

[beachgal]

I'd be interested to know peoples opinions on the various web authoring tools you use. Ease of use, pros and cons all that kind of stuff.

[myrealtyfeed]

Anyone serious in web development would use Macromedia Dreamweaver. It creates clean code and isn't that difficult to use when you know some html.

Photoshop is a graphics essential. If that's too pricey for you, you can try Jasc Paint Shop Pro. Photoshop seems to crunch images down better for the web, though.

Flash is great, but should be used sparingly. Search engine spiders can't read Flash files.

After tools, you have techniques, but that's a whole different thread...

[Boston Condo Guy]

I utilize macromedia products (dreamweaver, flash, and fireworks) for web design, development, and navigation, and I use Adobe Photoshop for all of my graphics and images. These products have a wealth of options that you can utilize, and can do much more than I currently use them for.

It will be interesting to see how these tools merge in some of the extra tools that I have been using lately:

1. Google site map tool.
GSiteCrawler by SOFTplus Entwicklungen GmbH, http://johannesmueller.com/gs/

2. Find all broken links and page errors
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

3. Simulate a search engine spider
www.spannerworks.com

4. Determine who is copying my content
http://www.copyscape.com/

5. Validate your code
http://www.validator.w3.org/

[pcdoc]

good list folks, but I prefer

http://enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng

for generating google sitemaps

[frobn]

I'd be interested to know peoples opinions on the various web authoring tools you use. Ease of use, pros and cons all that kind of stuff.

The best authoring tools are the ones that best meet your needs. I do everything by hand with notetab pro and the clip libraries for html, css and php. I am able to build sites with zero html bloat and because I build them in modules I can make single page or site wide changes with minimal effort. For those who like the convenience of DW or FP I suggest they take a look at NVU, an open source visual editor. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of DW or FP but it is free, the code is clean and it has excellent css support.

[pcdoc]

Forgot to mention...

Use Firefox and Web Developer Extension.

http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

[unsakred]

I use notepad, adobe cs2 and Zend Development Environment.

[rick_dallas]

Regarding NVU, I have tried it with weird results. Might be something I'm doing but I swear it changes the code if you switch to preview mode to look at things.

I uninstalled it and downloaded it again. Same results. Was wondering if anyone else had experienced this........

I've gone back to notepad and the problems have disappeared.

[Homesurfer]

I used FrontPage for developing www.realestateabc.com (which has been a very successful website), but we also use ColdFusion and publish the database results as .html pages (which are very search engine friendly).

In developing HomeSurfer (once I get the time to actually work on it), I'm committed to learning DreamWeaver, for two reasons. First, DreamWeaver and ColdFusion are by the same software developer and we figure they will work together better. Second, most experience folks say it is better. Third, every once in a while I try to learn something new, just because.

I think I'll always use some sort of WYSIWYG tool because though I want to learn new stuff, I only have so much patience with learning new stuff.

[sarahk]

Sorry, to the Dreamweaver fans, I haven't used it but I don't believe it creates clean code - certainly not from the source that I've viewed in the past. Dreamweaver sites are clearly identifiable by how bogged down they get. I suspect that it makes life for newbies very easy and the compromise may be justified.

Personally I use (no order)

• ancient version of Adobe Photoshop
• ancient version of Adobe GoLive when I can't be fagged remembering html syntax
• Zend Sudio
• EditPad Lite
• TopStyle Pro (Bradsoft) CSS Editor
• SmartFTP

And for debugging I use the firefox javascript console and some of the extensions that let you see where your code has gone wrong.