MS Front page, Dream weaver MX, etc ????? - Webhosting & Construction Forum

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Q. MS Front page, Dream weaver MX, etc ?????

Asked by ken krishnan (K=19102) on 11/13/2003

I just purchased an account with Dominet.net webhost. I purchased that because the 'Gallery' people said it works well in that host.

Now my problems is what program to use to design my site. Can any one help me out.

They are all so pricey too. I just do not want to spend too much at this stage and find latter that I have wasted money.

My interest is to create a web site for my travel journal with lots of photos.

Which program?.
And Why?

Regards, ken.

Jeroen Wenting

(K=25317) - Comment Date 11/13/2003

My choice of a tool for creating a website is TopStyle Pro.
No fancy graphical interface, but syntax highlighting of your code (and sidebars for quickly setting options etc.).

Does require good knowledge of HTML, but you should develop that anyway to build a good site that is easy to maintain as well.
Not the cheapest tool out there, but it's speeded up my work enough that it's been more than worth it (and it costs a lot less than Dreamweaver etc.).
http://www.bradsoft.com there is a trial version.

Another interesting tool which I used to like (but no longer use because it's too limited for what I want to do with it) is LiquidFX Pro.
http://www.psylon.com/
Bit cheaper, easier for beginners to use, but doesn't support the very latest web languages like XHTML and CSS fully if at all (current version might be better).

One of these tools combined with a good book on HTML and CSS will get you a better site than anything the heavy tools can create that's also easier to maintain (plus far cleaner and smaller code that means less bandwidth use and diskspace).

Christine Campbell (K=2693) - Comment Date 11/13/2003

Hi Ken,

The best thing you can do is follow Jeroen's advice and get a good book and learn HTML. It isn't hard and you should pick up on the basics rather quickly. When I first started, I used notepad, and still do somewhat frequently. If you can read & write html, the program you use won't matter in the least, unless of course the program itself is limited as your abilities grow.

Some of the worst websites I've seen have used a WYSIWYG editor (such as Dreamweaver & FP). They rely on the program to write their code and assume that it's good enough. Maybe it is in some cases, but I've had to clean up sites done by those people and it isn't much fun! I do use Dreamweaver both at home and at work, but mainly just for a visual of the layout, since WYSIsn't always WYG... I switch between Dreamweaver & UltraEdit, using UE for the majority of my coding.

Here's a link to test drive a few html editors: http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=html&tg=dl-2001

And I started with the book 'HTML for Dummies 101'. I think I got up to chapter 6 or so and didn't need it much after that. If you haven't already, you can try html tutorial sites, http://www.htmlgoodies.com/ and http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/ are the ones I had my daughter learn from.

Kyle Blair (K=1542) - Comment Date 11/14/2003

I have to agree with the two previous answers. Learning HTML is the best way to develop a good website. Learning HTML is almost as easy as learning one the programs that writes the HTML for you, the only difference is that when a bigger and better program comes out, you have to learn how to use it. But as HTML progresses, you just add the new knowledge to what you've already learned. My HTML editor of choice is Text Pad. A trial version can be downloaded for free at http://www.textpad.com (The only difference between the trial version and the real version is have have to hit "continue evaluation" occasionally...)

Kirk Williamson (K=456) - Comment Date 11/14/2003

Hi Ken,
I will agree with the previous posts to some degree. I know some html but not alot. I have used Dreamweaver, Frontpage, and Pagemill. I like them all and they all do a superb job at what you want to do.

Front page is easy to learn for a nice simple site that has galleries. You should produce the galleries in an image editing program such as Photoshop then customize them in Front Page. Of course Front Page can also create the galleries for you.

My site is simple and effective and it was all done in Front Page and Photoshop. Nothing flashy but it works.

Kirk
www.seasidescenics.com

jeff lynch (K=4770) - Comment Date 11/14/2003

I use FP for my site too Kirk and for a simple photo gallery, I like it.

ken krishnan (K=19102) - Comment Date 11/16/2003

Thank you very much guys. Its realy nice to get good useful replies. I very much appreciate it.

Regards, ken.

James Rathbun (K=204) - Comment Date 11/16/2003

Hey Ken,

My two cents on this, becuase I do a lot of web work, is that you look into dreamweaver and even consider fireworks. I use these two programs quite a bit and they are well worth the money if you are going to be doing a lot of web work.

However, if you are just working on your own site as a hobby there are many very nice little programs out there you can use that are inexpensive or free. I tend not to use frontpage. The main reason for this is that I don't like the html code that frontpage generates. But that is a personal preference.

KIRK: I like your site. although the swtiching between the black & white background was a bit disturbing to me. I would pick one and run with it. just my 2 cents, please accept it as constructive critisism as that is my intention.

Keith Banham (K=1306) - Comment Date 12/28/2003

Get yourself a good editore such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver. If you want to suffer the death of a thousand cuts them follow the advice and learn HTML. If you are at all creative and want a top site and concentrate on your photography get a decent WYSIWYG editor. I am a professional web developer as well as a professional photographer so I feel relatively qualified to comment. You will spend an AWEFUL amount of time doing it manually and then when you want to update it in 6 months you get to die all over again. I can't understand this "lets all learn HTML and do it all by hand" mentality when it hasn't been neccessary to do that for many many long years. The ONLY 3 reasons for doing it manually are:
1. Your a masochist
2. You are financially challenged and it's the only way
3. You are a real web pro and like/need to hand code scripts ect. to suit your specific requirements.

As to the comment of WYSIWYG editors not writing good clean code I would agree that Microsoft products.. Frontpage and MSWord HTML (cringe) make crappy code. There is even a function within Dreamweaver to clean up MS code. Its the 21st century for god's sake. We no linger ride mules to the fields to work and you certainly don't need to be wasting your precious time hand coding an entire site.

Josh Fields (K=221) - Comment Date 1/5/2004

Dreamweaver is the program that pwns them all, Dreamweaver, flash and photoshop can create a killer site.

Jeremy Darling (K=287) - Comment Date 1/7/2004

I've been designing Websites and software for over 8 years now. The basic answer that I give to all of the Jr's and students that I work with is this: Start out simple, find a site that you like save it to your drive and open it in Notepad or a simple syntax highlighter. Using things such as FrontPage and other utilities does nothing but bloat your site and make it run slow. A properly designed site can do things like display over 100 high quality thumbnails in just under 30 seconds (for a cable modem client), try that with frontpage and you will see that the page takes over 2 minutes. Learn PHP and download SWISH for a cheap flash editor. Personally I use GEL as my editor you can find it at http://www.gexperts.com its freeware and supports Java if you ever get into it.

Troy Sullivan (K=36) - Comment Date 3/6/2004

If you have your own web page, it pays to at least understand HTML and what your are looking at even if you don't code it. I often use Dreamweave to get the bulk of the page built quickly and then I pull the page into Textpad and work my web page by hand to fine tune it too my final result. I use Textpad because it is a small program that takes up little memory while it is running. It also has color coding for HTML and C+ programing, it also has too many HTML friendly features too name here.

You can pick up Dreamweaver from ebay for $99.95 and Textpad is free unless you want the ad-free version in which case it is $16.50.

Troy

http://www.sultaz.com

Lynda Kuit (K=707) - Comment Date 3/7/2004

You can download a very good program by evrsoft (www.evrsoft.com) called 1st Page 2000. It does require HTML knowledge however. Its freeware and is very similar to HomeSite. Otherwise my experience as a web designer is to go for Dreamweaver.

Kevin Dean (K=438) - Comment Date 3/12/2004

Hi Ken, please contact me at groovehogz@yahoo.co.uk with regard to the above question, as I have just started from scratch, and will mail you some info.

August Retrosesos (K=1439) - Comment Date 4/11/2004

Dreamweaver no doubts.

ken krishnan (K=19102) - Comment Date 12/18/2004

Thank you all so much for the help. I followed you guys help and learned the 'HTML', followed by how to use 'Java applets' and now I am in the process of learning Java programing !. Jesus, thats realy a hard work !!!!

With my megear knowledge - I have managed to design my own website, using FrontPage. Please take a look.

I would appreciate your suggestions - the link to my site -

www.kentheteaman.com

regards,
ken.

Diabo (K=2080) - Comment Date 12/18/2004

Don't waste too much time learning every HTML tag out there. You need to understand how it works, but I'd let the software deal with the details.

Computers are supposed to make things easier by taking care of technical details and HTML tags with a limited life span.

Remember those people who used to know every MS-DOS command and all the WordPerfect function keys? And how useful is all that knowledge know?

My advice: download a copy of Mozilla (not the Firefox browser but the full suite) from www.mozilla.org .

It comes with Mozilla Composer. An excellent wysiwyg HTML editor. And its free.

Hand-code some framesets if you need them.

I would drop all those letters that are jumping all over the screen. Keep it simple, and don't clutter your site with fancy effects just because they're available.

And maybe try to fix this:

Warning: Illegal offset type in /home/kenthete/public_html/gallery/init.php on line 27

Warning: Illegal offset type in /home/kenthete/public_html/gallery/init.php on line 28

(...)

Warning: Illegal offset type in /home/kenthete/public_html/gallery/lib/lang.php on line 319

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/kenthete/public_html/gallery/classes/Album.php on line 1376

Deb Mayes (K=19605) - Comment Date 12/18/2004

Hi, Ken,

Just took a look at your site as you requested, and here are a couple of suggestions. They're intended to be helpful, but it's your page, so you of course should make the final decision.

1. Do you really need the flashing Welcome sign? it's distracting. The word itself is enough, and flashing objects can really put off some viewers.

2. Why is the "To an enlightening..." line moving? In web design, less is frequently more (just like in decorating).

3. Look at your source code in a text editor or your browser using file/view/source and you'll see the biggest downfall of FrontPage: bloat.

"Text body starts here" appears 20 times, "End of Ad", "Left column lower", etc. do the same. The browser has to read that extra crud even if it ignores it, which slows the page load time. Many visitors (especially dialup) won't wait for that; they'll leave. Load time was slow for me, and I'm on DSL. Use notepad (or source view in FP) to strip out the extra junk.

This is one of the biggest drawbacks of FrontPage and not your fault. But if you're going to use that pos (and I did for years), you're going to have to tweak the code it generates. You cannot trust the program to do it for you. You CAN use FP successfully, but you're going to have to get your hands dirty to make it work for you.

4. When I clicked on "Ken's travels" I got a page full of php errors about illegal offset type followed by a fatal error "call to a member function on a non-object type".

5. The counter doesn't show. I'd solve that one by deleting it entirely; web counters are pretty much out of style these days.

I know those all sound like I'm being hyper-critical, and that's not my intent at all. You get full marks for jumping in and learning.

Good start, and looking forward to the next version. :)

Diabo (K=2080) - Comment Date 12/18/2004

Hi Ken,
I wouldn't try to learn every HTML tag out there. HTML will go the same way as MS-DOS commands and WordPerfect function keys: one day all that knowledge will be useless.
Just make sure you understand the basics so you can tweak your pages beyond what your WYSIWYG editor can do.

I would get rid of all that text dropping down, bouncing up, moving left and right. Just because it's possible to do that doesn't mean you have to use every feature of your web page editor.

And maybe fix your gallery? If I click a thumbnail, I don't get a up of tea. Instead I get a page full of error messages, no matter if I use Mozilla or Internet Explorer. What about getting rid of the slideshow code and start with the basics: thumbnails that link directly to the jpg file?

If you're looking for a good WYSIWYG editor, go to www.mozilla.org and download Mozilla (the full suite, not just the FireFox browser). It comes with Mozilla Composer: simple, clean, and free.

Neil Dolman (K=26883) - Comment Date 12/19/2004

Hi Ken, unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time designing i would go for a finished template. You can buy them for around $100 US complete with your own logo etc, flash animation, paypal etc, etc. I can give you the URL should you wish. They are excellent. Drop me a line if you need more info.
Best wishes Neil