I want to make my website a better place. Which one of these programs should I get? I know some of you will say just learn html but I do not have enough time to take it on right now. thanks
frontpage vs. go live! vs. dreamweaver--which one?
- Thread starter gplracer
- Start date
In my (very limited) experience i really like Frontpage, because of it's simplicity. Having used Dreamweaver a little bit though i think it is a more advanced program and would be better if i got to know it better, but it would take a little more effort. I haven't used Go Live
i.e, as you seem to know a bit about web design, go for DW.
i.e, as you seem to know a bit about web design, go for DW.
I'd say frontpage, especially if your ISP has the extensions enabled. It's so nice to be able to sit down at any computer running FrontPage and be able to get your webpage to edit. Frontpage also makes putting in complex tables really easy, which is what we use it for mostly. We'll setup a template with placeholder text, and then code in the content later
my experience with GoLive! 4.0 was really bad... I don't know why it did what it did, but it would crash soon after loading, without cause. I had tried it on a fresh install of Win98SE, and it just crapped out on me no matter what I did. Tried to figure it out several ways, with different computers and everything. It just wouldn't work right. I would steer clear of this program. Looks good, almost like a tweaked-out FP, but it fell short for me.
if you HAVE TO use one of them i say go with front page. i dont recommend using front page server extensions. theyre a big security hole. if possible just go with NOTEPAD. all those programs you mentioned code for IE only and while very few people use netscape i think its important to code for it as well.
<< all those programs you mentioned code for IE only >>
That is not true at all. Just stay away from the fanciest features and you will be fine in Netscape. You can also preview your code in any browser installed on your system, so you can get instant feedback on whether your code works and what it looks like in non-IE browsers.
I know HTML but I use FrontPage for most of the web sites I set up, it's so much easier and faster than notepad for setting up complex page layouts. I don't do e-commerce sites so I can't comment about that, but for general use, using FrontPage has been very profitable for me. And it is certainly easy to insert your own HTML code into that generated by FrontPage for those special cases when you want to do it "your way".
Actually, FrontPage and DreamWeaver (particularly if talking about current versions) do have settings that make their output Netscape and earlier browser version compliant. They don't write only for IE.
DreamWeaver is more powerful at managing / organizing large Web sites. Really large ones. FrontPage is better suited for small Web sites. Both have provision to allow you to manually write html (or tweak html that their WYSIWYG interfaces have produced), and they can be set to leave what you do manually alone.
Though I think they are both fine programs, I can't stand using either of them. I like Arachnophilia by Paul Lutus. It's a specially designed, ultra-fast text editor with customizable feature buttons that allows you to produce Web pages very quickly and very elegantly without the use of a WYSIWYG environment. It's not a "macho" thing. It's just that I got used to creating pages by my own methods before there were WYSIWYG Web editors, and I don't like the feel of letting someone else decide how my html should be implemented. When I try to use a WYSIWYG html editor it feels like slipping out of a Ferarri 240 GTB4 and into the driver's seat of a '56 Buick Special. Feels like a lack of control, like I'm wallowing. But FrontPage and DreamWeaver both produce very good html. You just need to use them prudently.
GoLive, in the only version I ever saw, which was about a year ago, was just awful. A friend who was inexperienced in html production asked me to evaluate I hated it enough right away that I uninstalled it and didn't finish testing it. In it I saw no options for tailoring html output to be widely compatible. And the "code" it produced was horrendously far outside the W3C spec and stupidly formatted, too.
Insofar as those who use "notepad" are concerned -- well, unless they are just producing single Web pages, I'd liken the choice to use notepad to deliberately choosing to wear hair shirts instead of silk or cotton ones.
I don't think it's beneath my so-called dignity to use a specially adapted text editor, like the aforementioned Arachnophilia or like NoteTab Pro, to make me more efficient in the production of pages. Because I like to standardize the format of pages on Web sites I design, I often have a couple of hundred pages open at once to make a tweak. If I were using notepad to do a conditional search and replace on a given link format that was included on most or all of those pages... I don't know about anyone else, but switching windows and hitting Ctrl+H or Ctrl+F and typing and cutting and pasting would drive me right around the old corner.
Then there's something called HomeSite which is kind of in the area between Arachnophilia and the FrontPage / DreamWeaver categories. (Actually a version of it comes WITH DreamWeaver.) It's highly thought of by many very capable Web designers.
If you do get around to wanting to learn the niceties of html, consider learning Cascading Style Sheets. Though not fully implemented yet even in IE, this standard will make the management of large and complex sites MUCH easier than it has been in the past. There's an outstanding freeware version of the commercial TopStyle CSS editor available out there if you search for it.
Anyhow, hope you find an editor that suits you.
Regards,
Jim
DreamWeaver is more powerful at managing / organizing large Web sites. Really large ones. FrontPage is better suited for small Web sites. Both have provision to allow you to manually write html (or tweak html that their WYSIWYG interfaces have produced), and they can be set to leave what you do manually alone.
Though I think they are both fine programs, I can't stand using either of them. I like Arachnophilia by Paul Lutus. It's a specially designed, ultra-fast text editor with customizable feature buttons that allows you to produce Web pages very quickly and very elegantly without the use of a WYSIWYG environment. It's not a "macho" thing. It's just that I got used to creating pages by my own methods before there were WYSIWYG Web editors, and I don't like the feel of letting someone else decide how my html should be implemented. When I try to use a WYSIWYG html editor it feels like slipping out of a Ferarri 240 GTB4 and into the driver's seat of a '56 Buick Special. Feels like a lack of control, like I'm wallowing. But FrontPage and DreamWeaver both produce very good html. You just need to use them prudently.
GoLive, in the only version I ever saw, which was about a year ago, was just awful. A friend who was inexperienced in html production asked me to evaluate I hated it enough right away that I uninstalled it and didn't finish testing it. In it I saw no options for tailoring html output to be widely compatible. And the "code" it produced was horrendously far outside the W3C spec and stupidly formatted, too.
Insofar as those who use "notepad" are concerned -- well, unless they are just producing single Web pages, I'd liken the choice to use notepad to deliberately choosing to wear hair shirts instead of silk or cotton ones.
I don't think it's beneath my so-called dignity to use a specially adapted text editor, like the aforementioned Arachnophilia or like NoteTab Pro, to make me more efficient in the production of pages. Because I like to standardize the format of pages on Web sites I design, I often have a couple of hundred pages open at once to make a tweak. If I were using notepad to do a conditional search and replace on a given link format that was included on most or all of those pages... I don't know about anyone else, but switching windows and hitting Ctrl+H or Ctrl+F and typing and cutting and pasting would drive me right around the old corner. Then there's something called HomeSite which is kind of in the area between Arachnophilia and the FrontPage / DreamWeaver categories. (Actually a version of it comes WITH DreamWeaver.) It's highly thought of by many very capable Web designers.
If you do get around to wanting to learn the niceties of html, consider learning Cascading Style Sheets. Though not fully implemented yet even in IE, this standard will make the management of large and complex sites MUCH easier than it has been in the past. There's an outstanding freeware version of the commercial TopStyle CSS editor available out there if you search for it.
Anyhow, hope you find an editor that suits you.
Regards,
Jim
I have GoLive 5.0 here for review, but I haven't touched it yet. Once I get my ass up to working on the review (which is quite soon, with a deadline looming...) I'll chip in on my thoughts about it.
atwl
atwlAdrian,
I'll be interested in seeing what you have to say on version 5.0. (I tried to test version 3.x, but I just couldn't bring myself to use it long enough to learn it.) I have a friend who would love to have an all-Adobe software complement. (Hey, I don't ask. I just try to please her.)
Regards,
Jim
I'll be interested in seeing what you have to say on version 5.0. (I tried to test version 3.x, but I just couldn't bring myself to use it long enough to learn it.) I have a friend who would love to have an all-Adobe software complement. (Hey, I don't ask. I just try to please her.)
Regards,
Jim
dreamweaver likes to put a lot of extra <p> and <div> in whenever it gets a chance. claris use to have a nice wysiwyg editor.
what i meant to say when i said those programs code for IE is that when you preview your work, youre viewing what it looks like in IE only. netscape reads pixels completely differently. if youre looking at a table or frame with set width you could be looking at something in accurate. plus certain tags IE will read fine but they dont show up in netscape. for instamce, the class tags for style sheets can not be imbedded into a table tag and change the whole tables text appearance in netscape but in front page the text will look correct.
I've got your meaning now, FOBSIDE. My wife uses DreamWeaver. (She does some BIG sites.) She just cranks up a couple of different Netscape browsers to preview the pages to assess the appearance of a page in a given Netscape browser. Not as convenient as using an internal previewer, but easy enough to do in Windows.
I have a hard time using all of the "features" of programs like these. To be frank, html is not rocket science. I wouldn't be surprised if it took as long to learn the interfaces of these programs sufficiently well to produce good Web pages as it would just to learned the danged html!
Regards,
Jim
I have a hard time using all of the "features" of programs like these. To be frank, html is not rocket science. I wouldn't be surprised if it took as long to learn the interfaces of these programs sufficiently well to produce good Web pages as it would just to learned the danged html!
Regards,
Jim
I've been fooling around with GoLive 5.0, and I don't really like it that much. It has the same interface as the rest of Adobe's products, it seems to have a lot of features but accessing them is sometimes tedious or troublesome.
It's table handling isn't that good compared to Frontpage, and I seem to like Frontpage's text handling better (font, size, colour, etc).
I could go on, but overall I think GoLive doesn't suite you well if you want an easy-to-use editor, which in this case I would recommend Frontpage instead.
atwl
It's table handling isn't that good compared to Frontpage, and I seem to like Frontpage's text handling better (font, size, colour, etc).
I could go on, but overall I think GoLive doesn't suite you well if you want an easy-to-use editor, which in this case I would recommend Frontpage instead.
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