Poll: Adobe or Macromedia?

[AlphaIVT]

If you were a newbie website maker, which bundle would you choose for web editing and graphics? The Macromedia (DreamWeaver, FireWorks, Freehand) or Adobe (GoLive!, Illustrator, Photoshop).

 

[Xzaver]

I would think the Adobe because ive just gotten sooo acustomed to it.....
Just My 02.

~X~

 

[IamDavid]

In the long run Macromedia can make better designed websites, once ya get the hang of it.. Ise Dreamweaver4, Fireworks and Flash. And I also use Photoshop..

 

[blurredvision]

I use Flash 4 and Dreamweaver 3 to design my website. I've gotten the hang of Flash pretty well, and can do most anything I can think of, but I'm still playing around with Dreamweaver a bit.

What exactly does the Fireworks program do?? I've seen it, but I'm not familiar with what it does.

 

[IamDavid]

What exactly does the Fireworks program do??

It makes objects like buttons.

 

[Modeps]

lets see... it really depends on what graphics you are making... if you making simple nice little graphics, like some text on top of a single color button or something like that, then get the Macromedia package. Fireworks is good for simple graphics... i personally never really liked freehand and dreamweaver (3 at least in my experience) tends to add a lot of extra tags to the html that its writing, but nevertheless, is a pretty good program...

If your making/manipulating photos, get Adobe. However Illustrator and Go Live! are pretty useless to me.

Personally, I like both companies products for their own reasons... For the "ultimate package" I would just suggest getting Macromedia's Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Flash 5 (if your interested in web animation) and Adobe's Photoshop 6.

Heres a hint though, if you DO get Dreamweaver, it will help you out quite a bit if you teach yourself HTML as well so you can tweak the dreamweaver code. Sometimes it'll put extra code in and stuff thats not compatable with Netscrape, or even put certain tags in the wrong spots (like when assigning a background image to a cell of a table, it will put it in the TD tag instead of the TR tag... quite annoying)

 

[easternerd]

Hi there,
I would recommend Microsoft Frontpage for a newbie!
My favourite is Macromedia Dreamweaver !!
Anyday it is the Best !! Cause it has
Functionality and features that no
other program has,,,It is really
a cool Application

 

[CyGho]

For webdesign I like Dreamweaver more then GoLive. For images for the web I like Fireworks best. For Photographic stuf though I think Photoshop is better.

 

[T4NNER]

I'd definitely use both. Photoshop for the picture creation/editing, and dreamweaver/fireworks for design and layout. Don't limit yourself to one company... it's a terrible thing to overlook great features just because of a name.

 

[AlphaIVT]

T4NNER, yeah, I was thinking like that because I thought that those programs might not work well with each other, so that the same company makes the product, it'll be bette,r but i guess thats not the case THanks guys

 

[FOBSIDE]

each company owns a certain area IMHO. nothing beats photoshop in terms of editing. i would not use it for creation, not even photoshop 6 with its vector graphics capabilities. its really bloated. you get huge files. freehand is the best for creating graphics for gui for web pages. obviously nothing compares to flash. dreamweaver...its like any other html program. i say go with notepad.

 

[Mday]

um, photoshop actually sucks for website building. it's for images d00d. not really creating them either... well except maybe for 6.0.

you can't stick with one publisher d00d. gotta mix. actually, i'd expect using all of them would rock ;-)

 

[DocDoo]

I'll start by saying....DO NOT USE FRONTPAGE!

While it is easy for a newbie, it is very proprietary in it's construction. Frontpage uses it's own type of HTML language. This can be a problem when a newbie gets better and starts to use Notepad to "hand code" some quick stuff.

Dreamweaver 4.0 is by far the most flexible HTML editor out there. The "real time" tutorials that come with the program are really good, and the "extensions" feature can really be handy. You can find free source codes to many of designers "extensions" online for download too.... In DW 4.0, you can now do some limited Flash.

If you really want to get to understand HTML, you might consider HomeSite 4.52 (but it's not a WYSIWYG editor). In a perfect world we all should start to learn with HomeSite(or Notepad), this way we could rely on our time-learned-skills rather then rely on the program. But this can take some time...

The bottom line:

There is no 1 program that will do it all. I recomend Photoshop 6, Dreamweaver & Fireworks 4.0. I use those 3 constantly (in that order).

 

[SaturnX]

I prefer to use a mix of Adobe and Macromedia software titles, I use Photoshop and Illustrator for graphics creation and manipulation, while I use Flash, and Director to create the more interactive aspects of my sites.

--Mark

 

[jaywallen]

Just a counterpoint on the observations about FrontPage. I'm not much on "WYSIWYG" Web building applications, but FrontPage 2000 isn't too bad. As for "proprietary" language, it can be set to be compliant with various browser combinations, even version 3 browsers. It doesn't produce the lousy plate of spaghetti any more. For a person new to Web building who doesn't plan to design big commercial sites, FrontPage 2000 isn't a bad choice at all. Just don't be tempted to use the html output generated by other Office apps for creating Web pages. Those are still very bad news.

And speaking of proprietary / hokey html, I've seen Adobe GoLive! produce some NASTY stuff. And I can count the number of useful Flash sites (for serious purposes, that is) on the Web using the fingers of one hand. Though I did see one that was unbelievably good. That site actually used interactive Flash for running an online forum! (And it worked BETTER than the many of the more "standard" forum software systems being used online!)

As for me, I have a simple mind and like to produce simple Web sites. I use Arachnophilia.

Regards,
Jim

 

[CoMmAnDoMoE2001]

Adobe there are more options but it is sorta complex in some ways to a newbie
but Micromedia is easy to use but there are not that many options
I suggest go with Micromedia and learn with it...... Then goto Adobe and make a fantasic Web page

 

[cirrus1]

I normally use Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 and Photoshop 5.02 when creating web pages. And when doing plain html editing I use Stones Webwriter because of it's great highlighting features