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Good App For Newbie Webpage Designer?
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I always recommend learning any language by hand and use your favorite editor, such as TacoEdit, BBEdit, vi, Textpad, jEdit, whatever. Then when you fully understand it, you can use a WYSIWIG editor. Then you'll be able to modify the code for efficiency or just plain modifications.
Go to Macromedia's website and download a free 30 day trial of Dreamweaver. The interface is easy to understand. The color coding text makes looking at the code alot easier. And, you can preview pretty much instantly what you've done, so you can toy around with the code to see what everything does. Good way to learn. I learned on Dreamweaver(pirated), then went to notepad when i re-evaluated my morals, and then went back to buy dreamweaver for mac when i switched over. If there's a notepad-equivalent for macintosh, you can probably use it for webpages once you've learned html for about a month.
Patmian212 said:
After a lot of deciding, I bought and am now using Dreamweaver. It isn't free though. If you qualify for a student/faculty discount it is $99. I am using the book Dreamweaver MX 2004: the Missing Manual
which is helping me a lot. I love the tutorials which you can download from the books website.
I know I haven't given you any thrifty suggestions but I am pretty happy with Dreamweaver and that book. Good luck!
Use RapidWeaver, seriously, it's the best app for making easy, fast, and good looking websites. The site in my link was made using RapidWeaver, and version 3.2 is coming out this October. The software is shareware, I think the cost is $35~. You don't need to know anything about HTML, you don't need to use any tags unless you are using the sidebar, which is usually for really simple stuff. You can make blogs with comments and RSS and a lot of other stuff. This app has everything.
http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/index.php Enjoy!
http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/index.php Enjoy!
Patmian212 said:
I prefer GoLive to Dreamweaver, but that could just be me liking the setup and workflow because it more closely mimics Photoshop. I believe Adobe offers a 30-day trial of GoLive CS2, check that out while you're at it and compare them. If you use other Adobe products (or other Macromedia ones) you might find the given program easier to use simply by association of workflow and layout.
Edit: Not free, but Adobe does have student pricing if you qualify. If not, once you purchase one app, I believe the entire Creative Suite isn't that far away which would gain you many other apps. Depending on your usage, look into it to see if that makes sense for you.
learn the HTML
very well... I made the mistake of learning on WYSIWYG and now i'm kicking myself for not being more intimate with it....
THEN
learn flash... people want it, plain and simple, but nothing beats the foundations...HTML.
very well... I made the mistake of learning on WYSIWYG and now i'm kicking myself for not being more intimate with it....
THEN
learn flash... people want it, plain and simple, but nothing beats the foundations...HTML.
Bah Flash is so 2004. Learn something like PHP, some Javascript and learn to leverage the XMLHttpRequest object and you'll find you don't need Flash. 
Is there a college near by? Check to see if they offer any web classes and walk in there one day and say you are just there for the trial version of 30 days. They will understand. On day 28.5, take a copy of dreamweaver from one of their putes.
It should work.
It should work.
Well, sticking to the question at hand... I can't think of anything that is free, but for someone just wanting to make a webpage (and not spend hours, days, years to become a professional) I usually suggest either Create or Freeway Express.Patmian212 said:
When I just need to put up a page or two on my own sites I use Create. Otherwise I use GoLive and OmniWeb (for editing source code) as the main tools for creating sites for my clients. Plus Create shares a service that will convert rich text in TextEdit to html to be dropped into an html document later (saves a little time).
Here'e something to try:nvu
It's a new app that's out, and it's free. I haven't used it much, but it might be worth trying. Here's a link
http://www.nvu.com
good luck
It's a new app that's out, and it's free. I haven't used it much, but it might be worth trying. Here's a link
http://www.nvu.com
good luck
I suggest TextWrangler and CSSEdit.
I'd recommend avoiding WYSIWYG editors; once you learn the language, you will be able to produce much more elegant code than the editor.
Even the latest version of DreamWeaver doesn't fully support CSS in WYSIWYG - and it will be very hard for it to in any future version. No two broswers display CSS the same way, so doing WYSIWYG in CSS is pretty much like throwing darts at a board.
CSSEdit is really nice since it makes it very easy to navigate IDs and Classes, and it has auto-completion. The free version lets you create like 1200 lines of CSS or something, so you can get by with it (you can use it just to create the CSS, then just copy the text over to TextWrangler to save as large as you want).
Just my $0.02
I'd recommend avoiding WYSIWYG editors; once you learn the language, you will be able to produce much more elegant code than the editor.
Even the latest version of DreamWeaver doesn't fully support CSS in WYSIWYG - and it will be very hard for it to in any future version. No two broswers display CSS the same way, so doing WYSIWYG in CSS is pretty much like throwing darts at a board.
CSSEdit is really nice since it makes it very easy to navigate IDs and Classes, and it has auto-completion. The free version lets you create like 1200 lines of CSS or something, so you can get by with it (you can use it just to create the CSS, then just copy the text over to TextWrangler to save as large as you want).
Just my $0.02
I agree 100% with the comments about flash
I despise of flash with all my heart it is horrible
Learn PHP it is fun
I despise of flash with all my heart it is horrible
Learn PHP it is fun
I have seen some really fun stuff coded in flash but I use a Firefox plugin to block flash content so as to avoid some of the nastier animated advertising. I occasionally come across sites that use flash for headings, personally I consider that a really bad idea for a number of reasons (which I won't elaborate).eva01 said:
The best way to learn html is to pick up Eric Meyer's book Eric Meyer on CSS. Get yourself a copy and a text editor. If I could do it over again I would definitely choose this route. HTML is actually pretty easy, using it appropriately and confidently, that is the hard part.
Patmian212 said:
technical speaking vi from the terminal; which means open up terminal and typing "vi" is the hardest app to work with. however, if you can learn vi which has a fairly high learning curve and be able to create webpages it will assure you that you can use any html editor of your choice without any problems. the down side vi is quite confusing if you never used before. the up side is your'll be able to use any *nix flavored server and be able to create a webpage without the aid of the special software because vi is installed on ever unix severs. however, if you don't need the functionality go with bbedit or subthaedit.