Website design

[starbuck]

Thinking about designing my first website and wondered if anyone knows of any good programs/sites that can help beginners.

I don't know anything about html.I learnt it a long time ago at university but have not used it for years so have forgotten it(but not adverse to learning it again if worthwhile).

Any help would be appreciated.

Once designed, is it worth buying a cheap domain name(as one of the things I'd like to do is upload pics of work nights out) and think it would be easier if I had an easy address to remember. Can anyone recommend a good/cheap host.

[turkster]

I found a good place to start with raw HTML, XHTML, CSS etc etc is W3Schools.
As i'm sure you know you online need a text editor like Notepad although syntax recognition is useful in programs such as Textpad .

Personally I use photoshop and image ready for any graphic design and raw program the rest. But I am only learning so i havent done any complicated stuff.

[Barry]

i'll prob be flammed for this but for a first time design it had to be frontpage, you have the wysiwyg and code tabs so u can see everything your doing

[Steve]

i'll prob be flammed for this but for a first time design it had to be frontpage, you have the wysiwyg and code tabs so u can see everything your doing

Yes you should be flamed, lol.

Front Page is OK for beginners. However it uses at least 10 times more code than is necessary and is, of course, geared towards Internet Explorer, which actually defies certain website standards.

I prefer dreamweaver for wysiwyg, as it's use of style sheets is rather nifty. However, for raw code editing, EditPlus is great. It supports a huge array of stuff: PHP, HTML, even stuff like Java IIRC.

[Kezzer]

Just do it the way most people do it. Learn the basic markup languages completely.

[Paul Adams]

Just do it the way most people do it. Learn the basic markup languages completely.

Personally I'd second this.
Buy a book on HTML and learn it properly, not the way some application wants to present it.
It's not that tricky, and if you come across problems you should gain the knowledge to fix them - if you've "learnt" by using an application then you don't gain that knowledge.

I would get a book that deals only with HTML and have a play writing pages in Notepad, then later get a separate dedicated book on stylesheets, and if you feel inclined another one on Javascript.

I would not recommend a book which attempts to cover all 3 areas.

[Barry]

help beginners.

Yes you should be flamed, lol.

Front Page is OK for beginners.

[turkster]

Yeah but he did say he had some long forgotten knowledge of HTML so there is no reason for him to start using Frontpage apart from that it is a lot cheaper than Dreamweaver for WYSIWYG.

[scouse]

I have Xara webstyle 4 and Netobjects and Dreamweaver all are good. Although many code there own sites, i myself am a beginner and i invested in the software to help me out and make life easier.

Code your own is great, but i would rather go the easier route. Or maybe because i am crap at code haha..


You could try using Ace HTML 5 and it is free best of all. http://freeware.acehtml.com/

They have brought out Ace HTML 6 Pro well it is available for download as a pre release..Worth trying for sure http://www.visicommedia.com/about/ne...6-acehtml.html

[dgr]

heres a hint - get someone elses site, and learn from it and w3c schools.

if you start using frontpage, you'll end up with really bad habbits. try to make sure all your pages are html4/trans and css valid.

i use the "dev-php" ide, its gpl, pretty light, syntax highlighting, great

[oshta]

DREAMWEAVER

- HTML and WYSIWYG reunited, its great, you can have a window of code, or wysiwyg, OR even both, on a split view, its a powerfull program, it really is,

-also, fireworks (also part of the macromeadia design suite) is a very powerfull graphics package, like dreamweaver seamlessly combines html and wysiwyg, fireworks seamlessly combines boths raster and vector graphics into every image/logo/button you make (as well as intergrateing perfectly with dreamweaver

- and then theres flash to compleate the macromedia trio

[Angus]

i'll prob be flammed for this but for a first time design it had to be frontpage, you have the wysiwyg and code tabs so u can see everything your doing

You could always use word

[Steve]

There's actually an option in DreamWeaver to "remove Microsoft Word HTML"

Word leaves special data in an HTML file to make it easier for Word to open it again for editing...

[killgORE]

Mozilla - the open source web browser - provides a free alternative to Dream weaver. I have used it in the past when I made web pages...

Available free at here

The key here is FREE. Not better. But I suppose there might be a fuller range of plugins than there was a few years back...

PS.. I have been using FireFox - next gen browser from mozilla.org again - and I have been dubbing it FireR0x for months. It is the best browser out there. Its free, and mouse gestures will 0wn your soul... But thats off topic

[këö¬t]

have to agree with turkster, a plain text editor and w3schools are the way to design good websites. go for xhtml/strict and tableless designs such as these: css zen garden, css/edge, and css layout techniques.

frontpage is awful, and i seemed to pickup some bad habits using dreamweaver, so gnu nano is the editor for me...

PS.. I have been using FireFox - next gen browser from mozilla.org again - and I have been dubbing it FireR0x for months.

download this extension, and use it to rename firefox to firer0x

[starbuck]

can anyone recommend a good html book(that only deals with html) as when I checked on amazon, there are loads to choose from.