I need to make a few websites shortly. I know HTML fairly well, but doing everything myself would take a long time (there are going to be a lot of tables and formatting issues I'm pretty sure), and I think it would be faster to give in and use a WYSIWYG editor.

What would you guys recommend? I've heard good things about both DreamWeaver and Frontpage. Any particular thoughts? We're not looking to do anything fancy, but formatting (getting things to line up in the right places) and look decent on most browsers is fairly important.


Thanks!

As much as it sucks to admit it, Frontpage is the better editor. Plus, 90% of the world uses IE, and Frontpage pages are usually pretty compatible with IE.

Dreamweaver is not so easy to master, FP is extremely intuitive.

Good! Now, I actually have a copy of FrontPage 2002 that I found and installed (had to call MS and get a new product key for $10 though - blah).

Should I pay the $90 or whatever and update to 2003 or am I not missing much?

For what it's worth, my volunteer webmaster uses FrontPage. It has so many quirks in formatting that can't be fixed (i.e., 2 sizes of fonts on one page when we only want one, strange line spacing) that I decided to pay a computer science student to learn a different program, redo my sites, and teach me to use the program. He recommended using Dreamweaver.

Frontpage writes crappy code that (like most other Micro$oft products) is designed to look good in IE and to break in other browsers. I've used Netobjects Fusion myself. It's pretty good.

I've created numerous pages with Dreamweaver and have been happy with it. Works fine for me. Easy enough for me to master, and I'm not real bright. Perhaps that's a plus with DW.

I would expect plenty of dissenting views on this topic.

I like dreamweaver much more than frontpage, but I will admit I have also been using it since version 1.0. If you are concerned with making things look perfect, dreamweaver wins hands down over frontpage. But like others have said in so many words, frontpage is usable for beginners and advanced users alike, whereas dreamweaver has a little bit of a learning curve.

If your audience is PC users with IE, by all means enjoy frontpage and all the themes and graphic elements (buttons, etc) that it does so well. Just don't try to tinker with the HTML, and I haven't tried fooling with frontpage css myself.

Dreamweaver, I think, is the better tool for intermediate to advanced users. The "doesn't touch your code" aspect is great, and it is informative about how tags react in different browsers. However, be prepared to BYOEverything as far as graphics and format go. DW does have flash buttons, but I find them even more annoying than their frontpage counterpart.

The best thing you can do is find yourself comfetable and the work yourself outside the box.

Code what you can by hand, pretty it up in Frontpage, and then clean it up in Dreamweaver.

Once Dreamweaver has cleaned it, review your code and work out what was cleaned and why. I now code in notepad 99% of the time and the occasional Dreamweaver tweak.

The most important thing you can do is learn what is happening within your code and the reasons for it.

I have to admit that I really liked Adobe GoLive however, I use Dreamweaver now.

Dan

Somehow, I keep going back to "vi".

You should at least give vim a try with syntax highlighting turned on.

Another Dreamweaver fan here. (I suspect the recommendations have a high correlation with whether the recommender drives a standard or automatic transmission.)

If you go with Frontpage, watch out for its "wizards" that invoke all sorts of routines that have to be on your server, unless you're certain that they are and always will be. One nice thing about Dreamweaver is that it doesn't make assumptions about anything outside the page itself unless you tell it to.

I haven't used either FP or DW, so I can't compare those. But a number of months ago, I needed to create a website to be hosted by Yahoo. After experimenting with a program or two that I did have and being very unsatisfied, I tried Yahoo's Sitebuilder and was very pleased. It only works on Yahoo hosted sites, so it may not be an option for you. But if the sites will be hosted by Yahoo, you might spend an hour or two downloading and playing with it since it's free.

And when I was a kid, we coded 5 miles there, and 5 miles back. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways!

~

FWIW, Frontpage will probably be the quickest and easiest way for you to get the sites launched. If you're looking at maintaining them for the long term, though, I'd take a closer look at Dreamweaver.

When I was a kid, we didn't have ones, only zeroes. When we needed ones, we had to hammer some zeroes flat and improvise.