Frontpage 2003 vs Dreamweaver MX 2004

T

topherus

New Member
I am a real virgin when it comes to web design. I'm creating my own website to sell products. I have both Frontpage 2003 and Dreamweaver MX 2004 with tutorials. I have lots of patience and time on my hands to do this. Any suggestions as to which program I should use to create my site?:confused:
 
This has been discussed many times..

Each time, my answer has been roughly the same: Learn HTML and use notepad.. :D
 
I don't use Frontpage for one reason. First thing it does when editing a page is to remove all other prog names that have been used to edit and subs "meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage". That's typical MS crap imo and I don't care what else the program may be capable of! I tried it a couple of times and did not like it.

Dreamweaver is excellent. Slick to use. I think sezerb could be right that it is less easy to use than Frontpage. I don't use it for site updating (had some minor problems).

I also use a few other progs for side jobs:

Arachnophilia 5 (requires Java) I use for doing search and replaces. It remembers the last 30 strings. Very handy because I do a lot of custom editing and use the same strings over and over for each style. I also use it for some formatting procedures. I used to use it for more things until I got Dreamweaver.

Arachnophila 4 I mostly use for quick edits as Dreamweaver is a lot slower to start up.

Netscape Composer for dragging and dropping image thumbnails with links from draft html generated in ThumbsPlus on to my template pages. It's the only program that does it neatly.

WS FTP Pro for uploading.

I strongly disagree with SFR. What a waste of time Notepad is. There's no virtue in making life difficult. Even the most basic html editor colour codes to make life easier. I use Notepad for a quick page source edit if I have opened a page in IE and that's it. I guess you do all programming in machine code too just so you understand how a pc works?

Starman*
 
I would have to say go with Frontpage, i have use it in addition to Dreamweaver and GoLive, and i find FrontPage to have more options and is easier to use for a novice.

And for the people who say just to use notepad, thats fine for easy-basic things such as text, images, tables, ect. But once you start getting into more advanced stuff it's easier for a beginner to use FrontPage.
 
Starman* said:
I strongly disagree with SFR. What a waste of time Notepad is. There's no virtue in making life difficult. Even the most basic html editor colour codes to make life easier. I use Notepad for a quick page source edit if I have opened a page in IE and that's it. I guess you do all programming in machine code too just so you understand how a pc works?
Click to expand...

I should have said a "Notepad" like editor. I use UltraEdit-32 and HTML Kit to do some of my HTML editing... Yes, its always easier to see the tags in different colors.. but after awhile I can create a page just as fast with notepad as I can with one of these editors... my point was WYSIWYG editors vs the above mentioned editors.

..as for FTP uploading to my sites...I have used WS FTP Pro but: ftp://mysite.com works just fine for me :D..
 
SFR, OK! I also was not sure whether you were joking.

I agree with your principle and have mostly done the same myself combined with some wysiwyg. However, learning html is not within everyone's grasp. Some people will only ever be able to use wysiwyg. The main problem with wysiwyg editors is the huge amount of excess code.

Even if you are a skilled editor, it is still quicker to use wysiwyg editing. All the main editing programs allow you to switch between design and html code. You can use the wysiwyg to get the basics done quickly and then switch to code to add or remove stuff.

Most of the time I use previous pages as templates for new pages and it is so much quicker making the majority of changes in the design mode. I switch to html code to clean things up and edit the non-text code.

Starman*
 
Hmmm

This is one thing where I am against the whole idea of learning HTML from scratch in order to be able to make a website. I think that's quite a nonsense for an average user like me who wants to do a WEBPAGE and not have to learn the code behind it as well. I don't think you can write up a complicated page faster and better for that matter in notepad or some other text editor. Using WYSIWYG software is the best way for anyone to start in my view. That's how I started and that's how I learned more about HTML. I would call it reverse HTML learning :P

So to get to the question, I like Dreamweaver the most. If you want to see what I have done using Dreamweaver and Photoshop, here's my page: www.cz3rt.com. I would like to see people write that up in Notepad...and make it look the same/better. I am not saying it's not possible, it would just be a waste of time doing that.The only time I use notepad or the code feature in Dreamweaver is when I need to make some adjustments. However, the core is WYSIWYG based ;)

JAN :D
 
Why do people always recommend notepad?
Granted, yes its all HTML. But.. for novices, I'm sure it's just the usual.. bold, itallic, underline, img's, ... what else? possibly hyperlinks, font colors, size.. etc..

The user basically have to KNOW html to be able to use notepad. Why not just write it up naturally in wordpad and have a page full of text.. I'm sure with very few knowlege of HTML, that's all it'll turn out to be.

From the two programs above, if you are like you said.. Very patient. I'd say try your hands with Dreamweaver. Other than that, I would say Frontpage. Whatever you see is what you get. If you know how to use Microsoft Word putting pictures, formatting the font, centering, etc.., then you'll have your page done in no time.
 
computerhakk, not clear on your wording re MS Word but regardless of the context, Word itself is probably the worst app I ever used to create a web page. I tried it once and used "Save as Web Page". The amount of excess code was ludicrous. That was a few years back and maybe it has improved. FrontPage itself is nowhere near as bad, as one would expect.

Starman*
 
I would say that I have a biased view, but Dreamweaver has always been pretty reliable and easy to use for me. I was able to put up a fairly large website in a pretty short amount of time (about 300-400 pages complete with graphics, interactive hyperlinks and text in about 2 months working on it about 15 hours a week). My bias comes from the fact that I have not used anything other than Dreamweaver, so I can't say that it's better than Frontpage, just that it's good, and I do like it better than "notepad" editors for me. Mainly because I don't do it very much, and therefore don't have the time to get very proficient at it...
 
I have used all three (Dreamweaver, Frontpage, and Notepad) so I will give my opinion on all of them.


Frontpage
By far the easiest for people new to web design to pick up since it is basically set up like Microsoft Word. Personally I have not seen many technical websites done with Frontpage since every webpage you make includes all of that Microsoft meta-tag garbage. If you don't remove that stuff from the code, your site will not look right in anything but Internet Explorer. As far as price it is in the middle of the bunch, currently around $120.

Notepad/some text application
Really the only people that use Notepad are people that have an extensive knowledge of HTML and don't need the visual aspect. I regularly use Notepad when I don't have access to Dreamweaver.

Dreamweaver
Overall I would have to say Dreamweaver is the best because it allows people to view their webpages in design and code view. Being a programmer I prefer the code view and when I want a preview of how it is going to look I just go to design. Unfortunately if you want to use Dreamweaver you are going to have to drop $400.
 
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don't use frontpage!!!
you have to learn HTML and use dreamweaver that's the best...
you can also use notepad if you want, but it's too boring...
 
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