Web Design Software
When it comes to doing website design it really is true that all you need is windows notepad to get started. For the vast majority if people we need a little more than that. Over the years there really has been loads of design software available at varying prices and many of them worked just fine. In present day the list has really shortened to an elite few programs, web design programs like Adobe Dreamweaver, and Microsoft Expressions (formally frontpage) lead the way by leads and bounds in marketshare. While there are other programs out there like Xsite, if you want total control of your web properties these programs are the best. Below we will describe a little about each program, its practicle use, and some advantages/disadvantages of both.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
Our choice for web design software first and foremost, we do use others but for most practicle purposes dreamweaver is top dog for web designers. Of the 7-8 Designers on our staff almost every one of them prefers dreamweaver to the competition. You can make changes either to the live site or to a local copy to test things out, you can also use dreamweaver with a test server in more complex situations. The biggest thing we like about Dreamweaver is how easy it makes web design, managing your website and more specifically managing multiple websites. Adding a site to Dreamweaver is about as easy as it gets, uploading files is even easier, this is perhaps why we like it so much more than Expression Web.
Both have very good functionality, and you can do almost anything designwise without having to know any html code at all, its just Dreamweaver is a lot easier to use in our opinion, which matters a lot, if you are going to be online, editing your website for several hours a day you don’t need any additional frustration. The only real knock on it is the price tag of upwards of $300.00. The nice thing is you don’t need to upgrade versions every year or anything, it just works for a long time a worthwhile investment if possible for anyone needing to do website design.
Microsoft Expression Web 3.0
A great option if you are coding sites in .asp (a programming language) also a great option when working with windows servers. (See our previous lesson on server types) There are a lot of progects we have used Expression Web for, and in fact its predessor Frontpage was the first web design program we ever used so it holds a very special place in our hearts. Expressions works exceedingly well at making things easy to understand for users and has a lot of the same looks and feels of any other microsoft office product which makes the learning curve a little more palatable than say something like Dreamweaver.
The price point is also something we like; coming in at about half the cost of something like Dreamweaver makes it a very affordable and very capable alternative to use.
Site Builders Like Xsite-
These programs offer a different type of advantage, they are great for people who want a website but do not necessarily care to deal with all the design work. Site building software can help you get your businesses website up literally within minutes. These sites often have a more templated design but certainly solve the need to get a website online as soon as possible. They are purposly meant to be quick and easy, we have recommended Xsite to thousands of people and we have heard it works great, if you just want to get online asap, use this program.
Honorable Mention Goes To Content Management Systems-
Software like Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress can be deployed with almost no effort at all, and no previous coding knowledge required. Once they are setup they making adding pages to your website about as easy as possible and make doing html code a lot like using a program like Microsoft Word. You can make something bold with the click of a mouse, add pictures just as easily. The in most part is what has made them so popular. The major drawback though is that if you want to do any custom design work that is much more difficult than standard html. That said, if you can find a template you really fall in love with, using a content management system can be a real stress reliever, I mean even we use one for this site! The nice thing about it is that you can make easy quick changes to your live site on the internet, no needing complex ftp programs and other utilities to add pages to your website.
The main takeaway here is there are a lot of options when it comes to the tools you want to use to design your website, starting out you will likely use a lot until you get comfortable with one, try a few of them out see what you think, it has to be easy to use
