dreamweaver or frontpage....

[Bowie]

Originally Posted by CuCullin

Thats because FP is gone - its been replaced by Sharepoint and Expressions.

Doesn't that make this debate moot? We might as well be debating whether to use Excel or Lotus 123.

[DaSkorpion]

Dreamweaver no doubt - you can learn frontpage later but once you get used to dreamweaver anything else becomes a piece of cake. I learnt dreamweaver and photoshop on my own and I am glad I did because it comes handy at my job.

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Originally Posted by ChicagoRon

I am ready to learn how to design websites better. I use templates at this time. I'm ready to remove the training wheels. Which program do you feel is the best to learn first and why?


Thanks


r

[DaSkorpion]

We all got to learn from somewhere and since the OP does not have much or any experience in coding thats why I would recommend DW - you can always switch to design and code view in DW and mess around with it to see what code it churns out and you can play with the code from there till you feel its time to start writing your own code from scratch.

I learnt HTML/Javascript/CSS/PHP & Perl the old school way using notepad but just trying to churn out code yourself is a turn-off to some people with me I don't mind I can just view the code in notepad and take it from there but it takes some time for one to be good at coding and be able to debug a few things here and there.

Once again it depends on how far the OP intends to go with the site - is it something he wants to tweak here and there every often by himself or have to pay someone to get a template then go through the painful headache of trying to figure out how to modify the template. It is always easier to know what you want and how you want it to work, then build it. This makes you understand your code and thus tweaking it becomes easy from there than being restricted to only what the template or the vendor supports.

There really is a big difference between a web developer and a website designer - a designer cares more about looks and feels whiles developers do the back end stuff....you can do a little bit of both if you have the courage to explore what makes your website work....so once again its just a matter of preference, choice and how much one is willing to spend.

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Originally Posted by MissShona

I may be in the minority here; but I don't see templates as training wheels...you can use them as a pretty quick way to get a site started...and for a lot of the customization, you really need to know your HTML/CSS/Javascript.

I used Dreamweaver and FrontPage years ago. Strangely the more and more I made websites...the less of an "interface" I wanted. Now I use Bluefish...a very basic HTML editor. However I also use CMS's for my sites now...so I guess that sort of cuts out the need for Dreamweaver (in order to standardize and organize the site).

I would think if I had to choose one...it would be Dreamweaver.

[Mi_Mom]

Speaking as someone who is pretty comfortable using new things I can say that Dreamweaver was what I went with for a couple website designs. I did my mother in laws site (e-commerce) for her sewing pattern business as well as my husbands company website (construction company). For someone who knew very very basic HTML, I caught on quick. It was nothing fancy but I (and they) were happy with the results. I purchased Studio 8 a couple years ago and have used Contribute that it came with as well.