If you could not use DW is there another HTML editor out there that's as good as DW?

[Work_Flow]

Please do not take this the wrong way.  I was wondering if there was a preferred second choice other than Dreamweaver.   I've never built a website. I know Dreamweaver is very good. I know that in order to use Dreamweaver you're supposed to know a little HTML and CSS.   But I'd like to know in a worst case scenario if a person could not use Dreamweaver for whatever reason what other HTML editor available to the public would you pick if your HTML and CSS skills were like mine?

[Günter_Schenk]

Hi there,

this is a reasonable question, yet the answers you´ll hopefully get might be biased -- perhaps mine is too 😉

From my observation (which may be questionable, because I only know the general specs) it seems that, when it comes to designing HTML pages in a "visual" environment, currently only the Microsoft Expression Web editor provides similar capabilities. That´s all I can say.

However in my opinion some of the most important aspects about deciding which HTML editor to use, are:

a) what features do you need, which ones can you live without

b) you need to be conscious of your short-term and long-term goals

b) how far do you want to go when it comes to gaining the required HTML and CSS knowledge to create contemporary and "cool" pages

d) how much time to you grant yourself for handling a learning curve (applies to the editor and HTML/CSS etc) which may become steep subject to your goals.

Other than that I´d recommend to download and play with the available trial versions, because in the end it´s not my opinion which counts, but your opinion and impression does.

[Nancy OShea]

I was wondering if there was a preferred second choice other than Dreamweaver.  

If you're serious about a career in web design & development, you must learn to work with code.  There are no shortcuts. If you can work with code, you can build a site using any plain text editor like NoteTab, NotePad Plus,  or BBedit... I built my first site in MS Notepad.  Its wasn't great, but I learned a lot about code.  And later when I purchased DW, I really appreciated all the time saving features it contained.

If you're planning to work in an ASP or ASP.net environment, you might be happier using MS Expressions b/c  MS wrote ASP code and supports it very well.  Adobe dropped support for ASP, preferring to focus on PHP.

If what you want is no-frills, WYSIWYG tools that require no coding skills, look at iWeb or Xara web designer.  Neither product would be suitable for anything big, but they might work well enough on a small hobby or amateur site.  Many folks begin at this level then switch over to DW or MS Expressions after they outgrow the consumer-level products.

Good luck,

Nancy O.
Alt-Web Design & Publishing
Web | Graphics | Print | Media  Specialists 
http://alt-web.com/
http://twitter.com/altweb

[Rob_Hecker2-uhQIgt]

ZEND Studio is a professional IDE for web development with PHP focus, especially on Zend Framework projects.It's harder to learn than Dreamweaver, but the toolset is very fine.

Dreamweaver is a great general purpose IDE that manages to serve the needs of both novices and experts, but it's certainly not the tool all professional web developers use.

[Guest]

A very reasonable question that I asked myself starting about a year ago and now no longer ask myself. By way of background, I had previously built a couple of static (ie html only) websites using FrontPage 2000. This worked very well for me the learning curve was easy and the interface intuitive. When I came to redesign my wife's website about a year ago I thought I should upgrade to a newer version, only to find that MS stopped supporting Frontpage around 2007 !!

I downoaded trial versions of MS Expression Web and DW CS4, I found both to be completely unintelligible with an interface I could not get my head around at all. The deciding factor for me was when I posted a few questions here on the DW forum and immediately received helpful replies from knowledgeable people. Sometimes I had to remind them I was a newbie but consistently the users here were patient and stuck with me until my problems were solved. Another factor I noted was that DW has about 3 times as many users as Expression Web - going from memory here so I could be wrong.

There's no doubt you'll need to understand html and to a lesser extent CSS, DW does the heavy lifting but you will need to be able to fix html now and again - the most disappointing thing to me was the Design view in DW is not even close to what the actual page will look like. I end up using the split screen view (html/ design) most of the time and then publish my page to see what it actually looks like.

I found the Adobe documentation, most of it online, to be completely unreadable, so I bought a copy of DW CS4 The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland (there's a version out for DW CS5). That was the best $32 I ever spent, the book is well written, clearly structured and has been invaluable to me. 

I wrote my first program in 1967 and at various times was an application prorammer, operating systems programmer project leader etc but learning DW has been the most frustrating and challenging learning curve I've ever had. If you do decide to stick with DW I recommend you get the book and lean on the excellent people in this forum. Eventually it all starts to make sense but it does take a while.

Good luck