Website Creation Tools

**aled** · April 9th, 2002, 03:02 AM

Thanks
There's always more work to do on them though!

**Nummi_G4** · April 9th, 2002, 08:00 AM

Yeah... I would go with GoLive 6.0. And best of all, you can get it on OS X. But... BBEdit is number one. I would wait for BBEdit 7.0 to come out.

**macaudiX** · April 9th, 2002, 03:33 PM

BSDimwit,

Ignore all the folks who dis GUI editors. The bad thing about them (the GUI editors, not the foks who dis them) is that people misuse them. Obviously, being able to code by hand is a requirement for making any half-decent site, but to waste your time typing common tags is silly.

Prior to OS X, Dreamweaver was the best. Now that GoLive is Xready and Dreamweaver isn't, it's hard to say. When coding, I spend about half my time in BBEdit and the other half in Dreamweaver 4. Version 4 is nice because of the split window. I can use the GUI interface when it's quicker and then immediately edit the code without even changing views. When I'm coding static html, the results are shown immediately, along with simple errors like not closing tags.

The process of creating a table with a particular cellspacing, cellpadding, width, etc. can all be done in about 3 seconds instead of typing line after line of tr's and td's. Changing cell attributes like class, bgcolor or width can be done instantly.

On the other hand, you mentioned that you already use Homesite. BBEdit is not the same. It lacks some features (easily replaced by Dreamweaver) but is so nice and clean that you shouldn't miss them anyway. My single favorite feature of BBEDit, that no other tool seems to come close to, is the Find & Replace capabilities. The grep features allow you to create elaborate search and replacement patterns that save hours compared to Homesite. You'll have to get used to the lack of built-in file browser and tabbed sub-windows, but I encourage you to purchase BBEdit first, no matter what GUI editor you select. After all, it's cheap!

One last thing... BBEdit can be integrated into the terminal. Instead of vi or emacs, just type "bbedit _filename_" to open it in BBEdit. It's a whole lot easier than the command-line apps. You might even be able to do this with BBEdit Light, the freeware version.

Have fun,

**aled** · April 9th, 2002, 04:38 PM

I second that, macaudiX - very well put.

That's exactly why I use the GUI - I can't be bothered writing repetative basic HTML - the rest is hand-tweaked.

With GUI Editors - just forget all their fancy JavaScripting too - it's all so bad.

For showing a client a quick design of a site use a GUI editor, and especially one like GoLive which takes in PSD files is very useful. Then database or PHP the site into efficient shape in no-time.

**sspooner** · April 10th, 2002, 02:10 AM

Freeway 3.0 (MacOSX native)
This is an amazing app, I love it. It's not cheap, but it's well worth it.

www.softpress.com

**LAdesign** · April 10th, 2002, 11:20 PM

Originally posted by BSDimwit
Hi all,

I wanted to get the opinions of some die hard mac users on which is the best Website Creation tool.

While I used to use Homesite on my Wintel box, that was several years ago and on a different platform. So speak up all you web designers... Which one is best and why. I am looking for a WYSIWYG based tool, not a text editor like BBEdit.

Thanks in advance for the advice. BTW, I am running on a Titanium Powerbook 550 with 512MB ram, with OSX 10.1.3.

BSDimwit

Hey d00d...

Let me just say, I'm speaking from experiance... been a Creative Professional and all.

If your truly interested in a hardcore webdesign too then there nothing better than Dreamweaver 4, but for CSS work then choose the UltraDev version. XML, HTML and various others are all supported.

It's a true WYSIWYG app,
If your looking for the Mac OS X version i'm affriad you're gonna have to wate that bit longer. Unless you don't mind buying & running the Mac OS 9 version. as the Mac OS X version of Macromedia's Dreamweaver hasn't quite arrived yet; as it's in the Beta state.

It's looking very promising tho

I can't say any more sorry.