Dreamweaver or Frontpage?

Ok just finished my trial for dreamweaver and found it had upsides and downsides when compared with frontpage. I have frontpage 2003, got it free from dad's comany and after trying dreamweaver i thought i'd ask you guys whether i should stay with frontpage or transfer to dreamweaver and being my html there. it does seem a lot better layou i must say.

 

neither.. edit plus and do it by hand. Spend the time to learn XHTML. Your code will be cleaner and you won't have to spend the time trying to decipher what DW or FP did..

 

Out of the 2 Dreamweaver is by far the better program. As Kodo says, both tend to make a bit of a mess of the HTML code. It really depends how serious you are. If you want to potter around making hobby sites then use whatever method you feel most comfortable with. If you are looking to get a job as a web designer then you will probably need to know HTML inside out as well as knowing how to use Dreamweaver (which is the industry standard web design package). Many professional sites are put together in DW, with the designer cleaning up the code manually afterwards.

ps. If you are serious, learn HTML first before you start worrying about the more advanced stuff like CSS, Javascript, PHP, ASP, XML etc etc etc...

 

I used DW myself, and I'm so glad that I do. Of the two, DW makes the least messy code (IMX), but even so its not pretty to look at. I do all my coding by hand (yes, all of it ). In terms of time it takes about the same, and you usually get better results because your code is cleaner and less cluttered, and therefore more efficient and faster.

Generally speaking when I design websites I do just what shedlord says: I make it in HTML roughly, and then validate it to XHTML afterwards, and then work out browser issues, then validate again.

If you are going to learn XHTML, I would DEFINATLY learn CSS at the same time. More and more, one is useless without the other. What with the dropping of many attributes (for example align in the <img> tag), you need to use CSS to replace the functionality. Well designed XHTML pages without CSS just don't happen.

 

Yeah coding by hand is more efficient and you'll learn more. You'll also be able to do more stuff, and do what you want it to do.

I would also second that you learn xhtml and css at the same time.

 

I third it.

 

thanks

 

I also code all published pages by hand with a text editor, but I sometimes use an old version of FrontPage to work out an idea or do complicated table editing. It has a source tab which I sometimes use instead of a text editor. I had a trial of DW, but hardly tried it, so I'm not sure how it compares. I imagine it would be good to have both, as some things are better in one and some in another. I personally find coding in anything other than a text editor to be restrictive. I rarely use FrontPage to do quick IE-only pages, but don't publish these, and often clean them up by hand l8r.

I also agree about learning CSS and XHTML together.

 

In my honest opinion you should learn CSS along side either HTML or XHTML. It may not be as "necessary" along side HTML, but it will give you a great head start on something that you will need to know if you want to build websites well.

I have never used Frontpage but I have been hand coding for several years and recently bought Dreamweaver. I must say, after doing what I've been doing in Notepad for so long, Dreamweaver just didn't seem near worth the money. But a client specifically requested that I build her site in Dreamweaver so I went ahead and took the plunge.