I know this is not a video topic. Web software

[DUDIRENO]

I trust people's opinions here more than anywhere else so I am asking this question.

For a beginners Web Site what software should I use. I have never done any web design and need some advice on software to start with. I wouldn't want anything more sophisticated than Galactica's web site so you can get an idea what I am doing.

[WiseWeasel]

How about Macrosoft Word, Appleworks or Adobe Illustrator, saving as HTML. They actually aren't too bad for basic no-frills web sites. Afterwards, you can open the html as plain text in TextEdit, and muck around a bit, even trying source code for sites on the net. It's a good way to teach yourself html code.

[Ladd]

For a beginners Web Site what software should I use?

Many modern applications will spit out an HTML version of its native documents. Probably not clean code and may not look exactly like you want or be easy to edit, but your upfront cost is zero and you can get something up on the web in a hurry that will look OK.

There's a lot to be said for learning basic HTML (lots of places on the web to do so) and one good source is webmonkey.com. HTML is literally just plain text so you can type up a web page in SimpleText or TexEdit and it will work, but knowing the code commands and formatting can be a challenge. Coding "by hand" is how many people learned how to do it and plenty of them still do. But there are alternatives that work really, really well.

Big packages like GoLive and Dreamweaver are absolute overkill AND offer a steep learning curve. Go this route only if it is your goal to actually learn a complex package (say, for a future job) and you want to use your web site for practice.

Allow me to suggest you investigate the free, trial version of the Mac-only web-design software Freeway Express published by SoftPress. This software uses the "page-layout" interface as its basis and does all the coding for you behind the scenes. It is extremely easy to learn to begin with and when you get more comfortable and choose to investigate its more powerful tools, you can do produce complex sites also with ease.

I originally learned HTML coding "by hand" and could still do it if forced to. But for the same reason that I no longer hand-code my PostScript output to the laser printer, I don't hand-code my HTML output to the web -- the tools have gotten good enough that it's more productive (and fun!) to concentrate on the design process and then "just push a button" to have the code produced for me and uploaded to my server.

It's kinda like the semi-true stereotype of PC hardware/software vs Mac hardware software. Do you want to know about DLLs and Registries and IRQs, or do you want to play with iTunes/iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD and produce good looking output without a great investment of time just getting started?

Here's the very first website I made with Freeway:SuperTutors, Inc.

[DUDIRENO]

This was exactly what I needed. Thanks!

Sorry to go off topic! And thanks to all the experts who answer questions on this site. I have learned so much from everybody here. I hate to say thanks to just one person for one question.

[deadsierra]

Learning HTML and CSS is not a difficult job, and does allow much finer (and dare I say better) control over the final product. The minor trouble is well worth the benefit. And this is coming from someone who has legitimate copies of Dreamweavers 2 through MX.

I suggest you take a look at sites like Daring Fireball and look through the source to see how he did it. Then take a look at his CSS code and work with it until you figure out how it works.

[galactica]

I wouldn't want anything more sophisticated than Galactica's web site so you can get an idea what I am doing.

are you saying my site is "easy" Just giving you a hard time. I put the front page together in under 5 min.

its all done by microsoft word. i just save as webpage and upload the contents to the server.

the code looks like hell [compared to other sites i have designed] but hey its easy

if you are looking to do photo galleries, i just found out Photoshop CS and maybe the other ones have a export to web gallery option, you just load up all the pics you want, it sets the thumbs and the expanded ones to a theme you can choose and you just click export. upload that folder and its got everything including the index!
how sweet is that!

[deadsierra]

I wouldn't want anything more sophisticated than Galactica's web site so you can get an idea what I am doing.

are you saying my site is "easy" Just giving you a hard time. I put the front page together in under 5 min.

its all done by microsoft word. i just save as webpage and upload the contents to the server.

the code looks like hell [compared to other sites i have designed] but hey its easy

if you are looking to do photo galleries, i just found out Photoshop CS and maybe the other ones have a export to web gallery option, you just load up all the pics you want, it sets the thumbs and the expanded ones to a theme you can choose and you just click export. upload that folder and its got everything including the index!
how sweet is that!

Thats an MS Word page? Wow, I never would have guessed

<meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document>
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 10">
<meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 10">

[thoughton]

FWIW, I've noticed that Word-generated HTML files are many times the size of everyone else's HTML.

Also, if you don't plan on buying Photoshop just to make some photo galleries, the copy of iPhoto that was included with your Mac does a creditable job. There's also a pretty slick iPhoto plugin called BetterHTMLExport which does it even better.

Also, if you're a beginner, you might just want to forget about CSS for a while. Sure it is fashionable right now, and it looks okay, but unless you're designing a largish site (which you plan on revamping regularly) it's probably not worth your time and effort to learn.

This is all my own opinion, of course

[galactica]

Also, if you don't plan on buying Photoshop just to make some photo galleries, the copy of iPhoto that was included with your Mac does a creditable job. There's also a pretty slick iPhoto plugin called BetterHTMLExport which does it even better.

really!
so you can export as html!?!? ill have to look into that!

[Ladd]

Good tip re: iPhoto HTML export!

[galactica]

Thats awesome! all this time and i never realized!
photoshop is a little more advanced in its exporting and layouts, but still it works!

[imacaroon]

Really interesting post - I'm just getting into learning about site making and HTML so appreciate stumbling accross this

[deadsierra]

Also, if you're a beginner, you might just want to forget about CSS for a while. Sure it is fashionable right now, and it looks okay, but unless you're designing a largish site (which you plan on revamping regularly) it's probably not worth your time and effort to learn.

There are many reasons why it is useful and better to use CSS, and one of the main ones is to do with learning to code HTML by hand. If you try to make a table based layout by hand, while learning to write HTML, you will fail. CSS, on the other-hand, allows you to write manageable structural HTML, and then write manageable CSS to create the look. Creating a table based layout by hand is dumb. WYSIWYG tools are a much better idea if you want just HTML. Well, unless you want your site to look like maddox's. Then hand coding HTML for layout would be fine.

Edit: I'm probably being misunderstood here, I am not by any means advocating hand-coding over having it generated by some program. I happen to think that it is a better to know the code, but really, as long as it displays well in Safari, I wouldn't worry too much. Still, I do all my web work in XHTML 1.0 Strict with the layout in CSS.

[galactica]

have you noticed Safari does not display CSS to its full extent!
Or is it only me. I have a site with CSS and safari will never load the <h3> the way they are to. Explorer will however!

[deadsierra]

have you noticed Safari does not display CSS to its full extent!
Or is it only me. I have a site with CSS and safari will never load the <h3> the way they are to. Explorer will however!

CSS support (in a general non application specific way) is crap at best. IE6 has stupid CSS1 support, let alone CSS3. Weird crap like that is standard.

If you do find a bug, use the bug button. Dave Hyatt claims it actually does send information to Apple.

But, on the <h3> issue, I'm using that tag in my stuff, and, as far as I can remember, it worked perfectly. Are you sure that its actually the h3 thats causing the issue and not some totally unrelated mistake in the CSS code? (I've had mistakes in specifying font size alter totally weird things, like borders in other divs)

[galactica]

to be honest, i dont really know where the problem lies
Its only safari that doesn't display it Mac and PC IE browers work fine. Im not loosing sleep over it - just thought it was funny.that safari wouldn't.

But then again i remember seeing Netscape not supporting it well and isnt Safari some half breed of Netscape?!

[imacaroon]

I find that Safari has a hiccup with .swf - put the url in the address bar (or link to it opening another tab) and it initially seems to reject it. The address bar goes blank. It is only when I go and reselect the url in the history tab that it will load.

Have you tried that new browser shiira?

Hmmm slightly moving away from web page apps - but thought I'd throw that one out there ...

[thoughton]

There are many reasons why it is useful and better to use CSS, and one of the main ones is to do with learning to code HTML by hand. If you try to make a table based layout by hand, while learning to write HTML, you will fail. CSS, on the other-hand, allows you to write manageable structural HTML, and then write manageable CSS to create the look. Creating a table based layout by hand is dumb. WYSIWYG tools are a much better idea if you want just HTML. Well, unless you want your site to look like maddox's. Then hand coding HTML for layout would be fine.

Edit: I'm probably being misunderstood here, I am not by any means advocating hand-coding over having it generated by some program. I happen to think that it is a better to know the code, but really, as long as it displays well in Safari, I wouldn't worry too much. Still, I do all my web work in XHTML 1.0 Strict with the layout in CSS.

I'm not trying to bash CSS, it allows much greater control over your webpage, especially character and text spacing which is something I particularly like about it. I'm just saying it's structurally a lot harder to figure out than regular HTML, especially when compared to a WYSIWYG web design package like Dreamweaver (although the MX versions of Dreamweaver are so ridiculously slow that they border on unusable on a 667mhz G4, stick with DW4). I've played with CSS for a while and I still find it all a bit mysterious predicting exactly where the 3rd column of my 3-col CSS layout is going to appear! I also found floats, among other things, pretty hard to grasp. The spotty CSS support among different browsers is also very frustrating, although much better now that it was a couple of years ago.

Having said all that, if you want to see how amazing CSS can be when done right, I would also suggest (in addition to the Daring Fireball link you posted) this site: CSS Zen Garden. Check out those 'select a design' links! Changing the entire look and feel of a site, while retaining all the same text and links, now that's what CSS is all about!

[deadsierra]

But then again i remember seeing Netscape not supporting it well and isnt Safari some half breed of Netscape?!

No, Netscape is Mozilla. Safari uses KHTML.