Best Web Authoring Application?

NotHereOrThere asks: "I want to setup a small business web site and I'm trying to choose a web authoring application. I'm a software developer, so technical complexity doesn't scare me, but I've never developed for the web other than some very simple HTML pages. My main requirements are ease of use and presentation quality. What do Slashdot readers recommend? Any recommendations for a hosting service?"

Comments

Recommendations:

[Southpaw018]

Are you willing to hand-code your pages? I recommend you do - it's the only way to ensure that your site is absolutely standards-compliant (get the Web Developer extension for Firefox. It's a big help). I use Notepad++ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus) because I feel it's a nice, simple, effective editor.

As for hosts, I highly, highly recommend Resiware (http://hosting.resiware.com/ Their prices can't be beat and their hosting is rock solid amazing. See the link in my sig for the lil site we have hosted with them now.

Re:Recommendations:

[captnitro]

I was going to mod you up, but I'll comment.

I say: if you're going for standards compliance, at this point, you almost *have* to hand-code your pages. If you're running Windows, go for TopStyle. It includes HTML Tidy integration and a number of other features.

The problem is, if you're doing more than simple HTML -- and you plan to keep it updated by hand -- these days, Dreamweaver and similar products just boil down to fancy text editors.
Their CSS features are far slower than simply hand-coding the tags, unlike if you were doing this in 1996, where bold and italic and colors would cut it. Dreamweaver, for example, seems to have a horrid understanding of CSS and XHTML, that is to say, you can hand-code, or you can use its "features", but don't plan on both, it's a headache.

I use to use Fireworks for a lot of "automated" web graphics, now I hand-code everything and use Fireworks for the design elements, but no table-based graphics. Web authoring has become so, well, complex -- it's not just HTML any more -- that no product made for the Old Web really cuts it any more than notepad. I'd die to have a program like Fireworks that would export my raw graphics as properly coded CSS, that compiled layers into divs properly, and that -- say I used a rounded corner with 75% transparency -- would write out the CSS3 tags for corners and opacity and have the code degrade properly for browsers that don't support it. Unfortunately, this requires more of a web-document compiler than generator, something more intelligent, that just doesn't exist right now. But someday.

Re:Recommendations:

[zbuffered]

I only know a few professional web developers, but they all use Dreamweaver. I took over one of their projects, so I started using it myself. I have to say, it's probably the most complete web development app out there. I've been using it for a year and have only scratched the surface of it's capabilities. It presents itself with a simple interface to begin with, and gets as complicated as you like. It's also got the best CSS editor I've ever used.

If someone knows of a better CSS editor (and by better I mean easier for newbies; I teach a class on web design to beginners), let me know!

Re:Recommendations:

[dubl-u]

Bah. I'm a huge fan of Dreamweaver.

I know some good people swear by it, but the thing that makes me crazy about apps like Dreamweaver and GoLive is that a lot of alleged designers use them as an excuse to remain ignorant of the underlying technology.

When I asked one designer to clean up her voluminous and chaotic markup and to fix the browser-related issues I had noticed, she told me that she was "a web designer, not a web programmer", and that she didn't really understand HTML and CSS so well. I rolled my eyes so hard I had to get an doctor to unstick them for me.

My tip for designer wannabes out there: use the fancy tools like Dreamweaver to speed along things you already know how to do manually. Clothing designers understand fabric and can sew. Print designers understand typography and the arcane details of n-color presses. Web designers do not get special permission to be clueless. Indeed, given how quickly web technologies evolve compared to other media, they have a special obligation to keep on top of the tech.

Why not an OSS CMS?

[gtrubetskoy]

Why not try an Open Source Content Management System like Plone or Mambo? Being a technical guy you will probably find that the only way to produce a good looking site is to do it by hand, learning the intricacies of HTML/CSS and latest graphics tricks, and that's a lot more work than meets the eye. That's why those things are nice - they give you a more or less professional look to start with.

Oh, and for hosting I recommend OpenHosting, of course!

Choices some good , some not so good.

[KingBahamut]

http://www.vim.org/
http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/
http://www.nvu.com/
http://www.eclipse.org/
http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/

best tool I've ever used for web development

[yagu]

vim (syntax on, syntax html)

My Reccomendations

[infernalC]

Hosting - canaca.ca
- SSH, FTP, PHP, ASP, IMAP/POP/SMTP, 10 gigs bw, cheap

Editing - emacs, tidy
- no more powerful editor out there
- you already said you weren't scared;
we'll see if you should be :-)
- use tidy to clean your markup

Language
- Do all you new pages in XHMTL 1.0 Strict and
style them with CSS2.
- Server-side script in PHP.
- Avoid client-side scripts.

Browser
- Get Firefox.
- Test in IE and Firefox.
- VALIDATE!!! validator.w3.org

- my 2 cents

Re: Cat got your tongue? (something important seem

[Anonymous Coward]

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">>
<META NAME="ProgId" CONTENT="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
Response to vbrtrmn
</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="BLACK" LINK="BLUE" VLINK="RED">
<DIV CLASS="slashdotresponse">
<DIV CLASS="quote">
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
<FONT NAME="Arial" SIZE="12pt">
<I>
<FONT NAME="Arial" SIZE="12pt">
Since you don't know, DON'T USE FRONTPAGE!!!
</I>
</FONT>
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
</DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV CLASS="quote">
<FONT NAME="Arial" SIZE="12pt">
<P CLASS="response">
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
Why not?
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
</P<
</FONT>
</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Re:Drupal

[tverbeek]

Um, his link has a typo. This will work better.