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Best Web Authoring Application?

Posted by Cliff on from the beyond-text-editors dept.

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?"

4 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Recommendations: by Southpaw018 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
    1. Re:Recommendations: by captnitro · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. Why not an OSS CMS? by gtrubetskoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

  3. Re: Cat got your tongue? (something important seem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    <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>