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Free or Open Source Web Design Program?
TheZorch asks: "I'm looking for a good Freeware or Open Source web design program. Right now, I use Web Dwarf but its features are a little limited. I love the ability to put text and graphics wherever I want, which is also how Dreamweaver works. The main problem with Web Dwarf is that I can't insert Macromedia Flash items onto a web page. I've tried Mozilla's web page composer, FrontPage Express, and OpenOffice. None give me the freedom to do what I want to be able to do. The program has to be FREE, no adware, no turned off features until you buy it, and I have to be able to format the page freestyle similar to how Dreamweaver and Web Dwarf work. Can you recommend one for me?"
vim
netbeans it if u wanna stay to JSP. for ASP and stuff theres no open source alternative.
What is the constriction preventing the use of commercial software?
bluefish which is available for MacOSX
and nvu which is also available for MacOSX.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
You want free and/or open source stuff but you're using it on a proprietary OS? (your mention of DreamWeaver suggests that)
Can you recommend one for me?
What Operating System are you using? This makes a big difference... there are dozens of free/OSS web development apps for Linux, but there are only a handful which run on Windows. Not sure about MacOSX.
You mentioned "Frontpage", so presumably you are running on Windows. But you need to be more clear.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I love the ability to put text and graphics wherever I want
;-)
Hrm - sounds like vim would be the ticket.
All joking aside - my understanding of html/css has shot up through the roof since I ditched Dreamweaver and started coding by hand. Code cleanliness has also improved greatly, as you'd expect. If you've never tried, give yourself a week with a text editor and a good html/css book. It's quite freeing to not have to worry about anything other than the code. No application updates, no program idiosyncracies to deal with, etc.
Newsforge ran a story about web development tools.They approach it as "web development tools for Linux," but most are available for win32 and OS X. I have almost no experience with commercial web development tools (except when trying to tidy up their ugly code). I use content management systems/wikis/etc. where possible (so others can add content & no one need worry about the code or an editor) & a text editor (vim!) when not. That being said, Bluefish, Quanta, and Nvu are all nice. All of these options are discussed in the NF article, as is Screem, which I haven't seen first-hand.
nvu.com
Software Wars
You say that like it's a problem.
I know, I know, I've got that "I know what's best" attitude that everybody loves to hate, but really, Flash is a craptastic piece of software, known mainly for bloating download times, making it impossible to bookmark a specific page, and generally being annoying. ("Punch the fucking idiotic monkey and win a piece of spyware!") Not to mention that it OWNZ0RZ screen-readers that blind or nearly-blind people use.
Seriously re-evaluate your requirements. Do you really *NEED* Flash?
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Forgot the link to the article...have included all relevants links in this one.
Linux.com ran a story about web development tools.They approach it as "web development tools for Linux," but most are available for win32 and OS X. I have almost no experience with commercial web development tools (except when trying to tidy up their ugly code). I use content management systems/wikis/etc. where possible (so others can add content & no one need worry about the code or an editor) & a text editor () when not. That being said, Bluefish, Quanta, and Nvu are all nice. All of these options are discussed in the article, as is Screem, which I haven't seen first-hand.
All the good open source programs have already been mentioned. Here's something from the other side of the camp:
ASP.Net WebMatrix
I never used the thing beyond the first day I tried it, but some people may find it useful. I use text editors for all my serious web development.
I'd suggest Jedit for any platform with Java support, or HTML-Kit if you use Windows, and want some different features.
Handcoding is the way to go, in my opinion. You can supplement your work with IDEs such as dreamweaver, but do NOT rely on them. If you can't develop a website in an efficient manner by hand, you need practice.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
I'll probably get ripped a new one for recommending something M$ but if you're coding anything in .NET, the Web Matrix is pretty good.
http://www.asp.net/
I use emacs, nvu, (not free) textpad, and homesite. I haven't had any rewrite issues with nvu, but I also haven't had to much tuning of what it generates. Homesite I have had to do a bunch of reformatting with to get the code to my level of comfort and readibility. Emacs, or any other straight-up text editor with syntax highliting is still my preferred way of creating pages and sites.
antipaucity
Not to sound like an elitist snob, but you say "None give me the freedom to do what I want to be able to do" and the fact is, the rules of how HTML arranges things on a page are not that hard to learn. Coding by hand gives you absolute control over what goes where.
Of course, in the process, you may learn that what you're used to building is not how HTML should be written in the first place, but that's a whole other issue. Get over the idea that you can control exactly how it looks on everyone's screen. Everyone has a different platform and the whole point of the web is that it'll work OK everywhere.
"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network." Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Nothing beats it in handling sgml-based content, like html or xml. It's not WYSIWYG: it's powerful.
As for Flash: dump the old thing and embrace an SVG + XForms future...
I don't feel like it...
Nice sig. I'm thinking of putting up a site with up-close photos of women who died during a legally-forced childbirth -- with blood everywhere, and the infant as well (preferably dead as well, or alive but with no living guardian is okay as well). Also photos of unwanted and/or abused & neglected children born to drug addicts, rape victims, 13-year-olds, etc.. They sure are shocking, and there's no better argument against forcing a woman to carry an unwanted fetus to term.
Oh no, I'm sorry -- visceral photos aren't an argument at all. I forgot for a second there.
Seriously, abortion is a big topic. But you have to discuss it -- I don't convince people to be vegetarians by leaving glossies of slaughterings on their kitchen table.
Are you a professional web developer? Then use a text editor. Sheesh. A web developer who can't handle plain text HTML, CSS, Javascript and some sort of shell scripting, is about as silly as a software developer who can't handle C/C++ and make.
<elitism>
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Here's a thought. Anyone asking for free (as in beer) software should explain WHY they think they are entitled to software at no cost. For example: they've contributed significantly to the community, they're running a non-profit for underpriveleged youth, or Mommy hasn't given them their allowance this week.
As other posters pointed out, you can't realistically expect a $0 program to be equivalent to a $1000 program. You have to be willing to give something up. Sometimes if you've contributed to the community, or are working for a non-profit, people will see that you are giving something, and help you out. Other times, they'll see that you're just being a selfish jerk. It would help us out a lot if you could provide us with some more details to help us make that determination.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
What standards exist in the field?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...what constitutes "useful".
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...Quanta Plus AKA KDEwebdev, but I'm betting that you're also too lazy to change from MS-Windows. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I seem to recall there is a comptetitor to Dreamweaver based on QT called Screem. I'm not too sure how easily it would be to run it on windows.
I know there's a linux emulator for windows but I forget the name.
ANyway, I remember it as being really quite nice to use, interface close to dreamweaver, but without the obvious proprietary integration of flash and all that Macromedia jazz. You can still include flash animations though, unless my memory is failing.
Hope this gives you a start.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
http://www.chami.com/html-kit/
Lots of ways to customize, many plug-ins, write your own.
writeSig(!funny);
I couldn't have said it better myself! Flash blows. Period. I avoid it like fresh cowpiles. Businesses that use it lose out twice with me. I don't buy from them, and they had to buy the horrid product.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
use placeholders for your flash content, they do a find and replace or some such method to switch them out for testing...
Even in Dreamweaver it's not like you get a preview of your flash content... it shows you a grey box with the flash icon, not very useful for anything really, so what's the point? Flash itself exports all the html that you need for embedding your object and it does it better than any other tool.
So... just drop a jpeg comp of your flash object in the layout and do a find/replace when previewing.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
See all kde webdev package. Quanta is the best html editor.
Welcome,R.
Its free, and works with IIS.
---- Booth was a patriot ----