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Free or Open Source Web Design Program?

Posted by Cliff on from the wonder-if-elves-will-get-into-web-design dept.

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?"

4 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. best tool by yagu · · Score: 4, Funny

    vim

  2. it has to be said... by anderiv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. With Links by Noksagt · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Do you NEED Flash? by Bastian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously. I have a 300kbit internet connection (not as fast as standard cable modem service, but faster than 2/3 of Americans), and I hit the "stop" button and take my surfing somewhere else when I encounter Flash sites. I'm sick of the load times. I'm sick of the craptacular web design that seems to be endemic to Flash websites. I'm sick of overdone Flash sites that run poorly on my three-year-old computer. I'm sick of Flash sites bitching that I don't have the latest version installed. I'm sick of sites with text that's too small to read and that I can't make larger because they did the text rendering with Flash. I'm sick of sites that force me to make my browser window larger when I'm using a small window or that only fill a small portion of the window when I'm using a large browser window because Flash sites run one size and one size only.

    Businesses that have Flash-based websites with no non-Flash option usually lose my business. I won't even stick around to see the sales pitch. I'll go find a competitor who didn't start their relationship with me by annoying me with some animation-rich but content-deprived piece of self-absorbed fluff.

    Flash is for Homestar Runner, not overdesigned menu sets and half-implmeneted-and-mostly-broken re-implementations of things that are already built into HTML such as the button and the scroll bar. It's a toy for web designers who think their primary job responsibility is mucking around with Flash, not making websites that don't suck.