Ask Slashdot: Which Web Authoring Tool is the Best?

Chris Deckard asks: "I have been assigned the task of finding the best web authoring software or package to use for site layout and design. Currently I am looking at Macromedia's DreamWeaver 2 and Adobe's GoLive 4. Cross platform compatability is a must (MacOS and Windows). Which packages are used by those out there and why do you like them? Name other packages that are out there. We want the one with the most features, but that is easy to use as well."

Comments

Dreamweaver 2 + Fireworks beats them all

[N8F8]

I've wasted a lot of money trying about every product out there. NetObjects, Frontpage (95,97 and 2000), Hotmetal 3 AND 5, CoffeeCup, Homesite, and many others.

NetObjects was good for a while. NetObjects is not very flexible. They went private (used to be part if IBM or something) and kind of lost the innovative edge.

Frontpage butchers the code and makes it impossible to edit later. The real downer for me on Frontpage was the stupid "Microsoft" metatags it puts on every single html page you edit with it. It also seems to have a lot of bugs.

Hotmetal 5 really could be at the top of the list. The only problem is that a couple of employees bought the company last December right after Hotmetal 5 was released. It should have been an Alpha or Beta version. They are still sorting out the bugs. Support was really shaky until last month. In fact there was no support from Jan-Mar because someone wiped their support pages and they didn't have a backup. They seem to be revamping their beta programming and making their support page more responsive. What makes this product really stand out is that they are developing a product that has extensive support for both line editing style and WYSIWYG HTML authoring. It also has code checking that can be turned on and off. Maybe Hotmetal 6 will be the real deal.

A good text editor is mandatory no matter what HTML authoring tool you choose. Many times you want to view and edit the code outside a WYSIWYG environment. Sometimes you are writing scripts which is easier to do in a straight editor. AltraSoft (www.XEMACS.COM) has an excellent text editor with support for custom script tag coloring. Their products include " InfoDock (an advanced integrated development environment), the OO-Browser (the world's most flexible object-oriented code browser)". As an added bonus they are making these products Open Source real soon.

Dreamweaver 2 is simply the best. It can turn anyone into an HTML wizard. Built-in layering support allows for very sophisticated graphical layout. The floating toolbars can be a little intimidating at first but in short order you'll really start loving them. All the most advanced web authoring technologies are supported: CSS, XML, IFrames, etc. Dreamweaver is a tool that can make a novice look like a pro and turn a graphics artist into a web authoring god. The features are endless, the bugs are few, and the integrated suite of tools available from Macromedia is awesome. If you choose Dreamweaver 2 as your authoring tool also look at Fireworks, Macromedia's graphics editing tool. Really slick.

Dreamweaver 2 -- because....

[schmack]

Man, so many people are just writing "X product because it is good" -- hmmm, not so useful really.

Having coded HTML by hand for about 3 years, I was convinced by a friend to give Dreamweaver a shot. It blew me away because of the following reasons:

• Stylesheet Support: Stylesheets are the way of the future [if you don't believe me, read this article]. With Dreamweaver you can create or edit stylesheets very simply. Rather than trawl through CSS specs, you have a GUI approach which enables you to see all the available attributes. Applying stylesheets is great -- a style palette enables you to highlight text/tables/images etc. and simply click the class you wish to apply.
  
  
• Site Management: Dreamweaver is a great tool for editing existing sites. Once you've set up a definition [including ftp or filesystem details] you are presented with a tree of the website. Editing a page is as simple as a double clicking its icon. This will download the page as well as any 'dependancies' [images, stylesheets, etc]. You can also check in and out files if you have a number of developers working on the site.

• Source Integrity: Dreamweaver does write very clean source. Sure, it makes a few mistakes you get empty paragraphs and similar chunks floating around, but there are built-in clean up tools which work really well. Keep in mind, with Dreamweaver while you can work totally in WYSIWYG, it's an advantage to know HTML. Switching back and forth between the source and WYSIWYG panes is ultimately the best way to write swell HTML.

• Structure: Dreamweaver provides a structural outline of each page at the bottom of the main window. The plots out the major elements in the page and allows you to select parent objects to the one you're currently editing. If you were editting a cell in a table you'll see a map going back to the overall table row, and then table itself. Editing properties is acheived through a main palette which will intelligently present the attributes available. The metaphor for Dreamweaver is very similar to that of Cosmo Worlds -- really the only tool you won't to be creating VRML worlds with.

There are a couple of negative points with the software however.

• Dreamweaver -- like all WYSIWYG -- tries to appease you by building things as set in concrete as it can. For example you'll find it will tend to add widths to all your table cells. This can be a pain if you want flexible tables that will work with various screen resolutions. A bit of tidying in your text editor of choice may be required here.

• The rendering has its own quirks and variances from other browsers. So something you've designed WYSIWYG in Dreamweaver may appear differently in both Navigator and Explorer -- doh! Let's hope Mozilla rally them and provide the rendering engine for Dreamweaver 3.0.

I haven't covered any of the DHTML and JavaSript-in-a-box features as I don't use them. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who does. Based on a little toying around, they seem very... er... verbose in their implementation.

Ultimately, Dreamweaver stands out for me as it definitely respects the developer who has a great deal of HTML knowledge and wants to maintain this control. If clean code, and fast development are you prime goals -- Dreamweaver is the one!