AWM

Do you guys have a favorite one to use? I'm gonna get whatever the best, with ease of use pagemaker out there. I was leaning toward Adobe Pagemaker 7.0. Any thoughts?


Also, and this will sound dumb to you people, probably, but the company I work for says I can make thier page better if I can, and i know a little html, but my question is, how can I, a telecomuter, edit their web page? I can open the page in Notepad, or whatever and edit it that way, but how can I make the changes stick for all to see? Don't I need access to the server the page is on or something to that effect?


Thanks in advance for your time if you answer!

AmericanWarMachine

Bires

You can usually just get an FTP access to the site's server and upload files from your home. It should be pretty much automatic.
As far as software, I've really come to like MS Frontpage. It's really easy to use. Do keep in mind though that I want my web pages to be easy to build. Many of those that I've talked to like Adobe's stuff, and dreamweaver, but it's much harder/more complex to to java/OLE/embedded sounds/movies than it is with the Office suite.


Hope that helps.

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ironchef

hey awm,

i've never used pagemaker to output html, so i can't speak for its competency. when i use a wysiwyg, i use dreamweaver, so i'm going to recommend using that. most folks in the industry will recommend dreamweaver or adobe's golive. GoLive is another one I've never used, but I would assume that if you're already familiar with PageMaker, GoLive's interface might come a little easier to you and might be a better choice. Dreamweaver is available as fully-functional trial ware, so give it a shot. I don't know, but I'd assume Adobe also offers trial versions of GoLive.

If you're going to telecommuting, you're right, you'll need some remote access to the server. Typically that's done through FTP, so get yourself a nice and easy to use client. I prefer CuteFTP, cuz it's cute, dammit. And it's very very easy to use. That's also available as trialware. You'll have to chat with the sys admin or previous web folks about getting access to the site via ftp.

If you're going to be the only one doing edits, then it's easy. Just download to the site to your local computer (assuming the damn thing isn't a monster), then edit away. Once finished, just upload the changed pages.

At the very least, avoid FrontPage if you can. The code it produces is a horrible abomination, plus its site management tools are slow and break often. If using it on a large site, you will most likely wish to pick up a large bottle of something alcoholic and inebriate yourself before beginning.

And always familiarize yourself with HTML. WYSIWYG tools are great for getting started, but always require hand-editing afterward to clean them up.

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Memo

I like MacroMedia Dreamweaver. It's a nice program. And ya, you will need to upload the webpage to the domain if you want the changes to take palce

hapoo

Notepad!!!

Like Ironchef said... I use frontpage for the designing and import the code into notepad for major cleanup. I dont really require a WYSIWYG editor but sometimes it helps to visualize what you want to do. Your best bet is to LEARN how to program.

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revil

ya, I'd have to say notepad. but i use dreamweaver/fireworks at work, which has a couple of nice features.

Grimm

Another vote for notepad!

If you rely on other programs to do your coding for you you will never learn how to do it well. As tools to make it faster they are fine. But you need to learn how to do it for yourself first.

moosehead

I'm in the process of redesigning the web page for one of the departments at the University I attend. I use Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, and I think it's great. Not only does it have a really nice user interface which you can quickly change from wysiwyg view to code view to split screen with one mouse click, but it also makes really clean html code (meaning that it doesn't get bloated by extra information that it doesn't really need). The code it makes is also easy to read. Dreamweaver also comes with
O'Reilly's HTML Reference, Cascading Style Sheet reference, and JavaScript reference, all built in...you just go to the help menu and click reference. It also has a lot of Java scripts built in for use with images, layers, and lots of other stuff.

At first it may seem confusing, or even daunting, because the menus are jam packed with stuff, but you quickly figure out what you need to know. Although, if you've got the cash, I'd pick up a book called "The Dreamweaver 4 Bible". It explains a lot of the bells and whistles and is a handy reference.

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moosehead

Hey evilcyclops, if you want to go the text editor route, why not throw out notepad and go to emacs. That's what I write my perl and java scripts with.

Or if you really want to play with the big guns, use vi.




[Edited by moosehead on 07-22-2001 at 01:36 AM]

Scojo

I teach a college class that spends a good bit of time on web design. Dreamweaver 4 is hard to beat, as others have mentioned. The book "Dreamweaver 4 Hands on Training" is a quick way to get started if you aren't familiar with the program at all.

Scojo

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