Which web authoring tool?

[Platypus]

I've done a few websites for businesses and charities using a tool called Net Objects Fusion and it's honestly not bad. However it does have its limitations.

What do you web professionals use?

I have the impression that for anything more than playing around, it's DreamWeaver or nothing. But at around £400 plus the need (?) to buy Fireworks etc. it's not an easy purchase.

[bored]

There is no best answer I believe.

From my experience it's usually like this: the designer produces a layout in Photoshop then the developer implements it in a text editor as it's the only way to ensure good accessibility and w3c compliance. However this process is a bit more expensive than just putting something together in Dreamweaver.

[xoggoth]

I can't call myself a web professional but have a site for a small business and would second use of plain text editor like pfe. Once you know HTML/jscript is as quick as any.

[NickFitz]

Text editor producing hand-crafted HTML and CSS for me, and for the overwheming majority of web devs I've worked with. (I use Eclipse, as I work with a good number of other markup and programming languages.)

That said, I know of a number of people - usually those who are graphic designers first and foremost but also have the task of producing finished pages - who swear by Dreamweaver. I believe it's actually very good these days if set up correctly, and used by somebody competent enough to implement a design without redundant markup. On the other hand, at least a few of those people never use the WYSIWYG view, so they might as well be using a text editor.

[Durbs]

I use Dreamweaver for web layout stuff as its basically the best there is bar none. I have a copy of the latest DW but also use an older Dreamweaver MX copy as well and that still works just as well. See if you can get a cheap older version on eBay?

I use Visual Studio 2005/2008 for code and tend to produce layouts in Dreamweaver and then Ctrl+v the HTML into Visual Studio's code view as IMO, VS, whilst being an unbelievably good bit of software is not a capable layout tool. It tends to create wierd inline styles and is just a bit clunky.

For graphics, i use Fireworks and really like it. Only good for web graphics though. For anything higher res you'll need Photoshop or similar.

Try the free MS Visual Web Developer package - its great and will do a million times more than you need.

Of course when asked what i use, i just reply 'Notepad', all those fancy apps are for noobs. Notepad is a big part of the web developers arsenal but you certainly wouldnt want to write an entire site in it (unless you are a Linux user and therefore like everything taking 10x longer!).

[bogeyman]

Until comparatively recently, Dreamweaver but that seems to have fallen out of favour at bit - probably because it produces crappy markup and is not too hot with dynamic content (well, last time I used it anyway - things may have changed).

I think most pros these days start with a grid-based layout worked up in Photoshop then hand-code the (X)HTML templates and stylesheets for use in a simple framework or a fancy CMS, depending.

You'll want a good text editor (ideally with some HTML awareness), ideally, a specialist CSS editor, and a decent FTP client (unless you're happy with command line FTP).

I mostly use a Mac, so favour TextMate, CCSEdit and Transmit in these roles.

If I'm using Windows then my tools of choice are HomeSite, TopStyle and Filezilla, respectively.

Larger, more complex web projects benefit from more sophisticated tools (Visual Studio, Eclipse and so on), but for the basics, the above will do nicely.

[Durbs]

Text editor producing hand-crafted HTML and CSS for me, and for the overwheming majority of web devs I've worked with. (I use Eclipse, as I work with a good number of other markup and programming languages.)

That said, I know of a number of people - usually those who are graphic designers first and foremost but also have the task of producing finished pages - who swear by Dreamweaver. I believe it's actually very good these days if set up correctly, and used by somebody competent enough to implement a design without redundant markup. On the other hand, at least a few of those people never use the WYSIWYG view, so they might as well be using a text editor.

"very good these days" - its always been good, used it since it was a pup and its always been light years ahead of anything else on the market at what it does. Its crap for .NET though but used to be capable of knocking up a classic ASP app in milliseconds.

[NickFitz]

"very good these days" - its always been good, used it since it was a pup and its always been light years ahead of anything else on the market at what it does. Its crap for .NET though but used to be capable of knocking up a classic ASP app in milliseconds.

Well, it used to rely on table-based layouts and font tags, and worse still would corrupt CSS-based layouts. It improved a lot when MX was released in 2002 though, thanks to Macromedia's collaboration with the Web Standards Project's Dreamweaver Task Force

[Ardesco]

I have been using Netbeans 6.5 recently which is quite good IMHO. It's free so deffo worth a look.

[London75]

I was going to recommend netbeans too, just been developing a java mobile app and the associated php web services all in the same interface with intellisense for both which is ace.