Hello everyone,
I have a very simple question. I would like to know what any of you could suggest me as the best program for building simple html websites, for a beginner that barely know what html, link, or ftp is?
Thanks a lot in advance for any suggestion.
Regards
Don’t use FrontPage. It’s not supported anymore and churns out bloated messes of code that should qualify as federal disaster areas.
Is your friend looking to create Web sites or just maintain them? If it’s the latter, I’d go with a content management system that he can update content to instead.
I would say the best software is a simple text editor with syntax highlighting (Crimson Editor, possibly?), a cheap or free FTP program (SmartFTP, free for noncommercial use), and a book or manual on the subject. You may also want to check out W3Schools as they have some pretty good instruction on learning HTML.
Well, your advice its nice and i thank you for it, but there is a small problem, the guy i am helping to find software doesn’t plan to learn HTML (not enough time), and simply wants to build his website via some beginner software, visually, not digging the code.
Try MS frontpage, nvu, firstpage or Coffeecup visual site designer
How about Expressions…
I agree with Dan about frontpage…
Well I would really suggest that he learns HTML! it is not that difficult to learn after all 
Using WYSIWYG editors is not good at all
How about FrontPage 2003, i heard is not that bad after MS tweaked it?
^ but still it is crap…
And Microsoft is no longer supporting or making FrontPage either.
^ instead they have ‘Microsoft Expressions’
and Sharepoint Designer for the more advanced.
Dreamweaver is the only program I know of that is good for designing a site without knowing too much code.
Yep - Dreamweaver
While I love Dreamweaver myself, it’s probably overkill if you only want to develop a site or two.
I haven’t looked at wysiwyg programs in a while, but check out that MS Expression product the others have mentioned and also look at what www.coffeecup.com offers. Most of them all offer trial versions so you can see what works best for you.
Also, many hosting co’s offer a wysiwyg sitebuilder with their hosting services, so that may work well for you too.
Steve
All HTML editor would expect you know some HTML coding, even a WYSIWYG editor usually need some HTML knowledge for final publishing. If you do not want to learn HTML coding, check out this all-in-one flash website builder (for windows), it is totally template driven. You just need to select a template from its gallery, fill in the text and images, and the website is done.
Don’t take this as being argumentative, but I learned Frontpage since it’s easy… and I hear this bloated code issue all the time but nobody has ever actually explained where this “bloated code” appears.
I use split mode so I can see the code and it always seems real basic.
Can you tell me what to look for.
Yep that’s right! I usually used fronpage… for NVU I think the development already stop to develop, you can try to used kompzer
If you can do without a visual editor… try it. Or else, coffeeCup might do the job.
And if you need to add some forms (which can be hard for a beginner) go for Wufoo.
Adding forms is tough if you’re trying to link them to a SQL database etc, but you’re adding a form that goes to an autoresponder, then it’s simply “copy”, “paste” & done