Which Tools Do You Use (Have You Used) for Building Websites?

I think I first tried coding with Notepad, then used Frontpage 2000, and for a brief while, had a copy of Visual Studio at work, though I can’t recall what version. After a brief lull of several years, I ended up with a copy of DW CS5 which I still have. It never gets opened though, and having used Notepad++ for quite a while, am now pretty much settled on using ST3 for everything. I’ve also looked at Atom, NetBeans, & MS Visual Studio Code. For images, I just use Photoshop CS5.

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That was Microsoft’s replacement for FrontPage that they then also abandoned in 2012.

Now you can have it for free, along with Expression Design, Image Composite Editor, Deep Zoom Composer and others.

i think it is up to your purpose. If you design website for selling it is different from for advertising with appropriate themes. However, tools for design basic website are similar

I don’t remember the name of the editor I started with, but it was something simple like “HTML Editor”. I used Dreamweaver in my first job as a Adobe ColdFusion developer, but the CF support was really bad (go figure, right?) and I found ST2.

At work, I use Eclipse (not my choice, but I need some tooling) and Sublime. Eclipse is really just pathetic for JavaScript, so I use ST3 for a lot of my JS work. At home, I use Sublime, but I’ve started taking up learning Vim. I’m not sure if I could ever switch to using Vim full time, but it’s definitely useful and a good skill to have. If anything, it’s made messing with configs on my servers way easier than trying to fumble around with Nano. I bought a 6 month sub to Vim Adventures a few weeks ago, but have been really busy since and haven’t made it past level 4. Up to level 3 is free. It’s pretty fun.

I’d probably switch over to IntelliJ entirely at work, but at home I don’t have the attention span to use it. I usually load something, do a few things, get bored, and start playing games or something. I need something I can load and close quickly. Plus, if I forget to close it ST takes up almost no resources. But at work, I usually just load my environment in the morning and keep it open all day so I can afford the load times and resource usage.

I couldn’t see anyone ever going back to Dreamweaver. The last time I used it, it had all the resource intensive downsides of the full featured IDEs with the functionality of ST, Atom, or Brackets.

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I started with Dreamweaver 4 I think a long long time ago, now I’m using PHPStorm and Sublime Text. I’m mostly working with Wordpress projects

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I too have DW 8, when it was still a Macromedia owned. Not currently installed on any computer here in the bat cave and I’d be hard pressed to find the installation CD. I have CS3 Web suite from Adobe that I got when I returned to college, not sure if I’m still legally able to use it but really I no longer use this suite either. Not a graphics designer, and I no longer start in a graphics editor these days.

Today I have Phpstorm, Eclipse (the IDE everyone loves to hate but latest Neon ver is great), Atom, ST3, VScode and a few others not worth mentioning.
I am beta testing a neat little vector graphics editor called Affinity Designer though and really like it. Originally a Mac app, it’s now in beta testing on Windows. Should be around 50 bucks US when it goes on sale.

Steve working in Colorado, USA

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I am really surprised that the number of Notepad users is so sparse. :scream:

Perhaps, this makes these badges…

… that I earned for using it, really valuable collectable items. :sunglasses:

coothead

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After much cajoling, they have finally let me have Notepad++ on my work laptop! Mad fools, they know not what they do… :laughing:

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Woah, seriously? I can appreciate the minimalist aspect, but there are some things that I couldn’t live without (such as pressing F12 to view the page you’re working on in the browser).

It sure had a bunch of features that I miss. For example, the fact that you could highlight an element in the WYSIWYG view, switch to the code view and have it highlighted there.

^ So true. You don’t want to know how much we spent on CS5 licences at work, only to find out that they changed their pricing/subscription model.

Lol. That was the best version :slight_smile: Had just the right balance of features and simplicity.

If you take the plunge, then check out Vim Adventures as mawburn advises. It’s quite fun.

That was my pick of the bunch, too.

Very true. I’ve become familiar with Nano/Pico out of necessity, but almost always end up Googling stuff most times I use them.

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In this instance, yes, seriously. :sunglasses:

Coding Power Tools have never been of interest to me. :mask:

Of course, you would have to understand that I am not
and have never been a professional web developer. :free:

I am a retired postman who just enjoys problem solving,
at a leisurely pace. :writing_hand:

coothead

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Are you a programmer? Have you ever looked at LeetCode?

Well, I would have to say no and no. :mask:

I tend to to look for HTML,CSS and Javascript problems, posted
in coding forums like this, which give me an opportunity to create
bespoke code. :ok_hand:

I also have a tendency to make snide remarks about “frameworks”,
which aways seem to offend my delicate aesthetic sensibility. :scream:

coothead

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Ah ok. You can use JS there, but it’s definitely more algorithmic Computer Sciency, than creating products.

Used FrontPage for the longest time, and when it was no longer supported, got the next generation: Expression Web.
That only lasted a few years as I kept looking for a more comprehensive tool. I found it when I came across PhpStorm 5 or 6. For me, it is the ultimate tool with support for not just PHP, but JavaScript, CSS and much more.
PhpStorm is intelligent in pointing out errors or issues in code before you even try to run it.
My other tool is Chrome’s DevTools.

Always been a text editor kind of person and never got hooked on Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

I’ve always liked the idea of a WYSIWYG editor, and with today’s very standardized HTML5 markup, it is not hard for these tools to produce pretty clean code.

Rather than Dreamweaver, I’ve been very keen on trying Macaw or Pinegrow or Webflow etc. Since Macaw was bought out some months ago, development ceased so that is off the books. However, Pinegrow looks really really interesting as a WYSIWYG editor for local development. It supports Bootstrap and Foundation, Angular, PHP. Edits are live, multiple responsive views at the same time, and editing files externally with live updating so you can still code using some other editor if you like. Some cools features.

First, I think what tools are used depends a lot on whether one is more design or more development oriented. I have always leaned more to development than design. My pages have been more of a “face” of the backend than anything remotely close to “art”.

When I first “got online” many years ago I was overwhelmed by the many tools available and I had little to no idea about what any of them were for or how to use them.

My first website was on AOLHometown that I created using HotDog.

I did explore FrontPage a bit, but because I didn’t know how to use Personal Web Server or even FTP in any way besides the AOL UI I didn’t get too far with that.

I soon discovered view-source and the wonders of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
And I quickly learned to not use Word for code but notepad instead.
I used notepad exclusivley for many years - until its memory limitations became annoying enough for me to seek an alternative.

I used Visual Studio (VB not C#), but only for desktop apps, not the web.

Writing desktop apps and an interest in applets led me to Java, which then led me to exploring Eclipse and Netbeans a few times.
I could do tutorials OK, but they had so many features that the learning curve was too steep for me and I always went back to notepad.

I eventually left notepad for Notepad++ and have been using it for a few years now.

I’ve also found IntelliJ idea CE and though I still go to the docs for something new or not remembered it is the first IDE that I feel comfortable using.

Mine was too. It was up until about 2010-2011 until AOL took down the service.

I was introduced to making websites in my Intro to Web class while in college, and the program we used for that was Dreamweaver. I understand why, for I understood nothing about making websites, and even the book we worked from was terribly simple. We made old blocky websites, nothing ever interesting.

All of what I do and know now has been self taught or guided from other resources. I’ve dropped Dreamweaver after that class because it inhibited my understanding of how websites function and the project files relate to eachother; being taught to link in the project and write code/view the website live all in the editor rather than in the real workspaces my code exists kept me from understanding fully how it works.

I now prefer to do my work by hand through developed practices and methodologies that require me to employ, backed by experience. I prefer the Sublime Text editor, Filezilla, and Gimp to handle the code, media, ftp. I am working on learning and implementing version control into my projects with Git, and I do most of my work on an local apache environment.

As for the browsers, I understand what’s available yet pay attention mostly to Chrome & Firefox; I find it hard to see using any of the others. While growing up I started on IE, just a kid on my parents computer. As I grew up and really understood the web more, the marvel of the firefox as a competing web browser and it’s fox on fire brand gave new life to web browsing. Then Chrome came along and that took over for a bit, it had some better features at the time like it’s recovery from crash being more reliable at times. I’ve only ever come across Opera or Safari when I started mobile browsing, safari was the default on my iPod, and opera was just an alternative I came across.

For the moment I browse more often on Firefox. I prefer the way it renders text & color, and how it zooms. Syncing accounts, saved tab sessions and recovering multiple windows flawlessly on crash, for the moment it has my heart ; )

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