Website design

[tanto]

Can anyone recommend a good website designer that does not charge a fortune for a simple, but effective site.

Any hints, tips or links, etc. would be appreciated.

Dave & Caroline.

 

[breezer]

get a webdesign prog and diy, that way you get what you want, not choices of options

eg.

FrontPage

dreamweaver

 

[gcol]

I got a copy of Dreamweaver, but I can't make head nor tale of it.

 

[breezer]

I got a copy of Dreamweaver, but I can't make head nor tale of it.

reading the instructions helps

but i prefer FrontPage

 

[tanto]

Thanks for the helpful comments - will look into this in more detail.

 

[Igorian]

There's plenty of free or cheap templates just a google away.

 

[JohnD]

You might get an intro training evening class at your local college. Seems a popular option.

 

[breezer]

FrontPage is so easy you would be wasting your money.

I once saw a class learning flash, they were all making websites to put flah on (not a website based on flash, just the home page in flash)

my point is what a waste of time, does anyone really watch a flash intro on a website?

flash is good for other things, but not for website intros

 

[TexMex]

Unless you are in a position where you can dictate that ALL of your users use Internet Explorer, I would avoid Front Page like the plague. It makes use of Proprietry Internet Explorer attributes, that are not supported by other browsers. Microsoft is about to drop all support for frontpage. Presumably as IE version 7 is more W3C compliant than their previous offerings and will, therefore, show the same problems when viewing Fronpage authored sites.

Dreamweaver also makes use of proprietry code, but nearly so profusely as Frontpage and, although it's developers are working on getting the output code closer to W3C compliance, it's not there yet.

The best method is to simply learn HTML and hand code it. In the event that you have problems you could then post your issues to a development forum and get assistance. (here's a good one)

There are, litterally, millions of people that know HTML like the back of their hand. Unfortunately the code produced by Frontpage, Dreamweaver etc.. is so convoluted, that nobody is going to be interested enough to plough through it all, when it goes wrong.

 

[empip]

Right click a web page in Opera browser, context menu allows viewing of Source code for the page, and also 'Validate' .. Which appears to inform of page errors via http://validator.w3.org/feedback.html

 

[Doc Lenny]

This is a good validation site also.
http://webxact.watchfire.com/
Tests for Quality and Accessibility in the main.

I agree with Tex to try and understand basic HTML tags first, learning CSS would be the next stage (If you are serious).

Dreamweaver is my choice.

 

[daved1]

I started with a book called html for dummies and used notepad, I picked it up quite quick and now use dreamweaver it makes it a lot easier in the long run and it is worth it.,