If you were going to buy software to help you design your website so that it worked flawless on windows,mac,ipad,android and smart phone
Whats the software of choice

Used to use dreamweaver but is something like muse better or what else ….

No such thing. You can buy templates for WordPress and Joomla and alter them to your liking though.

A text editor. Any will do.

If you were going to buy software to help you design your website so that it worked flawless on windows,mac,ipad,android and smart phone

Unless you know what you’re doing then I’d be paying someone to do it.

Serif WebPlus ?

Microsoft Expression Web 4 is now free:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=36179

Really is very lovely to use. Much more thought out than Dreamweaver IMHO – surprisingly for an MS piece of software it is nimble, well thought out and helps create W3C compliant code and has lovely CSS handling.

Very easy to manually edit the code as well.

I would probably use WordPress and get a theme that looked good on all the devices I wanted, then customise to suit.

Some customisation can be done within wordpress, more can be done by editing the CSS (use a tool firebug to test changes, then use a text editor to apply).

Then even more can be customised by delving into the PHP.

Use off-the-shelf plugins to easily add content to the site without needing code.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but I think your more likely to get the results you want this way, rather than starting with HTML templates.

If you were going to buy software to help you design your website so that it worked flawless on windows,mac,ipad,android and smart phone
Whats the software of choice

Apologies OP but this gets my goat. That’s a huge ask.

Nothing ‘helps’ you design ‘flawless’ websites across multiple platforms. Except years of knowledge and experience.

Speak to a decent web developer and designer and expect to pay for someone who knows what they are talking about. Trust me, it will make your life a whole lot easier.

Nothing ‘helps’ you design ‘flawless’ websites across multiple platforms. Except years of knowledge and experience.

Speak to a decent web developer and designer and expect to pay for someone who knows what they are talking about. Trust me, it will make your life a whole lot easier.

This is the answer.

But if you want to DIY. I too would suggest WordPress.

Notepad++ and a book on html/css

If you want to DIY with no real knowledge then, as others have said, WordPress

as others have said, WordPress

Not necessarily. WordPress may not solve your problem. It’s a platform not a solution.

Responsive or adaptive web can be built with or without a CMS. As long as the solution (the site) is thoroughly thought out from mobile up.

Start reading stuff by Brad Frost and go from there.

Erm thanks so far guys….my point is theres nothing more annoying than a website that crashes or freezes as soon as you start using a tablet ..
Back in the day i used to let photoshop make the gallery then use dreamweaver to edit headers and link it up …….but techs moved on ….
And so has the amount of bad websites…or the annoying ones that look complete crap on a wide screen
Wasting a 1/3 of your screen

Unfortunately there is no program that will do it for you. The choices are to spend months learning how to do it. Pay someone else to do it. Or use a platform that already does it.

If you were to pay someone else to do it, it would unlikely be cheap. Because getting it to work ‘flawlessly’ on all of those devices, is no easy task.

I’d say you were asking the wrong question, firstly you’ve listed OSs when you really mean browser types and screen sizes. What you need to know is what is the best language your website should be written in to cope with a range of browsers and screen sizes.

I’d have thought CSS / HTML is the safest and most flexible. Then throw in some Java to identify the user’s platform and direct it to the relevant site / code, because you’re probably gonna need multiple versions or at least CSSs. Isn’t that the way most mobile sites work?

Yes you could build something in notepad but if you’re familiar with Dreamweaver, reckon that would make life easier. Just take it one step at a time.

Or WordPress…. 😆

I’d have thought CSS / HTML is the safest and most flexible. Then throw in some Java to identify the user’s platform and direct it to the relevant site / code, because you’re probably gonna need multiple. Isn’t that the way most mobile sites work?

Java? Also, just make the website responsive using CSS and that’ll handle the design angle of different screen sizes at least.

Heyho

I want to build a car. How can I do it cheaply and easily?

I’d have thought CSS / HTML is the safest and most flexible. Then throw in some Java to identify the user’s platform and direct it to the relevant site / code, because you’re probably gonna need multiple versions or at least CSSs. Isn’t that the way most mobile sites work?

No. Responsive websites use the same codebase and adapt to various screen sizes or devices. As others have said, either pay someone to do it for you, or find a wordpress template that already has that functionality.

It sounds like you want a gallery or portfolio. There are literally thousands of wordpress themes perfectly set up for this.

If it’s an easy path you want, I don’t see why you need to look any further.

Get your host to install wordpress.
Browse the thousands of responsive gallery themes out there for wordpress. Start with the “20 best responsive gallery theme” type searches. They all have demos available that you can test on your phone/tablet.
Find one that works in a way you like and isn’t too complicated to maintain. You might find that the best ones cost £20-50.
Apply the theme to your wordpress install.
Get uploading your images.

Themes are getting cleverer and cleverer, but I recommend going for something simple. Something that doesn’t require too many ‘shortcodes’ or proprietary ‘page builders’.
I’ve had good results with WooThemes (because they keep things pretty simple in the backend) as well as many others.

——
Re: responsive. The modern way is not to have different code for different devices (although some of the truly massive sites still employ some of this), but to design ‘mobile-first’. Then let CSS expand the layout to suit larger displays as necessary. (i.e. allowing columns to sit side-by-side, and scaling images).

Nothing ‘helps’ you design ‘flawless’ websites across multiple platforms. Except years of knowledge and experience.

Speak to a decent web developer and designer and expect to pay for someone who knows what they are talking about. Trust me, it will make your life a whole lot easier.

This.

Looking into recent version of dreamweaver…quote…The layout of a website has to respond and adapt to the dimensions of the device on which it is displayed. Fluid grid layouts provide a visual way to create different layouts corresponding to devices on which the website is displayed.
For example, your website is going to be viewed on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. You can use fluid grid layouts to specify layouts for each of these devices. Depending on whether the website is displayed on a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone, the corresponding layout is used to display the website.

Mmm

But a responsive site built in Dreamweaver will be so bulky (ie, not optimised/minimised) that it would be hell on a 3G connection on a phone….

At a guess they may well compress things in dreamweaver when exporting. If you don’t know anything about html, css or javascript then its worth a play. Not sure how it will handle the multitude of different browsers (and browser versions) on different OS’s though.

First invest some time in understanding HTML/CSS/Javascript.
Then move onto jQuery, Bootstrap, Media queries, HTML5, Databases, Ajax, W3C compliance.

To be able to make the most of these you will need to understand the subtleties of the major browsers – Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, Safarai etc.

With a couple of years and a fair wind you should be able to knock out sites like a pro.

Don’t listen to this lot!!

Just get Dreamweaver and make websites, it’s dead easy to make sites as good as any web company without the specialist knowledge. It’s not the black art everybody makes it out to be and anybody who can use Word should be able to do it.

Just get Dreamweaver and make websites, it’s dead easy to make sites as good as any web company without the specialist knowledge. It’s not the black art everybody makes it out to be and anybody who can use Word should be able to do it.

Ohh stop it, you’re killing me, you joker, you.

<websites>deadeasy</websites>

It’s really going to depend on what you want your website to do. If it’s a simple, say gallery, then wordpress or similar will probably do that for you and there will be themes that will work on all the devices/browsers you want (for example, my wordpress based site is automatically different and optimised for PC or mobile and I’m led to believe works for everyone in the club regardless of how they’re accessing it) and plugins to do most of the things you want perfectly well.

If you’re after a more complex site with more interactive functionality then that’s where getting a professional in will probably be well worth it rather than having something that sort of works but doesn’t look professional.

This link is quite funny. Shows how simple a good website can be:
http://tinyurl.com/ntvxdc8

Gotta agree with this bit at the end…

Good design is as little design as possible

I’d have thought CSS / HTML is the safest and most flexible. Then throw in some Java to identify the user’s platform and direct it to the relevant site / code, because you’re probably gonna need multiple versions or at least CSSs.

Don’t need Java to detect platform. And it certainly wouldn’t make it responsive. Ideally I don’t want to detect platform at all.

If I write, it’s in HTML4 strict, and CSS similarly. Write for Chrome/Safari/Firefox and check it works still on IE. There’s a spec. If the browser doesn’t work with code written to a strict spec. then the browser is at fault.

Do it right, and 2 CSSes for layout, or 2 theme variations for WordPress or whatver content system you use, is all you need. 1 mobile, 1 desktop.

just depends how dynamic the site needs to be, how much interaction, etc.

Sadly too many websites are programmed by hipsters now, where the answer is always “throw more JQuery at it to provide an experience” 👿 (Yahoo! Are you listening????)

This link is quite funny. Shows how simple a good website can be:
http://tinyurl.com/ntvxdc8

That’s some funny shit right there.

And pretty spot on/>

I built a basic website a few years ago just using HTML and CSS in a text editor

although at the beginning I used to learn commands by (the purists will hate me for this) doing it in word, saving it as .HTML and removing all the guff. Then I did lots of tutorials on the W3C website.

To be honest I haven’t had the time to add fancy features, and I do struggle whenever I try to do a layout that’s more complicated than “centre aligned”!

http://Www.hartsbakery.co.uk

Now I’m at the point where the website works pretty well on the platforms I’ve tried (feel free to give feedback). I expect the code isn’t perfect!!

However it’s fiddly to update,I haven’t learnt any further skills and as the business has grown, I’m thinking it needs a revamp to keep it fresh, although a simple site will always fit with the company branding. A blog site would probably have been better in retrospect.

I did try to play with WordPress but found it a bit annoying that I couldn’t understand what it was doing. Learning code was something I knew I could pick up more quickly but my site is now really basic as a result.

Hartsbakery looks fine on my iPad. Ok on the phone in landscape but needs a bit of zooming in portrait.

Ha, I write for intranet applications mostly which is much easier! I can spend most of my time making the C# work really well and not have to worry about responsive design. Which is great…

If the browser doesn’t work with code written to a strict spec. then the browser is at fault.

Hilarious.

JulianA – you’re almost certainly going to need to change that thinking very soon – mobile is all over the Intranet now and users are beginning to expect in-house sites to be just as appealing as what they are used to on the Internet.

Tools necessarily make good websites; they simply allow those that have built up the required knowledge through a lot of damn hard work deliver more quickly.

Of course, there is nothing stopping you putting in the damn hard work…

Rachel

@allthegear – as and when… All of the stuff I work on is purely desktop at the mo, and as I’m mostly C# / ASP.Net / OOD / SQL Server I’m hoping not to have to do responsive design for a bit. I don’t see it cropping up in the sort of applications I work on, really.

It’ll be interesting if it does though. Hopefully there will be a front end person around for that kind of thing… 🙂

One for those in the know, how much would it cost to build a simple website to host documents, links, news items, embed videos, have a blog? I need one for a research project, and given who would be adding content needs to be straightforward to use.

i tend to charge within the region of £1500 for a full tasty website design and build with handover and training in the CMS. depends what is needed though

CaptJon – You could just start a wordpress.com site for next to nothing and get going. Choose a template.
It’s what a lot of people do. If you’re not selling a brand, then it’s what I’d do.

Otherwise, how long is a piece of string.
Cheapest totally custom wordpress site I’ve done was about £800 and it’s this one http://barrattlegacy.co.uk/

Pfft Alex – it isn’t even responsive 😉