I am a freelance graphic designer using Adobe Creative Suite and spend most of my day using Photoshop, illustrator and In Design.

Adobe GoLive comes as part of creative suite with which I have built a few websites. The website side of things seems to be taking off for me and I have been commissioned to build three commercial sites, but I am finding GoLive really struggles and is forever crashing.

Based on my background with Adobe products what application(s) would you recommend for building low(ish) end websites?

WGA

I’ve got adobe web premium. This incudes Dreamweaver, which if you use in coded view is pretty good.

I have to develop in a proper content management system, but dreamweavers still good for designing the layout/css etc

Ah, with CS3, GoLive has become Dreamweaver, due to Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia.

DW is very good, if you’re an image-minded person, although the coding geeks don’t seem to like it (and produce sh1t looking websites). DW has it’s own built-in FTP thingy, which allows ytou to update sites really easily.

I build stuff up in DW, and let a mate do the coding fixes.

Sure you can get DW on it’s own, but probably a lot better VFM to get the whole CS3 package.

The secret with dreamweaver is to use it in code view and write the code youself. like any wysiwyg type thing if you use it in design view it adds all the crap.

You don’t mention if you’re on PC or Mac. Mac, buy Coda (www.panic.com) – it’s fantastic.

The main thing, though, is to really get it into your head to separate content from style, something that is incredibly difficult to do in other media. An example of this would be to not include any style in your html – move it into CSS.

Even better, use a CSS framework – sepnd some time looking at such things as http://960.gs/ and understand how it makes your life easier.

Once you can make things pretty whilst they are static, you can then go and look at jQuery (www.jquery.com)

Thanks guys,

I am Mac based, so it looks like an upgrade to CS3 is the way to go?

My Mac is running the old G5 processor not the fancy new Intel jobby will CS3 run OK on an old G5?

With GoLive I just do the front end stuff and let the software do all the HTML, does Dreamweaver do this also?

People employ me for the visual stuff, I would make a rubbish coder! So I need something that will do all that stuff for me, I just find GoLive really clunky and does unpredicatable things which I have to work round

WGA

Same as me, WGA; I do the pretty stuff, and let someone else make it all ‘work’.

DW will allow you to build simple sites, that coders can then get their teeth into, and add all their gubbins to.

I try not to delve too deeply into coding. I think minds that do visual stuff, are often not the right ones for coding, and vice-versa.

My coding mate has no sense of aesthetics, whatsoever. He’s constantly surprised that clients think his sites look boring or just plain cr4p. They work perfectly, mind.