first things first
 

Hi everyone. This is my first post on web design talk. I got a couple of grand to spare so I wanted to know the best software to use for web design. I'd like to get the best gear and want everything to be possible i.e video, graphics the whole lot. Many thanx.

filter 8 :D

Nvidia has some awesome graphic cards, if you've ever played or hear of delta force, they design their games with them. also alienware makes some awesome graphic cards. I use jasc for foto manipulation and macromedia studio mx plus for all my other design needs. macstudmx+ comes with flash and dreameaver which I find very useful most of the times(yet I code with notepad hehe) and contribute is like the ultimate lazy person software. I also use seagull ftp to upload files to my server, it's free, I recomend it, though sometimes you loose all your config files, just restart and it makes it better. also a lot of memory is helpful(obviously). Either way hope this helps. If you want the cheapest prices on hardware use http://www.pricewatch.com/ they usually are the cheapest.


ok so let me ring this up real quick,

ok so macstud2004 is 899
the graphic card is (geforce 4) 91
and memory is about 50
jasc is 70 or 80

total I spent on system, 1120 american dollars. Yep. Add tax to that (i use 5% as a basic default) and the total comes out to be 1176 for n awesome hardcore graphic, web developer computer. So yea you'll need more than a grande if you want the goodies. but if you are happy with notepad and don't know flash skip out on the macstud and get yourself a kickin monitor. Hope this helps.

Hey there,

I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro for most of my graphics work (Can't really afford much more being 16 :(), and all HTML coding is done in either Notepad or LiquidFX (Free, like notepad but with a few pretty buttons and colour coding!) I've recently purchased Macromedia Studio MX (As it was cheaper than just getting what I wanted and I got Freehand as well now so) I don't quite get on with the user interfaces yet, and I'm still learning from my previous Version 4/5 experiences with the Macromedia range. It's got to be the best in functionality though overall so if you can afford it, I'd get it.

Photoshop for graphics
Flash MX 2004 Pro. for flash
Notepad for coding
GeForce FX 5200 video card

thats what i got :)

lol, i'll tell you all the software i have for web design.

Paint Shop Pro for graphics.
Arananee for coding (freeware)
Flash MX when I really REALLY want to do something in flash.
and SmartFTP for uploading (freeware)

I'm a pro - and this is all I use; then again I don't do the WYSIWYG stuff; so if you need that - i'd probably reccemend DreamWeaver MX of Frontpage 2k3.

I'll let you in on a little secret - you can do all of this for free. you can use WGimp for graphics, and unless you really have a reason, i don't really reccemend flash. Adding flash to a website just for the hell of it isn't a habbit you should get in to.

Adobe photoshop 7 for designing.
paintshop pro also for designing
Dreamweaver MX for coding... (notepad too)flash... if you must, but hosting companys seem to like it so ya know... depends on what you wunna do and how much u wunt to make.

No offence, but why does everyone seem to code in notepad. And to make things worse, some people that have Dreamweaver still use Notepad as well.. It defies any logic web design principle.

Because in notepad you don't have any help, no one is there to look over your shoulder. I don't know about everyone else but I am good enough to not need dreamweaver. Dreamweaver was almost a waste of my money. In my web life I have never had a page that didn't pass the cleanup or validator. so if you ask me, I'd prefer the freeform text base of notepad over the condstricting throat grabbing politics of dreamweaver.

With notepad your skills are always sharp. Say you needed to add in some code in a DW page, you wouldnt know what to do. If you use DW or any other WYSIWYG editor you dont really know the language. You just know how to point and click.

have you actually looked at the source code for something done in Dreamweaver MX? it's not like it's mind blowing - they even do a decent job at spacing it out for code readability.

I use a texteditor because, frankly, i'm a supperior coder than Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage. That doesn't mean that I don't use WYSIWYG - if i'm writing text, for example, i'll write it in Frontpage because it has spell check and automatically formats the text correctly - saves me time.

Overall - I can code something faster, slimmer, and more feature rich in a text based editor (with syntax highlighting : ' D) than you can in a WYSIWYG. Coding is the simple part - and if you don't know how to do it, i suggest you learn. Not only will you get a better sense of acomplishment if you code it by hand, but you'll learn that even the most powerful WYSIWYG doesn't hold a candle to a coder who knows the systems.

That being said... I have Microsoft Frontpage 2003 installed on my computer - I like it better than DWmx