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Website Design Software

As Cindy and I were working on our latest batch of Ebay posts, we realized that it would be nice to have a website template, or an HTML template that would let us put together good-looking Ebay posts.

We realized that this is hard if you don’t know html already – so I did some research and learned about several Website design software packages that help to put together HTML pages without the user even having to know or write a single line of HTML.

Through my research, I’ve learned that there are a number of programs out there that will help beginning website designers to make websites without having to know html, but apparently there are a lot of differences between the software packages, not the least of which is cost.

For this update, I want to share with everyone what I learned about the software, and which one Cindy and I eventually decided to use.

MS Office FrontPage
(http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/default.aspx)

MS Office Frontpage is a web authoring tool that has always gotten poor marks from web designers. Even the latest version of the software has had some terrible reviews all over the place. According to the reviews, the html produced by FrontPage is considered to be quite atrocious – probably the messiest and least efficient HTML to be found anywhere on the internet. However, supposedly it is fairly easy to use. Frontpage costs just over $100.

Netscape Composer
(http://wp.netscape.com/communicator/composer/v4.0/index.html)

Netscape Composer appears to be very popular and it features all of the basic web design functionality like creating tables, editing text, inserting pictures, and creating web links. Most reviews claim that it’s similar to the Dreamweaver software, but more limited in functionality. Most reviews state that it’s more difficult to create more complex websites with multiple pages. Also, there’s no image editing functionality built into Composer. However Composer is very simple and easy to use for the beginner. And best of all, the cost is Free!

DreamWeaver
(http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/)

The Dreamweaver webpage editor appears to be a little more complicated, but it has much more functionality. Dreamweaver offers fast navigating and editing of webpages. With Dreamweaver, you can quickly locate and edit font, hyperlinks, and tables. Also, Dreamweaver can edit photos using Macromedia Fireworks. The cost is a whopping $299!

Adobe Fireworks
(http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/)

Adobe Fireworks is more of a high-end web design software package that is mostly used by web designers to edit images for the web. However, it also has the ability to put together Web sites and Web applications. Most web designers love the image editing software and features above anything else about this software.

After having a look at all of the options, and considering that it’s free, right now Cindy and I are going to download Netscape Composer and see if, with it, we can design a nice web template that we can use on Ebay.

The saga of  Jack’s family ( to be continued)