This
chapter isn??™t supposed to be some kind of definitive guide on web design
software and each application??™s pros and cons??”instead, it aims to provide
an overview of the most popular solutions on the market, along with insight
into the tools I myself use on a daily basis.
Web design software
Adobe Dreamweaver (www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/) is the market leader for
web design software on both Windows and Mac platforms. Formerly a Macromedia product,
the application joined the Adobe stable after Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005.
Dreamweaver??™s position at the top of the pile is no accident: for several versions now, it
has concentrated on standards-compliance and lean code, but has also provided a flexible
interface that enables designers to take either a code-based or a layout-based approach to
web page design and the creation of dynamic websites. Although the CS3 update was
underwhelming, Dreamweaver remains the only WYSIWYG web design tool that I recommend
to people with any enthusiasm.
Adobe GoLive (www.adobe.com/products/golive/), formerly the Mac-only CyberStudio,
was unceremoniously ousted from Adobe??™s Creative Suite bundles once Dreamweaver CS3
arrived. Taking a more graphic-design approach, many of the tools in GoLive 9 are seemingly
derived from Adobe??™s desktop publishing application, InDesign. Although the application
is fairly easy to use, it pales beside Dreamweaver when it comes to working with
CSS-based sites and web standards, and using its control panel tends to result in unwieldy
span-infested markup and a document littered with inline styles.
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