MacuserUK

About 2 years ago I decided to start trying to learn web design. The tools that I was using were an Ergo laptop which was about 3 years old running Windows XP. The software that I used were Dreamweaver 8, Fireworks 8, Notepad. .

The problems that I faced was Dreamweaver a very powerful program but a bit clunky and had a hard learning curve to work how to use. The WYSIWYG view was good but never showed a true look to what it would through the browser. Using the text editor was quite helpful with a auto complete feature but again was to cluttered with menus etc. The worst feature was the FTP client that seemed very difficult to understand and use, it also asked for a lot details without any examples of what it needed. I ended using FTP clients like Filezilla which worked so much better.

As tool for making vector images and touching up photo’s Fireworks was an extremely helpful and a powerful piece of software. Because it was so powerful this meant that it was very resource hungry and used a lot of memory and processing power. This slowed my laptop down to a crawl even though I had increased the ram to the laptop’s max of 762mb. This meant that you would make a change and then wait while the PC caught up or crashed.

Notebook was quick and easy to use but with very limited features.

Due to the problems with the software that I was using, I tried to find free or cheap alternatives to all the programs on the Internet. This was where I hit a wall of problems as the free alternatives where scarce.

On the Mac there is an exuastive source of great cheap or free programs. These include Wrangler which is a free feature rich text editor. Vector Designer is powerful and easy to use vector picture design app, it costs about £40.

The best web design app on the Mac is Coda from Panic Software. It does cost $99 but it is an all in one web development environment. This is a multitude of apps including a text editor, FTP client, web browser and file browser.

I could have kept on listing loads more apps but it would have gone on too long.

Let us know your thoughts on this subject.