What is the best web design software?
Web design software is what everybody is into these days. In its early stages, web design could only be achieved via extensive knowledge of HTML (the DNA of any website) and, as a result, websites were cooking pots of broken links against a grey or green background, and garish pixilated gifs that were the epitome of web design mastery. However, with online business on the rise it became evident that people wanted to be able to build their own websites. Microsoft Office Word 97 incorporated web design tools that allowed PC users to design custom websites without the need to even know what an HTML command was.
While you could still build websites using Microsoft Word today, Microsoft Publisher is a good choice for first-timers or people who don’t have much experience with web design. It comes with Microsoft Office 2007 and it features several dozen predesigned webpage layouts you can choose from: all you have to do is type in the information and indicate where you want the links to take you. It can’t get any easier. You can also import pre-designed graphics and take the customization further by changing the layout colors… or you can always try your hand at graphic design and choose one of the three sizes of the “blank page” option and start from scratch. If you have worked with PowerPoint before you will find your way around Publisher in no time. The great advantage of Publisher is: any one can use it.
For intermediate to advanced users, who might want to create custom content before bringing the webpage together, some of the best work tools are Adobe Flash, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Dreamweaver, which can be purchased separately as stand-alone products or bundled with some of the Adobe Creative Suites.
Adobe Flash is all about animation – animated web banners, web page components, video and even internet applications like games. It contains a scripting language called ActionScript, which is a feature unique to Flash, but at the same time it is compatible with all of the Adobe products. While Flash is not web-design software per se, many of the features that make a website attractive and dynamic are built using this particular tool.
Adobe Fireworks, being a bitmap and vector graphics editor allows for resizing vector objects with no loss of quality, which contributes to diminish the total weight of the website –and the lower the weight, the faster it will upload. Fireworks is also fully compatible with Flash and DreamWeaver.
Adobe Dreamweaver is the real deal, full-fledged website design software. It allows graphics to be imported and created with Flash or Fireworks, and automatically generates the HTML code for the website (which can be hidden away from sight in the event of confusion).
In the end, to determine what the best web design software is, you simply have to reflect upon the specific needs your website will fulfill. Is it a personal site aiming to share pictures with friends and family? Is it a school project? Is it a website for commercial or otherwise professional use? For a personal project, it might be better to use software that you already have; for business purposes, perhaps it’s best to use professional tools… or leave matters in the hands of professionals altogether.
Visit us online at www.ilikewebsitedesigners.com and learn more about web design and development.