Dreamweaver or FrontPage

[BogdanBgd]

Hello. I intend to know something about web design and i was wondering which soft would be better ?
I made a site (not complicated) in dreamweaver and i enjoyed working ...
Is DR more professional than FrontPage or are both the same "thing" ?

WHich one is better in the ideea that after i got the knowing in webdesign i would like to go to te next step what whould be designing sites but more complicated ones not just easy ones. ?

One more question ... what is de different between the extensions .html and php ... are both the same thing or one is different from other ?

hope you'll reply ... thx & have a nice day !

[Paul Komski]

Both DW and FP are expensive WYSIWYG authoring tools and have their pros and cons. Personally I think they are both much over-rated and in the end what seems to be hardest with most such web authoring tools is to have them not update or change the underlying code. Trellian and HTMLkit are two very good freebies but if you really want to learn to code and to keep your code clean use a simple text editor such as notepad or a specialised ones such as PSPad. Amaya has great value in teaching one to write good html but has a quite revolutionary approach with its own learning curve since it doubles as a web browser.

Changing file extensions does nothing of itself to the underlying code so if you chage a perfectly good .htm extension to .php it will work just fine. What .php tells the web server is to expect a server side php script inside that webpage. When the server reads such code it can re-render the web page's html that it sends (and never sends the php code itself) back to the client machine that requested it. This is quite unlike client side scripts such as javascript which are executed, on receipt, by the client machines.

[BogdanBgd]

thx for the info ... that is the only/most important diference between html & php ? i'm just asking because i imagined that are quite different, but i never thought that the code lines were the same in each of them because i loked once at the source from 2 sites which were having this 2 different extensions.

By the way (web designing) ... I intend to create some sites but I don't intend to learn designing by "code" .... because I think would be though and will not help in what i study at all (Management) ....

I just want to design by using editors like DW or others and i was wondering which is the best way/software to start creating sites ....
If u can help me some way i would really appreciate. As "experince" in html I just have some "designing" based on some templates with a liitle bit of creativity.

thx a lot for the previous answer & for the next to come .

bye bye

[BogdanBgd]

sorry for some spelling mistakes "loked" instead of looked ....
i'm just improving my typing speed :)

[Variable]

The most popular web site development tool is FP. This is because it is simple to set up a site for a novice and allows for a lot of functionality for the more advanced.
To use Frontpage to its fullest the server needs FP server extensions, most do, but it is something to consider. I personally know several successful web designers who use FP. It is easier to set up more complicated web sites quickly with FP than Dreamweaver. In FP setting up forms and mail scripts is trivial; creating virtual sites underneath a main site is also simple. Dreamweaver is more "professional" but both will get the job done. If you are starting out, Frontpage is a really nice way to get started fast. Something worth noting is that FP installs several folders labeled vti_XXX if you connect to a FP built site with an editor other than FP you will see these folders. If you delete them you can easily break the site. It will require server admin intervention to rebuild the FP files.
If you want to code everything manually or cut and paste from script sites, then you can do most things with Notepad. I update most sites I where I work with Notepad. If you want to code web pages I would look into asp and php. PHP has to be installed on the web server to work, asp will work just about anywhere, it is very common.

Good web site design does not necessarily entail an in depth understanding of code, depending on what editor you use. There is no reason to manually code something that is built into an editor unless you want to learn for your own edification. The more you get into web design you will find the code is not the hard part, the design is the hard part. Making a visually appealing site that does not look like every other site is difficult. Creating simple web site is not difficult with any tools mentioned. I would figure out want you want to do with the site first, then try the various editors to see which one does what you want with the least amount problems. Find sites that you really like and then try to create your own test site based on their framework. How difficult is it to create a form or store information to a database? What about how your site looks with different screen resolutions or browsers?

I would figure out what you want to do, then try to do it with several tools.

V

[Paul Komski]

because i loked once at the source from 2 sites which were having this 2 different extensions
When you look at "the source" of any page as viewed in a web browser you only get to see "the source" that is sent to you; you never get to see any of the original "source code" of server-side scripts.

Just as an example, php is used on these PCGuide Forums but if you view this page's source from your browser's View menu all you will see is pure html. If you could read the original source code that the web server (which hosts this site) interprets you would find that this page's source code for the showthread.php script was relatively simple;. The ?p=287756 that follows the .php extension is a database reference and the content of the page would be pulled out of that database (on the webhost's server) and rendered into the html that you can now read as source code.

[BogdanBgd]

thx ... I got the ideea crystal clear. thx

can you give me some links or something where I can find good and lots of templates .... ?

[BogdanBgd]

I've already found something with donkey servers but I ask because I know that you are more on the topic concerning html ... and pc stuff in general.

I'm here to learn :)

[BogdanBgd]

if i downlaod a .php script and if copy/paste it into my html site will it work ?

php and html are compatible ?

sorry but i'm quite new to webdesign ?

[jlreich]

No it won't work. PHP needs to be installed and configured correctly on your system to work. If you were to down load a PHP page all you would get is the code and it would do nothing without PHP installed.

If you are really interested you can download XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html) . It will install and configure PHP, MySQL and a web server on your machine so you can develop webpages locally. It will allow you to view PHP encoded webpages and have a database (MySQL) on your computer.

You can also do all this manually but there is a pretty large learning curve.

XAMPP works pretty good but just so you know it is not meant for a live server, but only local development. It the lacks security to be a live server.

EDIT - Sorry I looked at your question a little closer. :rolleyes: No you can't just paste it into your website. Just like on your computer, your server needs to have PHP installed and configured correctly. Most web hosts have PHP available theses days but it is not installed by default. And you need to know how to configure it. Again if you really want to get into it have a look here. http://www.php.net/

[BogdanBgd]

thx a lot for the info ...

the ideea is that i want to add to my site -php Simple MSN Weather Displayer- which is a script that i found.

here are the instructions: http://www.biglickmedia.com/misc/php/msn-weather.php

so ... what are the steps that i have to amke in order so taht my site will benefit from this weather displayer ?

now i am downloading xampp as you said ... but can you guide me further ?

thx anticipated

[jlreich]

Sorry I am not a PHP guy. :( I have been dealing with it for some time now working on my own site, but I would be of no real help to you. I am still winging it. :p

My suggestion would be to look at the documentation for the weather display, and also look at the documentation from your web host on installing and configuring PHP on your server. Or give them a call and explain what you want to do. They may actually be able to tell you what to do to get it up and running.

Perhaps on the members that know PHP well will pipe in to offer advice. :)

[BogdanBgd]

thx a lot anyway for the info ...

it was useful ...

i have to check if my web host supports php ...

if others can help me ... I'll appreciate that

[pangea33]

I am a web developer by profession, and I would not recommend that anyone use Frontpage. It adds a lot of things that I think are "junk" to the source code. I've used dreamweaver and while it is a little bloated, it's pretty good software overall. Just my two cents.

[BogdanBgd]

thx pangea33 ... for the info concerning DW vs FP

2. can you help me with my problem ?
What are the steps that i have to amke in order so taht my site will benefit from this weather displayer ?

[BogdanBgd]

Is it necessarily to learn the "code" ? Is it enough to use editors ?
I'm not intending to make a living from web designing / web development , but I want to create some pretty good looking site's. maybe a part-time during the university , something like that ...

thx

p.s. can anyone help me also with the prevoius prblem concerning .php ?

bye bye

[jlreich]

Is it necessary to learn the code? No. But if you want to have a clean good looking website that looks the same on all the major web browsers and loads quickly, then yes ditch the WYSIWYG editors. They bloat the coding of the page with unnecessary and deprecated or poorly written code. I have only worked with FP and I understand DW is better in this respect, but still bloats to an extent.

One caveat on browsers. IE will give you the most problems with trying to write clean correct code. Good ol' MS has to do things their way by not following web standards :rolleyes: Web designers these days actually design for Firefox, because it follows web standards, and then "fix" the code where needed for IE.

Basic HTML is pretty easy to learn. CSS (cascading style sheets) is fairly easy to learn, which gives you excellent control of layout and very clean code if used correctly.

PHP is a little different. The syntax is a more complicated and the learning curve greater. But it is definitely doable if you are willing to take the time.

I don't do this as a living either, nor would I ever want to. But when I started building my own website for my small business several years ago I started using FP and quickly realized it wouldn't work and I had to learn HTML to get it the way I wanted it. Worse FP totally screwed up the e-commerce part of my website. :eek:

Again, you don't have to learn this stuff. But it depends on how important the website is to you and what it is for. WYSIWYG editors are really for the general consumer, people that want to put up things like family photos and such. If you really want to maintain a professional website yourself you need to start learning how to do it properly.

If you do decide to start learning don't be surprised if you end up having imprints of the keyboard on your forehead from slamming your head into the KB from time to time. :p

There are many free tools and tutorials to help you in writing good code. There are also several good forums dedicated to web design out there that you can find excellent help at. Webdeveloper.com (http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/index.php?) is one that is pretty good.

[BogdanBgd]

you recommended me Xampp .... i guess Windows Apache Mysql Perl Php Server will work no ?

[jlreich]

Yeah that will work. I only recommended XAMPP because it is easy to install everything at once. But like I said only for local development.

[BogdanBgd]

Apache Mysql Perl Php Server also only for local development ?
thx a lot

[jlreich]

If you install them separately and know how to configure them correctly you can use them for a live server on the internet if you like.

If that is what you intend to do you will need to get a static IP address from your ISP.

[BogdanBgd]

is it imperative to have sql knowledge in order to work properly with php ?

[jlreich]

Well from what I have been dealing with on my own website, MySQL-PHP, it really helps to have a basic understanding of how programing works. But if you are going to install and configure a WAMPP yourself you need to start doing some reading.

Here is a good place to start on getting it up and running. http://www.elfqrin.com/docs/wamp_install.html

After that I would go to the individual sites for each program and read the documentation.

[BogdanBgd]

can anyone tell me how cna i create a photo gallery slide showed one ?

i managed to do that in front page, but I can't find the solution in macromedia DW ?

thx anticip'