Dreamweaver and FrontPage

Someone on our technology courses last month wanted to know about more about Dreamweaver and FrontPage, two html editors [definition] for creating webpages.

Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Dreamweaver (price currently 347 GBP from Amazon.co.uk) is much the better of the two, and is a program I've used -- and liked very much -- every working day for about the last five years.

It's not that difficult to start to learn, comes with a full manual, has good online support and tutorials and is a very professional solution for building webpages.

You also want to know about the following, sooner rather than later, as webpage design is not just a question of learning to use Dreamweaver:

• Good design principles (lots of ideas on A List Apart)
  
• Basic html (coding)
• CSS, including positioning (some great tutorials from MaxDesign)
  

Personally, I'd recommend learning a little about html and CSS even before you start with Dreamweaver.

Microsoft FrontPage has now in fact been replaced by Expression Web (price 256 GBP from Amazon.co.uk, 85 GBP for an upgrade from FP). FrontPage had its limitations, Expression Web looks to be on a par with Dreamweaver, though I've not used it extensively.

But do you really want to know about such programs?
You can create webpages with other programs, far less sophisticated ones, like those available at Yahoo and Google, for example.

Or -- if you want something professional looking and dead easy to set up -- your best bet would probably be to set up a blog.