Industry standard for web design?

[Alastair]

Can anyone with experience of 'basic' web design offer some advice please?

The GF needs to do a course and buy some software through her work to allow her to publish some basic web pages like this. Nothing fancy but I thought it would be best to get trained on software that will be a transferable skill.

Software that works on PC and Mac is the only necessary really. Dreamweaver is the only one I know of - is that the best?

[AllYourBase]

A lot of people will tell you notepad is all you truly need, for a little extra help personally I consider Dreamweaver the best. I don't like Frontpage all that much but I guess it has it's place.

[Salsa Party Animal]

You need
a text editor (textpad or notepad) and
a web design software like Dreamweaver
a graphics software like photoshop (or fireworks)
a web browser to browse the web site
a FTP software to upload the site to a server host.

This is what you need for plain html/javascript web site. Oh the job market are not very good for budding web designers. There aren't job there anymore. If there are jobs you have to be specialised in ASP, PHP, MYSQL, Flash and stuff like that.

[goldbricker]

I've been using Frontpage 2003 and found it to be pretty good for basic stuff and site management although not as good as Dreamweaver mind.

[Alastair]

Dreamweaver it is then. Thanks for the advice. Will the copy she buys work on both the Mac and PC?

Legendary - thx for the advice. Her job is in markeing but for a small company so she has to do stuff like this too. Just wanting to get her some skills and software that can be used in a different company if needs be.

[Salsa Party Animal]

You will have to pick one. (You could try downloading a trial version and enter the genuine code for different format)

[Ish]

Rather than use notepad for editing of raw HTML (which she probably will end up doing every now and then) use something like Context (see here) rather than Notepad. Its free. And a most splendiferous editor.

[Gabbi]

Another good, free, text-based HTML editor, with plenty of features is 1st Page 2000.

Get it here:

http://www.evrsoft.com/1stpage2.shtml

[killing_floor]

Dreamweaver should have ftp upload in it already, I forget what version I was using (b4 MX) but it was in 2001-2002 so it should still have that facility.

If you have a Netscape browser there are pagemakers in that too, but the source code viewer isn't editable.

[JibberX]

I use HTML-kit, very very good too, for lazy web deisgn I use Dreamweaver 4 but not often.

https://www.chami.com

FrontPage is a travesty by the way, an industry joke.