Sometimes all you want is one program or group of integrated programs to do your Web design and development work. These Web suites combine the basic necessities of Web design - HTML and graphics editing. If you buy or download one of these packages you'll have all you need to maintain a Web site including the graphics.
Dreamweaver is one of the most popular professional Web development software packages available. It offers power and flexibility to create pages that meet your needs. I use it for everything from JSP, XHTML, PHP, and XML development. It is a good choice for professional Web designers and developers, but if you're working as a solitary freelancer, you might want to look at one of the CS suites like Web or Design to get graphics editing capability as well.
Adobe released Creative Suite 3 in a bunch of different combinations. While you can still buy each product separately, buying a bundle might save you money. But how do you decide between the different versions which one is best for you? I believe that any of these four editions would work for most Web designers: Web Standard, Design Premium, Web Premium, or the Master Collection. But you should buy the edition that works best for your needs.
Expression Web is Microsoft's newest Web editing software. It offers everything professional Web designers have come to expect from a world-class Web editing tool, including HTML validation, WYSIWYG and text editor support, support for CSS and non-HTML pages like ASP, and lots of pre-built templates to start with. The biggest benefit to Expression Web over other top-quality Web editors is the price. But with Microsoft products you get locked into Microsoft - there isn't a lot of native support for PHP or JSP and it doesn't have the photo gallery maker like FrontPage used to.
Expression Studio combines Expression Web with Expression Design, Blend, and Media to give you a full graphic and Web design suite. If you are a freelance Web designer who needs to be able to edit graphics in something more powerful than Microsoft Paint, then you might want to look at Expression Studio. It offers all the features you expect from a world-class Web editing suite. The only drawback (and it may not be a drawback) is that with Microsoft tools you are strongly encouraged to use only Microsoft technologies. For example, there is a lot of ASP support, but very little or no PHP and JSP support.
Adobe GoLive is a powerful Web page editor with all the features you come to expect of a high-quality editor. In version 9, I couldn't easily find the hooks to Illustrator and Photoshop that were there in previous versions, but if you're familiar with these programs you'll recognize the interface. GoLive is a high quality Web page editor, and if you've used previous versions, you'll still be happy with this one.
Freeway Pro extends the Freeway Express Web page editor. For just a little more money, you get more features like CSS support, and support for different DTDs.
Contribute is a WYSIWYG editor that is intended to work in tandem with Dreamweaver. While it is possible to create and maintain a Web site with Contribute, there are some features noticeably missing, like spell check and forms. It is a good editor for clients who want some control over the content of their pages, but don't want to handle the design and programming aspects.
Web Studio 4.0 is trying to answer the challenge of Web design tools that tools like Word have provided. Namely, the idea that you should be able to build a Web page by simply dragging the images or multimedia elements that you want onto your document and then typing text around them. Web Studio 4.0 does a good job at this - by making the creation of a Web page easy to understand, by removing all direct access to it from the user.
Freeway Express is a great basic Web page editor for the Macintosh. It includes basic graphics editing and creation so that you only need one software package to create simple Web sites. One drawback is that you can only save your files as HTML 4, there is no support for any other DTD.
Create is an extensive graphics manipulation program that also acts as a Web page editor. It provides WYSIWYG functionality to make it easy to place objects and elements. But it's true strength is in the graphics manipulation features it has. You can create text and image objects and then manipulate them in many ways. It is quite fun to use.
Do you have a Web editor that you absolutely love or positively hate? Write a review of your HTML editor and let others know which editor you think is the best.
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