Windows Web Editors for Professional Web Designers

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.

Creative Suite Web Standard is the minimum a freelancing Web designer needs to build and maintain Web sites. It comes with Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, and Contribute. These give you graphics editing, HTML editing, and Flash as well as Contribute to provide your customers with support. It also comes with Bridge to manage your images and Device Central to work with mobile devices. If you don't anticipate needing a lot of graphics manipulation, this is the perfect suite for a freelancer. It also offers a lot of features that a member of a Web design team can appreciate like check-in check-out, templates, and integrated version control.

Expression Web 2 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 lots of templates. The biggest benefit to Expression Web over other top-quality Web editors is the price. It is missing just a couple of the features of other high-ranked editors, but it has a lot of built-in support for ASP.Net and ASP.Net Ajax. If you work on ASP.Net pages, this is the perfect editor.

If you are a graphic artist and then a Web designer you should consider Creative Suite Design Premium. Unlike Design Standard which doesn't include Dreamweaver, Design Premium gives you InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, SoundBooth, and Acrobat. Because it includes Dreamweaver it includes all the power you need to build Web pages. But Web designers who focus more on graphics and less on the purely HTML aspects of the job will appreciate this suite for the extra graphic features included in it.

Creative Suite Web Premium is the best suite for Web designers who do it all on the Web - such as 1-person freelance shops. It offers a great combination of graphics programs (Photoshop extended, Fireworks, and Illustrator), Web programs (Dreamweaver and Contribute), multimedia applications (Flash and SoundBooth) and additional support programs (Acrobat, Bridge, and Device Central). This is the suite that I prefer of the CS suites as it provides me with all the tools I need without a lot of extra features.

Expression Studio combines Expression Web with Expression Design, Blend, Encoder, and Media to give you a full graphic, video, 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. Expression Studio is perfect for the freelance developer who works mostly on ASP.Net projects. There is extensive support for ASP.Net and Silverlight in Expression Studio.

Creative Suite Master Collection is the ultimate in creativity suites, and the price reflects that. It includes all of the Adobe design products including Dreamweaver, Photoshop extended, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign, Acrobat, Contribute. Plus all the production products like AfterEffects, Premiere, SoundBooth, and Encore. If you plan to do video editing along with your Web design, you might want to look at this suite to get them all bundled together. But it might be less expensive to buy only the exact products you need. You should do an evaluation of what your needs are, unless the price of the Master Collection doesn't daunt you (or your purchasing department).

Fusion is a very powerful HTML editor. It combines all the tasks you need to get your website up and running including development, design, and FTP. Plus you can add special features to your pages like captchas on forms and ecommerce support.

HotDog is one of the first WYSIWYG editors that I liked. And version 7 still lives up to their high standards. A feature that stands out is the Flash wizard that makes it really easy to import SWF files into your Web pages.

I've always liked CoffeeCup software. They do a great job of providing what their customers want for a low price. Plus, with free upgrades and support for life, the cost of their products becomes next to nothing. The CoffeeCup HTML editor is a great tool for Web designers. It comes with lots of graphics, templates, and extra features - like the CoffeeCup image mapper. And I've found that if you request a feature, they will add it or create a new tool to take care of it. I love CoffeeCup!