Mac visual web editors

January 8, 2006 10:06 AM

Any Mac web designers used Rapidweaver or Freeway Pro? I know how to write valid (X)HTML and CSS, but I'm always looking for ways to save time and I was wondering if these tools actually produce valid, clean, and accessible code as advertised.
posted by 40 Watt to computers & internet (8 comments total)

RapidWeaver certainly does, but you are strictly limited to the templates they provide. That isn't necessarily bad, it's mind-numblingly easy to produce a cool looking site with content from iLife, the templates are good-looking and there are a lot to choose from.

See
posted by Mwongozi at 10:15 AM on January 8, 2006

hmmm....that almost defintely defeats the purpose of the tool for my needs... can you create your own templates if you know what you're doing?
posted by 40 Watt at 11:37 AM on January 8, 2006

You can, but if you're smart enough to do so, RapidWeaver really isn't the tool for you.
posted by Mwongozi at 12:54 PM on January 8, 2006

Touché. OK, looks like I'm sticking with BBEdit...
posted by 40 Watt at 1:19 PM on January 8, 2006

If RapidWeaver or Freeway Pro don't fit the bill, is there anything that does? I was researching a similar need for a friend: What wysiwyg editor for Mac OS X produces semantically valid code?
posted by maniactown at 1:25 PM on January 8, 2006

slightly off topic - i am thinking about beginning to do wireframing/ui mocks in dreamweaver8 - usually i hand code most work? what are peoples feelings about dreamweaver 8 for rapid prototyping?
posted by specialk420 at 3:16 PM on January 8, 2006

You didn't mention price as an issue, so I'd have to recommend Dreamweaver 8, which will in fact do what you need and produces valid, clean code, as advertised. It's only downside is cost.

Specialk420 - if the mocks in question rely on HTML or some other web language, then you'd be hard pressed to find a program better than Dreamweaver 8. Keep in mind, however, that HTML is itself very limiting when it comes to things like layout, so if you really need the freedom to size and position stuff whereever you want, there isn't any HTML editor that will be good for you. It's not impossible to do such a thing in DW, but since you'll need to put everything inside layers, there's a lot of extra work. You may be better off using a graphics editor for that purpose.
posted by robhuddles at 3:49 PM on January 8, 2006

For what it's worth, there's talk on the street that an app called iWeb will be in iLife '06, supposedly to be released next week.. and some are saying it'll be like Pages for the Web.. so.. :)
posted by wackybrit at 5:16 PM on January 8, 2006