Mac software for website design

May 23, 2006 2:34 PM

Website design software for a Mac beginner?

Something light and cheap, we're not talking about Macromedia Studio here, just something simple, is there an included program?

posted by Cosine to computers & internet (12 comments total)

iWeb is included with iLife '06. I don't have a lot of experience with it, but it claims to include all kinds of Apple-style intuition and integration with iPhoto, etc. And if you're willing to pay for the .Mac hosting, it's got one-click publishing.
posted by ckolderup at 2:39 PM on May 23, 2006

Oh, and if you already know HTML and are looking to go the manual route, I'd recommend using a text editor like Smultron or SubEthaEdit (which doesn't have to be used for collaboration, it's just a nice editor with good syntax highlighting) and an SFTP program like Cyberduck to upload your files.
posted by ckolderup at 2:43 PM on May 23, 2006

I second SubEthaEdit -- I use it for all my textual needs, whether it's taking notes, pre-blogging, HTML/CSS editing, whathaveyou.

On a related note, If you're a beginner and you really want to get a grasp of web design my best advice is to go the raw coding route. In my own experience, It wasn't until I dug into the code that I really understood how the different elements fit together and create what you see in the browser. It'll stand you in good stead even if you do decide to (or have to) use dedicated software for the task.
posted by macdara at 3:12 PM on May 23, 2006

Contribute; Macworld review
posted by kirkaracha at 3:24 PM on May 23, 2006

Sandvox could be what you're looking for.
posted by bonaldi at 3:36 PM on May 23, 2006

Nvu is free, and rather nice.

If you're a curmudgeonly type who edits your html directly and in the nude, Textwrangler fits the bill rather nicely.
posted by freq at 3:44 PM on May 23, 2006

SKEdit. $25.
posted by dobbs at 3:50 PM on May 23, 2006

I quite like RapidWeaver. Sandvox is nice too. iWeb is good but a little peculiar and 1.0 still.
posted by neustile at 3:57 PM on May 23, 2006

If you're willing to drop a hundred bucks, I don't think you can do better than Freeway Express. It's relatively easy for a beginner, but will also allow you to do more complicated things when you're ready.
posted by j-dawg at 4:13 PM on May 23, 2006

I just peeked at the online shop. If you're a student, Freeway Express is only $59. A steal.
posted by j-dawg at 4:15 PM on May 23, 2006

I'm going to ask for more detail.

Website "design"?

I have a website designer sitting next to me. She designs in Photoshop and gives the resulting file to me. I make it into a website.

So, how much of the process are we talking about? You need software to do page layout, optimise images, edit HTML, manage a website, FTP to a host? All of the above? Only some of the above?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 4:32 PM on May 23, 2006

This is slightly tangential advice. Years ago I tried a number of WYSIWYG web-page creators, including Dreamweaver and Fusion and (heaven help me) Frontpage and Pagemill and GoLive and found that they were marginally helpful in a number of areas but that I never really got to like any of them. While they provided sortof a blandly accesible nice page layout mechanism, a middleground between a graphics program and a good text editor for wrangling code, they aren't really design tools. And they're not necessarily fantastic for wrangling code, either, however nice some of the visual interation with the page is.

Eventually, I found it was better to go at things armed with (a) a good graphics program and (b) a good text editor.

So even though you said you weren't really looking at Macromedia, and even though you seem focused on the page-layout type tools.... you might want to consider getting a good graphics tool and one of many good (and generally very affordable if not outright free text editors). And if you do decide to lay out for a graphics program, I highly recommend you take a look at Fireworks . It's far and away superior to anything else I've ever used for concepting, creating, and manipulating web graphics. It is pricier than most of the options mentioned here, but probably cheaper than photoshop, and the right balance of vector and raster tools specifically targeted for web-focused graphic design (rather than, say, Paint Shop or Photoshop, which are overgrown raster manipulators with tacked-on features to make web targetting more convenient, or Illustrator, the mother of all desktop publishing vector graphics tools, but one that has relatively few features tacked on to make web targetting convenient).

Even an old version of Fireworks -- say, MX or even 4 -- would probably serve you capably (heck, version 3 is when I found it and fell in love), and it's likely you could pick one up on eBay for less than $150, maybe even less than $100. Heck, the student version of Fireworks 8 is almost certainly less than $100.

Just a thought.

If you do decide to go the WYSIWYG webpage layout route, I have to say that I've been thinking iWeb and Freeway look interesting, and even from my Fireworks-fanboy, snobby-hand-coding perch, I think about giving them a spin.
posted by weston at 5:06 PM on May 23, 2006