Website Design
Working just in code sounds a bit crazy because you have to keep stopping, load the page into a browser to see what it looks like so far. So if a wywiwyg editor creates the code for you, then why do it by hand? Because the code itself is very important, and in a wysiwyg editor it is out of your control - such editors are famous for creating lots of unnecessary stuff in your code, and being somewhat non-standard too.
On the other hand, if you use an editor that does both, you can flip between the two which can be the most productive way to work.
Here is a selection of web design programs that we personally have used much. The pluses and minuses are both mentioned, so you can choose one that most suits your needs.
NVU. An 'open-source' wysiwyg editor that also allows you to edit the code directly. It has become very popular among web designers due to its ease of use (in most functions). On the down side, some of its functions are in very strange places and take some finding, plus the resulting code often comes out with large gaps between the lines. Also, there are some table handling operations missing. NVU is still available but development on it stopped quite some time ago. Not widely known is that it was developed further under the name 'Kompozer' which can be found if you search the internet, but although this has been described as 'NVU with bugs fixed' we found this to be not the case with the small problems we had. Also there have been reports that Kompozer has accidentally introduced new bugs. You can only tell by testing it out yourself.
http://www.nvu.com/
WebNamo. We used version 4, but believe it is now up to version 6. WebNamo was found to be the most well-behaved wysiwyg editor around. It is not 'free' like NVU but does beat it in most aspects. Includes a full professional site manager much better than NVU's simple one. Being more professional than NVU it can seem more complicated, but you have to decide just how well you want to do the job.
http://www.namo.com/
Namu6. A very strange oddity indeed. Create a full web site without typing one line of code. Does it work? Yes. Is the resulting code standard? Very. It it easy to use? A 5-year-old could work with it. Does the result look professional? Very - assuming you use good graphics. So what's the down side?
Firstly, Namu6 does not allow you to create 'tags' in the header, and gives you no automatic ones either. Some such tags are vital if you want search engines to treat you well. You could always type them in by hand afterwards, but you need to be expert at that, and besides, on your next edit the tags would be wiped out.
Another niggly point is that only the text can be used to create links, not the pictures.
Namu6 has become immensely popular worldwide, mainly among people who just want to create a personal website, or for a local club etc. If you are not a professional businessman and know nothing about web design then Namu6 will be your dream come true. If you are in business you could use Namu6 to begin with, then work on it further with a more advanced web editor such as WebNamo. In fact that is how this web site was created.
http://namu6.com/
DHEditor. Another wysiwyg editor, but graphical only - you have no access to code at-all during design. Also, DHEditor works exclusively with layers, or divs as they are now known. This means you can place text and graphics anywhere you want on the page and they will stay where you put them. You can even overlap objects. While this produces very stable pages that can look well and behave well, you should check the results in Lynx because you could produce a coding mess if you're not careful. But for a novice it is almost as easy as Namu6, but much more flexible.
http://www.hexagora.com/
SiteSpinner. Similar to DHEditor, uses divs and you have full freedom to place objects anywhere. We found it easier to use than DHEditor and its interface is more professional. It also has more access to vital functions such as header tags, and many other functions. SiteSpinner is a commercial product that can create a full website, but if you want to create pages separately there is a 'cut-down' version called WebDwarf, which is free. When we say 'cut-down' there's not much cut out at-all, it does almost everything SitSpinner does, the only real difference being that you cannot automatically create a link to another page, and cannot duplicate pages. Only one page can be opened at a time.
If you want to try the program out, we suggest WebDwarf at first, then download SitSpinner for a trial to see if the extra facilities are what you need.
http://www.virtualmechanics.com/
Some Utilities...
AI SmartColor. A very useful tool for grabbing color values from the screen display to get the numeric value for typing in. Includes the ability to convert a selected color to the nearest 'web-safe' color. The definition and purpose of 'web-safe' is a strange area - different sources say different things. Some say it is to enable full compatibility with older monitors, while others say it is for the benefit of people with vision difficulties. Even W3C, the world authority on html standards, is unsure whether 'web-safe' colors are needed anymore.
http://www.isotton.com/smartcolor/index.html
BackLinks Master. After you've had a website for some time, you'll gradually find out the real secrets of internet popularity, and one thing you'll soon come across is the high importance of other sites linking to you, which increases your ranking on search engines, while your links to others don't have anywhere as much bearing. BackLinks Master is a very good program for scanning the web to find out who is linking to you - even ones you never knew about. It does have a quirk in that you can only select one of the three major engines in the settings. If you want to keep checking them all you have to constantly edit the settings to do this. But the data it retrieves is well worth having.
http://www.cleverstat.com/
SimpleTidy. W3C is the body responsible for setting web standards. It also lays out rules called 'xhtml' which is basically the same as html but keeping to strict rules. It is always preferable to have all your web pages 'xhtml compliant' but requires that you're very careful with your coding, and if you use a wysiwyg editor you often can't control that at all. SimpleTidy is a utility that you apply to your web pages to make them fully compliant. We checked the results and found that even some of the messiest, non-standard code turned into a pristine document. The program also reformats and indents code that may have been shuffled around, especially from a wysiwyg editor. While a hand-coder would probably state that such a utility is not needed, not everyone is an expert, or even a coder, and such a tool as this goes a long way to creating clean sites that function properly.
http://www.tsnetsoft.com/
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