Web Design IDEs

Hi Everyone,

I have learnt web design techonologies at my university and also tried my hands on the new HTML5 and CSS3 web standards. I still know how to perform web programming with hands on knowledge and a refresher on the coding syntaxes and API libraries.

I have used Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver (now Adobe Dreamweaver CSS 5.5). I have not tried the new designer from Microsoft, Microsoft Expressions.

The best IDE for web development is definitely Adobe Dreamweaver CS 5.5. It is the most extensive development environment today. It is also integrated with other Adobe products such as Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Flash, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. The latest version (5.5) also supports HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery technologies. Now it also has intelligent coding built in and there are multiple preview screens for pc and mobile devices. Drag and drop capabilities are also available. Dreamweaver has the most complete web development tools so far.

Microsoft Frontpage is a older webpage development tool that comes with Microsoft Office. It has built in drag and drop and publishing capabilites. It uses a lot of frames in the web design back then. Now, it is replaced by Microsoft Expressions. Expressions also comes with newer features such as HTML5 and CSS3 integration, dynamic website support (PHP, Javascript, CSS, Silverlight, Flash, Windows Media support and etc) and browser preview comparisons (IE, Safari, Firefox). We can compare how a website looks like between web browsers. Overall, it is much improved over Microsoft Frontpage.

Overall, Adobe Dreamweaver remains my best option for web development. However, it does not come cheap. It is quite expensive. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

This concludes the IDE posts that I am writing. 

My overall favourite programming languages:

1. C#.NET / Java
2. HTML5 / CSS3
3. RPG Programming
4. JavaScript / VBScript
5. SQL Server
6. C++
7. Visual Basic.NET

My overall favourite IDEs:

1. Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 and below (I liked it since Dreamweaver 8)
2. Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2010 and below (from Visual Studio 2003)
3. Microsoft SQL Server 2010 and above (SQL Server 2005 onwards). SQL2000 is good but GUI is not as modern
4. Netbeans / Eclipse
5. JCreator / BlueJ
6. IBM ISeries AS400 5250 Emulator
7. Dev C++
8. Microsoft Expressions (This ranking may not be accurate as have not used before)
9. Microsoft Frontpage
10. Unix Shell

It is good to know both front end and back end programming languages.

Cheers,

Rogerkoo