by Marc Gendron - Superintendent MSAD 20
My web person is using Word and Frontpage to create and post content. We are now considering Dreamweaver. Is there anything easier and user-friendly. Word is limiting and Frontpage seems to give us problems. Any advice welcome.
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3 comments:
Marc,
There has been a discussion going on about this topic at the ACTEM listserv this past week. As far as web editors, free, open source Kompozer is an option. It is user-friendly, but without all the bells and whistles of Dreamweaver.
I guess in the end it depends on the goal of the site and abilities of the individuals who will actually be posting changes.
jim
As a person that always wants to explore the free stuff out there, I have been working with Kompozer this last week. From what I have read on the forums and from my brief experience with the program, it seems to be a very good tool to get a meaty site up and running. Many of the menus and pallets are designed to emulate Dreamweaver. I bought Dreamweaver 3 years ago (called Studio MX back then) and it has already gone through two upgrade. Both of these upgrades require the user to purchase new software. The joy of the open source community is that the updates are free as is the original product. If your webmaster is missing a feature, he or she can simply jump on the forum and find out who is working on it and what is the status of development. When it is tested and the community agrees it is good to go, you download the new patch and poof your done. You don't have to wait until they come out with the next model next year, you get it when it is ready to go. Of course it is all free too. Unless, you are looking at starting a very ambitious school website, I would think Kompozer is worth trying. If your web master is familiar with CSS, I would suggest a very power full site could be done up in Kompozer.
Dreamweaver is still the king of software for web production though. It can be pricy and you may have to upgrade it every year or so but it offers editors more options that are easy to use than any other that I have worked with.
Just my thoughts. Note I am not a professional web designer, but I am increasing my web design skills every month as I keep reading forums and trying new things.
You really need to stop using Word for your website; it is not designed for use as a web editor despite what it might say on the box. If you need to use FrontPage, that's okay, but don't cut and paste stuff from Word. As it stands now, you have lots of extraneous and non-standard code on the MSAD 20 page that makes it almost impossible to read/view - even with Internet Explorer. I suggest you have a contest in your schools for the best new design for the district website. You can then continue to use FrontPage or any web authoring program to update the site.
John Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
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