I am looking for a tool(s) to VERY quickly create the 80-90% of my web
site that has nothing fancy. I am willing to use either an online tool
or an off-line application. The other 10-20 percent I will do by other
means.

--- I am... 
- the only who will be editing the site.
- an experienced programmer.
- using a Mac OS X computer.
- already using a hosting service (ix Web).
- plan fairly simple pages -see "Page types" below
- and I have expectations I'll need to move to a high-powered program
some day, such as Dreamweaver, as my business grows.

--- My SiteStudio experience (provide free with my host)
  (1) Can't edit the graphics in the header. I want to be able to use
my own header graphic.
  (2) Can't edit the button borders and other details to make for a
cleaner look over what their templates provide.
  (3) The page content does not resize with the window

--- My CityMax experience (tried their 10 day free trial)
NOTE: They are part of the http://www.MeZine.com family of affiliates
as demo'd by http://www.samplebuilder.com/
  (1) Provides everything I find lacking in SiteStudio.
  (2) They host the pages but provide no phone tech support.
  (3) The $20 monthly charge makes them an expensive solution in the long run.

--- Features I seek:
- can easily/quickly create a 10-20 page site
- creates HTML that is good for Google ranking
- can provide my own image for the site header
- can paste in HTML text when editing a page
- able to create a clean look for the site
- navigate to sub pages by links at left edge of page (underline style) 
- Ideally want all pages to run off my current host, but I am open to
other hosting possibilities.

--- Page types I plan to have:
     1 and 2 column generic pages
     About
     Articles
     Contact
     FAQ
     Links
     Press releases
     Tables (for feature comparisons)   

--- My best guess solution...
I see two components:

1.  Use a editable, full-site template that provides these features:
  - Header image that I can customize
  - Index buttons (customize their name, layout, and look)
  - Generic pages that accept HTML content
  - The template manages the linking between pages
  
  NOTE: The CityMax web-based tool does this but I expect
  a stand-alone application would do it better, and cheaper in
  the long run.
  
2.  Use an HTML editor to create the content for each page in the
template -- ideally with these features:
  - Drag and drop editing
  - Standard Word type formatting
  - Support for images
  - Support for tables
  
  NOTE: Microsoft Word might well be this tool, since it
  can save in HTML format. There must be a better tool though.

---

Clarification of Question by lenr-ga on 28 Sep 2004 08:17 PDT

I do plan to have a Windows machine soon. Perhaps what I want to do is
much easier on a Windows machine. If so, I can purchase the PC now
rather than later.

---

Clarification of Question by lenr-ga on 28 Sep 2004 10:17 PDT

In my ingnorance, I may have narrowed my options too much. I have
asked for an HTML editor. Perhaps a page editor or content editor is
what I should say. In any case, I am looking for an editor for
producing the content that goes into a page in the template.

---

Clarification of Question by lenr-ga on 20 Oct 2004 11:15 PDT

In my own research I have found wysiwygPro, www.wysiwygPro.com, as an
HTML editor. It runs in many browsers, although not IE on a Mac. It
does run in FoxFire on the Mac. It handles images, tables, and style
sheets and appears to be a mature product. One has a choice of saving
the generated HTML to XHTML 1.0 Transitional or HTML 4.01
Transitional.

I also found Code4Design, www.Code4Design.com, which looks extremely
hot for CMS. It's main drawback is the built-in wysiwyg editor only
works in Windows IE--everything else works on both platforms. One can
still enter text but, on a Mac, but there is no way to  override a
style you have setup.

I plan to get both products. And now, I've discovered, I need to find
a quick-and-dirty solution for generating CSS on a Mac.

 I will accept an answer to just this question:  What are the easy to
learn and use CSS generators/editors for the Mac?

---

Clarification of Question by lenr-ga on 20 Oct 2004 11:19 PDT

With one qualification, the CSS editor must useful.  i.e.: generates
valid CSS data and is not seriously limited in capability.

---

Clarification of Question by lenr-ga on 20 Oct 2004 11:40 PDT

[reposting of clarification that failed to show up -lenR]

In my own research, I have found wysiwygPro [www.wysiwygPro.com] as an
HTML editor. It runs in many browsers, although not IE on a Mac. It
does run in FoxFire on the Mac. It handles images, tables, and style
sheets and appears to be a mature product. One has a choice of saving
the generated HTML to XHTML 1.0 Transitional or HTML 4.01
Transitional.

I also found Code4Design [www.Code4Design.com] which looks extremely
hot for CMS. It's main drawback is the built-in wysiwyg editor only
works with Windows IE. Everything else works on both platforms. One
can still enter text on a Mac, but there is no way to override the
style you have pre-set for that text chunk.

I expect to get both products. And now, I've realized, I need to find
a quick-and-dirty solution for generating CSS on a Mac.

I will accept an answer to this question...
What CSS editors/generators are there that:
   - Run on the Mac
   - Are easy to learn and use
   - Generate high quality CSS data
   - Are not seriously limited in capability

---

Clarification of Question by lenr-ga on 22 Oct 2004 06:53 PDT

I'm closing out this question and submitting a new question just on CSS editors.

Hi,

I recommend using pagespinner
http://www.optima-system.com/pagespinner.  Its great cheap (from
memory USD$29.95) and has this nifty preview option using OS X
preview.  It has great reviews at version tracker and macupdate(both
five stars).

<rant>If you end up designing on a Windows PC don't lose the mac. 
Make sure you check your website on the mac in both Safari and Firefox
as well as IE.  You don't want to fall into the trap of you website
only being accessable to window users with IE.  There are a lot of
people who don't buy products or services from companies that don't
support other browsers.</rant>

BBEdit is also good but it is a lot more expensive.

Regards,
Goopee

I am looking for the quick & dirty solution...

Thanks Goopee for you comment!

I do have BBEdit and use it every day for many different things,
although I have not used yet it for HTML. Thanks for the tip on
PageSpinner--I had not run into it. It looks like it might be better
for HTML than BBEdit. These fall short though, in my hunt for the
quick and dirty solution.

I just want to create objects on the screen, enter the text, and have
the application generate the HTML. My vision is something like a Quark
Express that saves to HTML and includes a library of HTML objects that
can placed in a document, where the objects can be moved and resized
as inspired. Dreamweaver does this, I guess, but seems way over
powered (and difficult to learn) for just creating content to be
placed into a template.

On the Mac front, have no fear on my leaving. I have 3 Macs and no
plans to abandon them. I will check across several browsers and thank
you for recommending which ones to check against.

Len

I never use it because I either use a CMS or HTML-KIT or notepad, BUT
Netscape Composer is free and available for OS X, and it's WYSIWYG...

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download_fullinstall.jsp

Or your favorite office suite program that exports to HTML, including a free one: 
www.OpenOffice.Org (link is direct download for MacOS)
http://download.openoffice.org/1.1.2/contribute.html?continue=http%3A//www.openoffice.org/project/porting/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html

This is a Free comment.

ooh.. yeah, you have PHP and MySQL on there, so you might want to
consider installing your own Content Management System to do this.
It's not a hard thing to do... I've been testing many, but you might
want to try something like www.phpnuke.com (overkill, but NICE!) and
install it as a framework for your site. Yes, it'll take a bit to
learn and install, but adding pages will be BROWSER based (any
computer/os, most any browser) instead of OS based.

Consistent look and feel, the whole bit. :) 

I'm currently testing out webgui www.plainblack.com/webgui and may
implement it myself. (because this requires changes to httpd.conf, it
may be tough to set up on a hosted site). It lacks wysiwyg, but I
think I may integrate fckeditor http://www.fckeditor.net/ to fill that
gap in the meantime.

Another Free Comment.