I am wanting to learn web page design eventually hoping to do it
professionally.  I am looking for recommendations for a full featured
web-site creation program similar to Macromedia Studio but less costly
than the $900 it costs (I am not eligible for an educational version).
 I've programmed for 20+ years and so am not concerned about the
technical challenge.  Intead, I want a program that I can stay with as
I become more and more proficient.  The long term viability of the
company is also a concern as most of my investment is in learning the
product.  My price range is $200 or less; freeware tools are a
possibility as well.  I suppose older "used" versions of Macromedia
are an option.

My hosting service is www.1and1.com on a Microsoft Server.  Underlying
support appears to be limited to Adobe GoLive, FrontPage server
extensions, CGI, Active Server Pages, and ASP.Net.  Moving to a Linux
server would be an option for me.

In addition to simple recommendations, elaboration on the strengths
and weaknesses of each would help much.  Pointers to articles, reviews
or recommendations would be great.

-- Kent

You can easily get brand new full version copies of Macromedia Studio
MX 2004 editions on eBay for less than $200 shipped.  This package is
what top web designers around the country use.  Dreamweaver (included)
is by far and wide, the best website designing program in the world.

It includes:

   1.      DREAMWEAVER MX 2004
   2.      FLASH MX 2004
   3.      FREEHAND MX
   4.      FIREWORKS MX 2004
   5.      HOMESITE +
   6.      COLDFUSION MX 6.1 DEVELOPER EDITION
   7.      FLASH VIDEO EXPORTER

List of reviews:

About.com: http://webdesign.about.com/cs/htmleditors/gr/aaprstudiomx04.htm
Creativepro.com: http://www.creativepro.com/story/review/20340.html
PCMag.com: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1658622,00.asp
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Studio-MX-2004-with-Flash/dp/B0000CAVVI

As the lazypig (great name, lol) posted, Macromedia is becoming the
industry standard in web design. Our company mostly uses the
Macromedia Suite along with Adobe Photoshop for creating web graphics,
such as icons, boxes, images, etc.

For a more entry-level package, Microsoft Frontpage is a very user
friendly web design tool. The standard templates are very simple to
use, but with experience can create a well desinged site.

Our company site, <a href="www.aryeltech.com">ARYELTech.com</a>, for
instance was created using a simple template and Frontpage. More of
our graphic heavy sites are design with Dreamweaver.

Another, very entry-level tool, is the Blue Voda software.... here is
their link <a href="http://www.vodahost.com/partner/idevaffiliate.php?id=5150_1_3_9">Free
Website Builder - You will love it!</a>

Very easy to use.... 

I hope all this helps!

From a programmers point of view I prefer not to use GUI editors and
instead went with a $100-$300 package from Zend Studio that does PHP
and HTML code coloring, indentation, completion etc very similar to a
lot of popular IDEs for c++, python etc. It will not help you with
layout like Dreamweaver or GoLive will but that is what I have a web
browser for anyway.

If you are looking for a GUI editor might look at GoLive from Adobe.
Dreamweaver may be an industry standard but it puts out horrible to
maintain and/or manually edit and maintain code. Again from a
programmers perspective this is painful for me as I like hacking at
the code itself as it is faster a lot of times than finding whatever
menu that option happened to be in. GoLive does things in a way that
make sense to me, Dreamweaver does things in a way that make sense to
a designer. Just preference I suppose.

Again though... I do not actually use either any more. I use Zend
Studio as it allows me to do pure code development, does proper text
highlighting etc. Best of all they have a good license. For $100-300
depending on version I can do everything I need and want to do and
does a very good job of it. Since most of my pages are auto-generated
from PHP functions to make it easier to maintain, using a GUI is just
not a desired or viable option as they fail completely to render that
code.

iweb, apple makes it and the only drawback is that there its no way to
edit the sorce code in the program no java script no flash. but their
is a program that allows iweb to have these things it's called iweb
enhancer. i have used alot of programs and this is the best for
creative freedom and this isthe first version of iweb. iweb  is only
$80 and iweb enhancer is $12. i love this program.


iweb - http://www.apple.com/ilife/quicktour/iweb/

iweb enhancer - http://web.mac.com/cbrantly/iWeb/Software/iWeb%20Enhancer.html

Textmate from macromate.com (http://macromates.com/) does indentationa
nd a host of otther neat stuff.
I use that, and CSSEdit(http://www.macrabbit.com/cssedit/), to build websites.
Both apps together cost less than $75.