Freeware Web Design

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Ok, so I've found Gimp to use instead of Photoshop and I've found Inkscape to use instead of Illustrator. I'm now looking for a freeware web design product instead of Dreamweaver. I have found Drupal, but that seems to be more content management orientated. Does anyone know of a simple freeware program I can use like Front Page or Dreamweaver. My Dad said that I should just use Notepad, but I'm not that good at html. I'm ok, but not that good.

im with your dad on that one, hand coding is where its at. Even if you arent that great its pretty easy and worth learning.

Instead of notepad, I'd use vi, vim, or gvim. You get some more functions, such as pattern matching, and some versions will recognize when you are working with different types of code, and color code certain things, like functions, tags, and comments.

You also get much more power when editing lines. You still need to learn HTML, though...

There is also Notepad++

Not sure what you're trying to do, but I was able to knock out a tolerable website using Google's free sites for something my wife wanted me to do for her work, basically a one shot site of a few pages plus some PDF attachments for some conference she was in charge of. Didn't look all that great, I admit, but the price was right (free) and given my knowledge of HTML/XHTML (pretty much nonexistent at the start and not much greater at the end) it took nowhere near as long as I thought it would.

And, yes, she works for a very large organization that has a staff that is supposed to do all that crap for her. As if.

Sausage Software makes Hot Dog, and something else, I think, that is shareware. There's probably 10 to the ridiculous numbers of free coders out there.

That being said, I've heard good things about something called the Crimson Editor...free

You can learn HTML in like half an hour. No one, no matter how technologically inept, has an excuse to use Dreamweaver instead of HTML other than laziness.

An editor like jEdit can be very useful, as long as you've got Java installed. Keep a web browser open as well and you can see what the browser does with things - Save from the editor, Refresh in the browser.

Or download an Eclipse with Web Tools, and get help documentation, tag completion, you name it.

Stretch your wings and get into the Google tools, or jQuery. Add a Tomcat to the mix and start packaging your applications.

It depends on how far you have to take it. If you're trying to get a job doing Web Design, they're going to want Dreamweaver experience (whether it's necessary or not...

That said, yeah, the basics of HTML don't take a lot of work (I did my first web page in Notepad, but there's folks here who used Edlin, or probably vi and emacs...

A good alternative to Dreamweaver is Aptana Studio who is free.

Cool, thanks. I will look up some of those suggestions. And yes, I agree, I really should get to grips with html and do it properly.

Just in case you come back...

These are html editors with wysiwyg options.
NVU
KOMPOZER (mozilla?)
FILEZILLA? (mozilla firefox ftp plugin)
Older Mozillas (not firefox) also included html editor and offline email/news client

possibly...
OpenOffice Word Processor or other app may generate html.
Abiword may generate html
^not sure

with the text editor of your choice and the browser you don't need
any of the above if you don't care about wysiwyg, as long as you
can ftp to your site with something besides filezilla, like gftp, ... etc..

Go play, with your text editor of choice, with one or two of Google Chart's examples. Use the browser of your choice as a testbed.

Make yourself an eXist installation and write the HTML from an XQuery from the data of your choice. Still, go on using the browser of your choice as a testbed.

You'll be amazed. If you hit something that doesn't work, just ask me.