Three Web Design Tools that Designers should use

Hello all, again. Have not posted here in a while, so surely I should post SOMETHING, HMM???

Well I couldn't come up with much, just, IDK, some of the tools I use when I design sites. Two of the tools are more important than the third. And, I use many different tools for many different things, just because different projects require different things.

Got this post idea thanks to some noob on #Chris IRC chat who was trying to tell me how to sell my websites (lol). He thought he was the pretty awesome, saying that I overprice my sites and people could get 20 page professionally designed sites for under $100 on the internet. I laugh at you, whoever you are!

Anyway, here are some tools that will save you countless hours of development time. That's good for both you and your customer, isn't it?

1. Adobe Dreamweaver

If you develop websites professionally, chances are I don't even have to mention this tool for you to know what it is. But for those few of you who are unaware of it, Dreamweaver is a legend in the Web Development industry, and will remain there for quite some time. It does almost everything you need, from Layout to publishing. The only thing it doesn't have is a graphics editor, but a different tool will come later for that.

2. Firebug

Firebug is FREE. Firebug is THE reason for you to develop using Firefox. Personally, I always developed in Firefox anyway, then fixed any required things for the site to work in IE, but Firebug is extremely good at debugging, because you do everything IN REAL TIME. Edit css? It shows up the moment you're done typing. It really helps to learn cause and effect in CSS and anything else you do.

3. Adobe Fireworks

A lot of people use Photoshop to design sites, but I don't understand why. I never looked at Photoshop as a good vector graphics tool, I've always just used it for photography editing (is that why its called Photoshop?)
But anyway, I tend to go with Fireworks for doing the initial brainstorming of a site design. It has very rapid editing features for drawing any polygons and adding quick effects like glow or shadowing or gradients. Very nice tool.

Well that concludes that post. Sorry if it sounds stupid or doesnt make sense at all, I'm gettin really tired as of right now and I have a lot of stuff on my mind, so it is quite hard to concentrate :D.

Tags: adobe, cs3, cs4, development, dreamweaver, explorer, firebug, firefox, fireworks, ie

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Comment by Mad Max on November 30, 2008 at 7:16pm: I think Fireworks is more for prototyping and then getting the more raw ideas out there in visual form, then Photoshop can be used to refine those elements that require it. Please don't take this as offense, but most people who make websites aren't as visually creative as graphic designers, it's two parts of the brain that don't often merge for most people, and they're better at one or the other. You'll generally get pro developers who have graphics and web designers as two different people who work together and complement each others skills. One is more creative, the other is logic based, much like people who are good at English (or whatever language you study if English isn't the 1st language in yout country) tend not to be as good at maths, and vise versa.

Fireworks is good for those who work more in the logic part of the brain, and who actually put the sites together. It's great for getting the ideas in there quickly and effectively which you can then pass on to the graphics guys who will work more in the creative part of the brain (artistic wise I mean) who'll then refine the final design choice within Photoshop. That's how I've worked in the past at least. I SUCK at creating sites but I'm handy at making stuff look pretty. My friend can code the thing from nothing but isn't quite as handy inside Photoshop. We have a saying between us "He makes it work, he makes it look pretty" lol. He's recently found the wonders of Fireworks himself, I still usually end up refining things though in Photoshop.

I'll have to pass that Firebug thing along to my friend too, he'll love it, he's the same as you, he'll make a site work with Firefox then poke about getting the thing to work in crappy IE. If it works in FF and IE then it'll generally work in everything else lol.

Nice recommendations by the way, I'm sure a lot of people will find this useful, it's a common question around here too (not as common as Mac vs Windows mind lol).