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"Web Design Tools?"

What are the best web-design tools, for windows?

Is TextPad the best text-editor? Are there any apps. for to-do lists and notes? I know Mac's have loads, but even so, that doesn't help me...

Sweet. Looks perfect!

Cheers cjh! J00 t3h r0x0r.

:D

Coin wrote:
> Heh....
>
> To clarify: looking for a program (or possibly extension?) for
> Notepad, to highlight code in CSS and XHTML. Same as what Firefox
> does for .css files and "View Source". But... Yeah.

Topstyle Pro (Fully customizable, full validation tools etc etc)
DreamweaverMX 04 (Only n00bs use it in WYSIWYG) (Ditto)
Zend Studio
PHP Designer 2005
Visual Inter Dev

Oops, forgot to mention HomeSite. The original text editor and probably still one of the best.

Heh...

What's the point in Dreamweaver MX if all it does is format text?

Coin wrote:
> What's the point in Dreamweaver MX if all it does is format text?

Mainly the fact it's an industry standard application design to handle everything thrown at it from html to .NET & aspx. Fully customizable right down to modifying the whole GUI of the app, excellent code handling and formatting, validation tools, code formatting (not just colour, it goes as far as font's etc), dynamic preview of data without having to upload to the server first, snippets library, could go on for days.

You'd be surprised how powerful it is for a text editor. The most powerful asset in DW is the search and replace tool and it's flexibility (condoitional statements, wild cards, current page, site wide etc etc).

DW is what you make it. I've been using it since release 1 and it still surprises me sometimes.

TopStyle Pro is another awesome app, though doesn't handle php etc. But for £45, you can't go wrong.

Coin wrote:
> Basically looking for a replacement for Notepad, and possibly some
> other's that make multi-tasking that little bit easier. Preferably,
> the Notepad replacement would be able to hand XHTML and CSS,
> unlike TextPad...

Just as an aside, if you're settled in Textpad, you can find plenty of syntax definitions on the textpad homepage which will give you highlighting. If you want both CSS and XHTML highlighting in the same file, you can merge the defintion files fairly easily.

There is no "best" design tool out there; it's always down to preference. I find DW too heavy handed for simple sites, and prefer to use a mixture of TS and a good text editor (Notepad++) for HTML/CSS sites.

Notepad ++ is teh shizle.

Perfect, as I only code CSS and XHTML, with the occasional fumble with PHP.

I dont use the Design veiw of dreamweaver much, but why is it you dont like it?
If it cuts down time on simple things like table resizing then why not use it?

Because it encourages people to use out-dated techniques such as tables and the dreaded frames.

My opinion - learn XHTML & CSS, then write it in Notepad or, as it happens, Notepad ++ :D.