Lab

Web design software

The appeal of the Internet as a publishing medium is hard to resist. Its advantages over other media are clear: post your site to a low-cost host and it's instantly accessible to a global audience of many millions who can access it 24 hours a day. Even better, the Web, and the HTML code it's built upon, was specifically designed to make it simple for you to become a web author. In fact, all you need to create your first page, or indeed any page, is a basic text editor.

Every web page is produced with HTML code, and the more expert you become in it, the more useful you'll find it if you're able to handle it directly. But, let's face it, coding isn't exactly intuitive. That's why there are plenty of entry-level web authoring options designed to take care of the HTML in the background, while you concentrate on the design. That's also why the majority of packages provide a wysiwyg interface in which you effectively work in a page-layout view.

The wysiwyg approach provides a more familiar and productive authoring environment, but it's crucial to recognise that, because of its HTML basis, a web page remains fundamentally different to a printed page. As such, to really get to grips with web design you'll need a package that provides good table-based layout control and tag-based formatting. And these days you'll also want good support for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - a dedicated language that works alongside HTML.

Layout and formatting control provide the foundations for your page, but if you want it to stand out you'll need to use more than just text. What first gave the Web its design edge, and made it a success, was its support for graphics, so your authoring package will need good image control. As well as being a visual medium, the Web is also a dynamic medium and scripting capabilities can bring your pages to life even if it's only in the form of some simple button rollovers.

Finally, it's important to realise that you aren't just knocking up a few unconnected web pages: what you're actually producing is an entire website. To keep on top of it, you'll need dedicated site-management tools.

Now we know what we're looking for, let's go and see what the packages have to offer.