I am a guy whose idea of a web page design tool has always been stuff like Kompozer, and I've got the homepage to prove it (although, actually, most of that was done by hand back in the day….).
But I was admiring a nice looking web page with good graphics and drop-down boxes the other day, and wondering how they'd done that. A quick look at the codes suggests it was done in iWeb 2.0.4. So I went looking for that.
Turns out, shoulda figured given the i, that's its for Mac, and I'm a PC guy.
I even went so far as to see how you might install a Mac tool on a PC. VMware? OK, been thinking of that to run Ubuntu next to XP. External hard drive? OK, got a few spares acting as paperweights. Bittorent a pirated copy? Forget it.
So … anyone know of a good, ideally free, XP-compatible (or maybe Ubuntu-compatible) web design tool that makes cool pages easily?
Why don’t you just get a used Mac on ebay or craigslist. There will likely be a slew of them after Macworld first week of january. (But BTW, iWeb sucks for blog design). You could also just use a text editor and look for nice css web templates like a this guy’s place and munge them to suit. http://andreasviklund.com/templates/
The tool usually doesn’t make good design, your eye does. That is you can make a great page with any tool, but any tool doesn’t automatically create a great page. You are far better off stealing someone’s design that you like from view source and a text editor, but templates are a great resource, too. If you insist on a tool though, look at the developer’s page to see if they include templates, and also see how ugly or beautiful that site is to see how easy or hard it will be to make something elegant with that tool.
Excellent post michael! An intriguing distraction from the corruption in Illinois that will keep your readers from suspecting that where there is smoke there is fire. What is best about your post is that it distracts without use of reference to Brittany Spears, Madonna or Paris Hilton, an all to often ploy used by other outlets that may soon loose its effectiveness as a distraction. Most ingeniously, you appeal to a need for assistance, which tends to attract those with the greatest tendency to want to fix things.
The Party and its acolytes all know that The Mighty O was an honest Chicago politician. Really he was. So please don’t trouble yourself with such worries and help michael find a free way to create nice web pages instead of finding an eager UM student!
All Hail the Mighty O!
I’ve tried to find UM law students with HTML/CSS design skills who’d like to be a research assistant, but without success. (I suppose I could broaden my search to undergrads, but then the funds available to pay them would be very small.)
If you have some funds then, why not post a request at your university’s graphic design center
http://www.as.miami.edu/art/p_gdmm.html
You could ask one of the faculty to use your site as a case study for one of their classes. You could have a “contest” and award the design that works best a prize (out of your very small funds).
Or you could post an ad near there seeing if any undergrad wants to earn some cash over the holidays. (Stress that your emphasis is on words and ease of publishing, as well as web standards, and not flash.)
YM
The only funds I have for my homepage are either for research assistants — which must go to UM *Law* students, or money from my own pocket. Which is why the funding for undergrads would be low…but I appreciate the idea and may try it if I give up on DIY methods.
(As for this blog, which isn’t what I’m looking to redesign at present, no university funds are used for it, and it resides on a server that is not paid for or in any way associated with the University.)