Web design

[jack616]

Does anyone here have anything to say about web design software?
I'm asking here because I'm hoping at least a few of you bash out
a bit more than a plain web page now and then and I'd welcome some well informed info.

I've been given some space on a server to set up a site (so I dont need to worry about admin)
but the best software recomendation was to use netobjects - which was suggested with a whole range
of if's and buts. I'm happy to pay for it - it doesn't have to be free - but of course free is cool too.

I don't want anything to do with dreamweaver or so called "cloud" computing but would like
to have some stuff built in like PHP use if possible.

If anyone is interested the site will be just for odds and ends of tools I write for myself
cleaned up a bit and offered to anyone who wants them - plus one data cleaning project
I'm trying to resurect now I have regained it. (I'll be looking for testers for that if anyone is interested
- its probably of most interest to web site admins or pehaps list managers)
I could probably spare some bandwidth if anyone here wants to have something hosted.

all comments welcome.

[Thaddy]

This is not about design software, but on how to design user interfaces and by a big margin the definitive guide on the subject:

About Face 3
The Essentials Of Interaction Design
(ISBN13:
    9780470084113 )

By  Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann and David Cronin.

I started with About Face 1. Invaluable experience and insightful. Nowadays it is updated to the web (although that didn't matter too much). My last version is 3 (p.d. 2007) , there may be newer/higher versions out there already.

This is all about why, not about how. Most programmers do know how, but a lot of them do not not why
And it is the academic's book of choice about the subject, written in a non-academic, accessible, way.

To stay current: any widely used tools regarding CSS3 and HTML5 are extremely important. Just look up the "most popular" lists with google. Scripting is less of an issue and generally books and software are of lesser quality, but any good book about PLAIN javascript/ecmascript should do. Do never tie in to frameworks (which tend to introduce security issues. FACT. And everybody and my dead grandma uses them. Which makes the security issues easier to exploit by the uninformed script kiddie, which is an avoidable nuisance) before you know basics, so don't read anything about those for now. Only the security reports, that is ( I am not talking about spear-point attacks.... that's done by criminal or governmental pro's)