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The Free Software Guide
Designing and Developing using Free
Software
The Guide aims to show that full-fledged web-design is still possible using
completely free tools ('freeware' software). The software categories are
Authoring HTML, FTP, Graphics, and Text Editors.
Authoring HTML
To start with, you'll need a dedicated software program to edit your HTML with,
while learning and improving on your authoring skills at the same time. This is
nicely accomplished by
AceHTML
Freeware, which also includes a built-in library of Javascript and DHTML scripts you
can drop in and use instantly, and, most importantly, learn from. You should
note however, that this is not a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) program
like FrontPage or DreamWeaver, however if you really want to learn how to script
websites, this is the way to learn. That's not to say that WYSIWYG editors
aren't useful, they're tremendously so, however they can only guess what you really
want, whereas when you're coding you're being explicit about it.
AceHTML offers
color coding, code management and pre-designed styles to get you going right
away.
Getting your files 'Up' to the Server
This is at the same time simple, and hides within it a few snags. A simple and
free FTP program is rather common, and really, there are quite a few good ones
out there. We chose
AceFTP because it connects nicely with AceHTML, but also because it's won multiple
awards for usability and control. Always remember to keep your server
information backed-up elsewhere, not just within your FTP program. It's
extremely common to not be able to connect with one software for some reason,
and then not remembering what your password was in the first place.
Graphics and adapting for the Web
In terms of graphics software, there aren't that many packages that really give
you a proper toolset for creating, rather than editing images. Remember that
graphics for the web is much more technical and restricted, and isn't at all like photo
editing. That's not to say that some photo editing software won't let you create
some nice graphics, but you'll need to move those images to another software for
'micro management' before placing them into your pages. Here are three packages
to get you started with. Naturally, they're all freeware:
Paint.Net : This is mainly a photo
editing software, but a very refined one at that. As a matter of fact, it's one
of the most impressive freewares you can download, according to many reviews.
It's still evolving, so if some features aren't there now, they may be there in
the next edition.
Ultimate Paint Freeware : Ultimate Paint may
not feel as modern as some of the other packages, but it does allow you to
micro-manage your images (modify by numbers and percentages, edit color count,
control compression) which is very important for a good finish on a website.
FxFoto : This is clearly a photo editing software,
however it allows you to create so many combinations of collages that it becomes
useful as a wildcard graphics program too. You can create textured backgrounds
with odd effects, tilesets that just need a bit of blurring in another program
to be used as button backgrounds, etc.
One last note about graphics programs: Photoshop is quite often way above the
limit in terms of price for most people, especially if you need to set aside
resources for an advanced web editor and/or Flash. But for the most part, for
most purposes, you don't need Photoshop. A company called Jasc, later purchased
by Coral, developed Paint Shop Pro (now in its 10th version - 'Paint Shop Pro X').
This software package costs $80, and it's nothing short of a powerhouse. It
gives you every bit of control you'll ever need, and if you don't want to take
that control and would rather the program handle the technical parts, you can do
that too. Its ability to work in Vector Mode is amazing, especially when you're
moving things around and don't want to dictate the same bit of very specifically
defined text over and over. When you get more used to Vector mode, you'll find
that sometimes you'll only want to add one letter, or 'Glyph', and then edit it
like you would in 'Illustrator'. The software also has every effect you'd expect
to find in a graphics creation package. It enables you to achieve very accurate
results when preparing images for the web, and the advanced layer system can
save you a lot of time when you need several versions of a similar item. My
point is, you'll only get so far in graphics with freeware software, simply
because they're comparatively heavy programs, which means that there's only so
much a team/group would do for such a project, and it would have to be an
extensive team at that. In my opinion, $80 is a very reasonable price for a
package that covers just about all of your 2D needs (in a nutshell, 90% of what
Photoshop does, and it's the important 90%). And by all means, read
every review you can find on it.
Text Editors
For plain text coding, Notepad isn't a proper environment. If you script CSS,
JavaScript, Java, ActionScript, or any server-side language like Perl, PHP, or
Python, ASP, you need something to manage the code, even if not a complete IDE
('Integrated Development Environment'). What you need that program for is
color-coding, indentation, advanced search-and-replace, multi-document editing,
and so on. There are quite a few of these around, and it's difficult to select
out of the freeware versions. This is because the freeware is usually a light
version of the shareware, which normally doesn't cost more than around $20,
sometimes $10. They simply remove a bunch of features from the freeware, which
is fine, it just makes the task of figuring out what's in which version rather
difficult. We decided overall on
EditPad Lite. It's adaptable for many uses, and is quite advanced in terms of features, if
you need it to be. Remember though, that AceHTML maybe just fine for CSS,
JavaScript, and DHTML. It depends on how you like to work.
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Remember that tools come with instruction manuals, and those documents can save
you time, energy, and in case of software, can teach you quite a bit about the
subject, not just the software package in question. And of course, when it comes
to coding, let the software take the lead at first if you're just starting out,
but look up the code that it's placing for you and what it means. This includes
the code that a page starts with, and the code that the software generates when
you've gone through a 'wizard' of sorts (in HTML, for example, a table wizard).
Lastly, don't get stuck on effects... I know, this is odd coming from this site,
but really, in practice, you'll realize that a refined look and feel is much
more of a challenge and is much more rewarding than a few animations flying
around.
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