[waffffffle]

My page design tool of choice has always been Adobe PageMill because it is so simple to use. Unfortunately Adobe killed it off a long time ago and PageMill still has issues (like it can only do relative font sizes). It also will never be OS X native.

So I'm wondering what a good replacement for PageMill would be. I would like a tool that is inexpensive (PageMill came free on iMacs a few years ago), and doesn't require any training or learning in order to use it. PageMill was very simple and straightforward. I have a copy of Dreamweaver 3 and I have absolutely no clue how to use it.

I need to make a graphics-intensive website for a band and I was wondering which tool I should go for and how I should go about making the site. Here are the options I have been considering: learning Dreamweaver and Fireworks (I have Dreamweaver 3 Fireworks 3 Studio, but don't know how to use either of them), using ImageReady with Dreamweaver (I have Imageready 3 Photoshop6 and I have previously been making sites by creating graphics in Imageready and pasting the HTML code into PageMill, not the best system since PageMill often screws up the code). What else could I do? Can I make an entire site in Imageready? How about Flash? I have Flash 4, which I haven't used in over a year, and I'm not the most proficient with, but a lot of bands have Flash websites.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

[Fink-Nottle]

Firstly, if your copy of Pagemill is registered you are eligible to upgrade to Adobe Golive 6 for $150 US. That's a good deal and you may want to consider that. Bear in mind too that GoLive has an image optimizer built in so as long as your image programme can produce a TIFF you can then optimize for the web using GoLive.

For ease of use you may want to take a look at Stone Studio. The 'Create' app is $150 and is very full featured... you can use it for page layout, illustration and... websites. You need to group objects and text properly to get true WYSIWYG output but the programme is very easy to use and versatile. Info here: <a href="http://www.stone.com" target="_blank">http://www.stone.com</a>

Good luck!

[Hobbes]

Actually, I believe you can upgrade from PageMill to GoLive for $99 not $150. I know its not a huge difference, but hey, every little bit counts. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

[Fink-Nottle]

Hmmm... Hobbes is correct ($99) BUT they no longer seem to offer the upgrade path from Pagemill. It looks like now they require an earlier version of GoLive with the serial number. I'm glad I got in there before they changed it...

Here's the link to the Adobe site so you can get the info straight from the horse's mouth:
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/store/products/master.jhtml?id=catGoLive" target="_blank">http://www.adobe.com/store/products/master.jhtml?id=catGoLive</a>

[Simon Mundy]

How about <a href="http://www.softpress.com/" target="_blank">freeway</a> ?

[Scoo]

Mozilla/Netscape comes with Composer, a very decent wysiwyg HTML editor for the price (free!). It's definitely better than PageMill, IMO.