Home | My books | Free Web pages | Reference sites | Tool sites
There are a million Web tools out there and the vast majority of them, I’m afraid to say, are junk. That’s because the initial rush of energy about the Web back in the early 90’s led to the creation of a lot of thrown-together tools, many of which are still hanging around.
But as Web specifications have gotten more complex, a small number of expensive tools such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver, plus a selected few inexpensive tools, have become the standards for Web design and Web graphics.
Note that the expensive tools are almost all available in free trial versions; Photoshop even has a “lite” version, Photoshop Elements, that does nearly everything a Web author would want and is priced under $100. See Creating Web Graphics For Dummies for much more on Photoshop Elements.
The following tools and tool-related resources will help you get almost anything you need done without wasting your time with junk that should have been de-rezzed – anyone out there remember the movie Tron? – years ago:
Adobe has an amazing range of software products, all graphics- or Web authoring-related. Photoshop is the leading graphics program on the planet. Photoshop Elements is a fairly full-featured ‘lite’ version of Photoshop for under $100. Adobe Acrobat lets you create PDF files. GoLive Studio creates Web pages with sophisticated layouts. And on and on. Plus, it’s all backed up by expert help and discussions.
CNET does individual and roundup reviews of many products and services including Web-related tools, Web hosts, free Web page sites and more. The reviews go into great depth and save you tremendous amounts of time and effort. You now have to pay for access to much of the content, but it may well be worth it to you for the time you save.
Download.com is the online source for free and trial software. You can find free tools here that will convert file formats, allow you to create graphics, music, video and more, more, more. The site not only has the tools, it has user ratings and download totals that help you separate the wheat from the chaff. An amazing resource.
The home of Paint Shop Pro and several other cool tools, all available in free trial versions. Not an indispensable Web treasure like the Adobe site, but not half bad either.
Macromedia makes graphics, animation, and other multimedia-type tools that are, for the most part, intimidatingly capable and complex, yet indispensable for professionals in a wide range of endeavors. Macromedia Dreamweaver, their flagship Web development program for professionals, is almost usable by the rest of us, and it’s very cool; for instance, it doesn’t erase any hand-crafted additions you make to your site’s HTML code when you update your site in the main program, as does Microsoft FrontPage.
The Microsoft site is huge and includes many, many things not of direct interest to a Web page author. Where Web-specific info does exist, it tends to be for professional developers and over the heads of us mere mortals. However, there are several good Web-related tools here, such as FrontPage and Microsoft Publisher, and some useful supporting info to back them up.
Home | My books | Free Web pages | Reference sites | Tool sites