EggXpert

I am currently working on my company's website and I have run into a problem where After editing a page, I open it up and it looks completely different than what I edited, previewed, and saved it as. And it also looks different in different browsers and this applies to different computers within the office (the page looks different on each machine). Anyway, to get to the point, I am using dreamweaver, and I am wondering if there are other editing programs out there that tend to be more consistent in different browsers, preferably IE and Firefox.

 

I would give you system specs but as I mentioned I opened this on many many machines with different specs.

If I forgot anything or if there is more information you may need than please let me know.

 

Thank You,

Brian 

In order to answer your question better, what exactly is happening to the web page. How is the page made (tables CSS, etc.)? Are you getting more consistency on computers with same resolutions, or does resolution not play a role here? Also, screenshots would be ideal.

There is a program I've been using for about 5 years now. It is called First Page, in my opinion it is the best editor out there, besides its many features, the great thing it is free. Clean of spyware as far as I can tell. You can read everything about it here: First Page .

it does have css and tables and as far as I can tell there isn't really consistency with resolutions.

Okay, thank you! I will check this out. The cheaper the program the happier my boss will be.

Chances are the program doesn't have anything to do with it, it's the coding, which you will run into no matter what editing software you use.  Tables are going to give you fits, especially depending on which editing mode you are using within DW.  Stick to CSS and use fixed widths if you don't want it to look different, but this is possible with notepad, if you are familiar enough with the code.

 Since you are already using DW, make sure and utilize their preview option within IE and FF, because both browsers will render pages differently.
 

Hi.

I work in web developent so hope I can help with your question.

First off, browsers compatability is a nightmare. I have just finished another website last weekend and it works wonderfully in IE and opera, but it does not display exactly the same in Firefox. Some browsers from my understanding read code slightly different so then will display certain parts of code different. Even if using CSS this can still happen. I have had this happen with some attributes to do with text color. In IE it was red and in Firefox it was grey. You simply just need to learn all the coding to work around this. W3Schools has some great tutorials, so check them out for info.

I would advise against using tables for style or layout in websites and suggest sticking only to extremely strict HTML writing. Making sure everything is wrote in lower case and has both start and end tags. CSS replaces having to use tables for anything beyond data input areas. Tables are only for data. ( what i was taught in university ). Now the biggest problem with the likes of dreamweaver and other similar programs is that the coding built into them is not that great. They put out sloppy coding. I dont know if you hard code or not, but if you dont, I highly advise you learn to code with just using the likes of Notepad ++ Which is a free HTML editor.

From what Im have understood from your question, its not 100% dreaweaver that is responsable for your problems, I believe it is an entire mix of all the problems combined. I use dreamweaver for CSS and sometimes for full websites and have never had any issues with it. However i do tend to stick with Notepad ++ for all my coding. I will say that Frontpage 2003 is a good program and a hella lot cheaper than dreamweaver.

Also I could be wrong with what you mean when you say the website looks different on each machine. Do you mean that it is larger or smaller or somehow out of proportion with different screen sizes and resuloutions?. The resuloution setting on screens will impact a website big time.

We had a client once who had his website all messed up and we tried to tell him he was causing the problem by having his resolution set to high. So always keep that in mind to determine a problem before we look at coding.

Hi Neonjuice,  thanks for sharing your experiences, I really appreciate the tip about screen resolution.

neonjuice:

First off, browsers compatability is a nightmare.

Yes..  and now with IE 8 and Google Chrome as more browsers to test our sites in.. yepie!!! doh. I only code.. so its either HomeSite, NotePad++ or DreamWeaver..