Choosing A Web Design Tool

Article Summary: This article looks at four basic web design tools that you need in order to design your own online tutoring website.

1. Web Design Authoring Software

Web design authoring software or WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) allows you to create HTML pages, either by using the programs drag-and-drop features, or by allowing you to hand code each page. As a rule you should design your web pages either in HTML 4.01 or in XHTML. Although there is a switch from HTML to XHTML, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) currently recommends the use of XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1 or HTML 4.01 as the standard codes for creating web pages. The W3C is responsible for the development of HTML and other markup languages. Web designers often refer to the HTML codes as either "clean" or "dirty codes." Programs such as MS Frontpage or Yahoo Sitebuilder produces dirty codes. Dirty codes are not considered pure HTML by web design professionals, and can only be hosted by special web hosting servers that supports that particular code. It's very important that you choose a web design software that produces only clean HTML codes. Clean codes can be easily read by other web designers, they can also be edited by most HTML Editors.

2. Digital Image Editing Software

As you compile photographs and images for your web pages, you'll need a software to edit and convert your files into images that can be used on the internet. The tools that will need in order to work with pictures and images is a digital image editing software. Next to an HTML Editor, a photo editing tool is perhaps the second most important tool for web designers. Photo editing tools (also known as image editors) help you to crop, resize and add special effects to your photographs. In addition to photographs, photo editing tools allow you to create and modify graphics and photographic images.

Since your photo editing software is one of your most frequently used tool, choose a software that is flexible and intuitive. If you're going to be working with a lot of images, you might also want a program that allows you to quickly streamline all your images to the same size and format. For beginners, or for those who only occasionally need an image editor to post images to their blog or website, there are many software that are both free and easy to use such as PhotoFiltre or Googles Picasa software. Another popular digital imaging software, which is used mostly by professional artist and designers is Adobe's Photoshop. Photoshop is a powerful image and photo editing software that allows you to create professional designs.

Before you buy a digital image editing software, see some of our recommended free Digital Image Editing Software.

3. Web Browsers

A Web Browser allows you to view and test you web pages. Since Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) has reportedly captured around 78 - 93% of the browser market, making it the most commonly used browser, make sure that you run your tests on this browser. Other web browsers that you might like to download is Mozilla Firefox - and Netscape Navigator.

4. An HTML Validator

HTML Validator Tools are used to check and validate that your HTML or XHTML pages comply with the code and document structure as set out by the W3C. A number of validator tools are available, but the online W3C Validator tool is the most accurate and up-to-date tool since it follows closely the specification of the W3C itself.