What program should I use for website design?

[artdutra04]

I use Dreamweaver MX (color syntax coding for XHTML, CSS, and PHP), Fireworks MX (for designing conceptual designs and graphics), Photoshop CS2 (always great to have in your bag o' tools!). I use Fireworks to design web pages, Dreamweaver to code them, and Photoshop to do amazing batch processing and editing of pictures for the photo galleries.

I've used FrontPage, and it was okay if all you are doing is editing HTML, CSS, and Javascript in the "Code View" and using its built in FTP. But I absolutely HATED that it did not have color syntaxing available for PHP. So I went out and bought Macromedia Studio MX to get Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and Flash.

I've also had some experience with CMS's, and they can be great. I was originally going to use a turn-key PHP/MySQL CMS for team228.org's 2007 website (our new site revision is still under construction) and then hack it down to the software core and rebuild it the way I wanted it to work, but I didn't like any of them enough, so I writing my own from scratch. It's fun to try the impossible!

* Actually, it's not that hard. I already have a news system done, about 40% of the administrator back-end done, the photo galleries are well under way, and overall its coming along great. The hardest part was importing 2100+ pictures into the MySQL database, tagging them, and adding descriptions for the photo gallery!