using linux for web design

.. replacing my windows software

[4eyes]

OK, so now I have linux on a test box I am trying to see how I could survive without my usual web design tools.

Graphics:
Gimp
Corel Photopaint
..either seems OK for what I need

HTML and CSS:
Well this was a major surprise for me. At first I could find nothing half decent but then tried the Mozilla editor and was amazed. Never looked at it before, but it really is rather good. Found an add-on that gives it a decent looking css editor as well (not got it working on Linux yet - but looks good on windows).

Any others (that are free:)) that I should know about?

[evinrude]

I've been using Bluefish for HTML development on Linux. Pretty spiffy, and since I've come from Homesite on Windows, it even looked similar.

[littleman]

I've used Bluefish, Quanta+, and Mozilla. Quanta and Bluefish seem to follow the same philosophy. I like them both, but find myself using Quanta more of the two. That preview window is very handy.

I am also very impressed with Mozilla's editor. It is really a nice piece of software. I wish it was a little leaner, but I am really impressed with it's features. It's wysiwyg is surprisingly clean. I also like the ease of switching modes. Right now, Mozilla is tops for me.

OpenOffice also has a HTML editor.

[David]

The gimp for images just keeps getting better. The more I use it the more stuff I am finding it can do.
I have settled on Quanta Gold for my editor and actualy like it better then homesite for windows.

[scotty]

I am using Mozilla's built-in editor for something quick. However, I'll dig into vim to edit the raw HTML for most other stuff, especially when you need to integrate them with the server-side scripts.

GIMP is really nice, and it has came a long way to its present functionality. I still remember in the 0.5x days when it was still compiled with Motif... And the price is right too! I'm actually using GIMP on both Windows and Linux, so I can pass the .xcf files around.

[littleman]

And GIMP could even help people with no artistic talent like myself. The script-fu section has a bunch of ready made utilities that come in handy for the artistically challenged.

[Nick_W]

I'm weening myself off fireworks to Gimp and i'm definately artistically challanged. Thanks for the script-fu tip ;)

No one mentioned Apache, PHP and MySQL yet?

Nick

[4eyes]

What I am missing is a graphics package that will let me slice and export as CSS layers - not asking much eh!

I can't even find how to 'slice for tables' with the Gimp.

Corel PhotoPaint won't install on my Mandrake (tried all the fixes - gave up)

Also - can't get the css addon for mozilla composer to work on linux (works fine on Windows though) - any nice free css editors for Linux?

Guess I will have to go the win4lin route, (unless anyone knows better?)

Ah well, I never thought it would be easy.

[4eyes]

Whoohooo

IBM Websphere Homepage builder has nice WYSIWYG, nice CSS control with its own built-in editor, and it is affordable - had a quick tryout, looks OK for what I need.

I'm getting closer to the putting Mandrake on my main box:)

[Josk]

Has ImageMagick been looked at? From reading the man page it looks like it will be albe to slice'n'dice your images, although I've never used for this.

On Linux a lot of the commands and features windows has in nice clicky boxes are command line utils. It makes life harder for the casual user, but if your using Linux, you won't be a casual user.

[littleman]

I thought I'd mention gThumb [gthumb.sourceforge.net]. It comes in very handy if you deal with a lot of photos (e.g. shopping cart images).

gThumb lets you browse your hard disk, showing you thumbnails of image files. It also lets you view single files (including GIF animations), add comments to images, organize images in catalogs, print images, view slideshows, set your desktop background, and more.

...But what makes it handy for me is that I could right click on a thumbnail and open the image up with my choice of editors. It is also easy on the resources.

[scotty]

> Has ImageMagick been looked at? <

Don't think ImageMagick can slice up the JPEG, and then generate HTML tables to wrap the whole thing up. However, I found it really useful when you need to batch process images. For example, you have a directory full of digital photos, and you want to increase the contrast and brightness, then shrink the size by 20%, and then save all of them into PNG format... Very easy with ImageMagick.