GRAPHIC WEB DESIGN TOOLS

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Adobe Fireworks - Graphic Design & Page Prototyping
If web layout is your primary function, then Adobe Fireworks is by far the most productive and reliable tool to use. It has many advantages over its runner-up, Adobe Photoshop. One of which is that you can create multiple pages within a single native .png file. So, if you are designing a 20 page website, you can keep all of your prototypes in 1 file which is way easier to keep track of. This is especially important if you are a designer with many projects going on at one time.

For those web animators out there, Fireworks has the tightest integration with Flash. Fireworks and Flash were formerly developed by Macromedia. This means Fireworks had a several year head start on Photoshop in terms of integrating, and optimizing web images for the smaller file sizes needed to make flash that doesn't suck the life out of you in loading speed.

Adobe Flash - Animation and Flash Design
Adobe Flash is the clear winner here. Stay away from swift and other knock-off tools. Your quality and load time will be greatly increased with the real deal that Adobe Flash Professional brings. The learning curve for this software can be rough at first though. I suggest searching Google for example files of whatever you are trying to do and look at how they are built. Once you get going, you can create a website that is a far superior media experience than regular Dreamweaver or HTML websites. The services you can sell by using this software are abundant and growing. Some examples of work you can do with this software include making animated banners, making streamlined web video, and creating rich e-learning applications.

Adobe Photoshop - High-Detailed Imaging, Graphics, and Photo Touching
Adobe Photoshop, is often used by web designers as the primary design layout. However, it's real strengths are in photo editing and making individual graphics, not web layouts. The opinion of Web Design Outlet staff is that it has a sharper learning curve to make web layouts with Photoshop and that Fireworks is better suited for creating interfaces that will later be coded in CSS / HTML.

Adobe Premier and After Effects - Web Video and Video Effects
Adobe Premier and Adobe After Effects are the most powerful combination of video products. Regarded as top grade video editing software (Premier) and top video effects software (After Effects), these two power-houses continue to be the top choice of many successful freelancers and video companies.

Create motion graphics and visual effects with the industry standard. Adobe® After Effects® CS4

WEB CODING / DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

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Adobe Dreamweaver - HTML, CSS, & Browser Checking
Originally developed by Macromedia, the now Adobe Dreamweaver is a great tool for professionally building web pages with HTML / CSS. There are many useful features such customizable CSS templates for those who are still learning div tag layout. There is also a very useful HTML validator and a built-in program that checks for browser compatability all the way back to IE5.

Dreamweaver is overall a much more generally accepted standard among most good web designers and web design employers. Very rarely will you see a successful web designer who relies on Microsoft products. Just look at most websites built with Microsoft tools or even ASP; you will find them full of display errors. They can't make a browser right, what makes you think they can make a decent web design tool. Your Vista isn't safe either by the way. Employers requiring skills for Adobe Web Design and Graphic Design products is more than 10 to 1 over Microsoft. Why? Because Microsoft makes crappy website tools target marketed towards noobs. Why waste time learning a tool that creates extra browswer conflicting code? Go with Dreamweaver. Your career and clients will thank you.

WEB DESIGN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Basecamp - Project Management
Basecamp is the best project management software on the market for web design companies. Most software on the market that is supposed to help you manage things are so over-complicated that they defeat their original intentions of efficiency. Keep it simple and use it to keep track of what you need to do and when you need to do it. Basecamp also integrates with Blinksale, so you can have your project management, CRM, and billing in one seamless system. Feel free to post on the forums if you agree or disagree so we can praise or diss your thoughts appropriately. www.basecamphq.com

Blinksale - Billing
Blinksale is really good because it integrates with Basecamp, keeps pertinant records, sends receipts, allows for online payment processing, and you can even send your invoices as PDF's in one click directly from the extremely easy-to-use web-based application.

Hosting & Servers
Unix is the most efficient, cost productive, and secure way to host your websites. WHM / Cpanel and Plesk are the top two options. They provide an easy interface for everything you would normally do from the command line.