Advantages of Design Software

The most obvious advantage of web design software is that you see your edits in real time, as you make them. The software rewrites the HTML and updates your CSS rules for you. As discussed earlier in this chapter, not everybody considers this an advantage. The point of using design software is, of course, to make your design projects easier, thereby saving your time (and your sanity). Most web design programs — such as Back to the Beach Software's Web Studio or Virtual Machine's SiteSpinner, for example — rely heavily on built-in templates and predesigned page modules, insulating the designer (usually beginners or people who do occasional work on websites) from the actual code.

The problem with this approach, especially from a mobile design perspective, is that, while they're easy to use, the code they produce is seldom clean or lean enough for mobile devices. Making matters worse, getting to the code at all in some of these programs is often a challenge. They really are designed around a single concept — ease of use — and not conducive to creating or repurposing websites for mobile devices. Besides, using them does little or nothing toward advancing your HTML or CSS skills.