# Uniform website appearance... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 18, 2009, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uniform-website-appearance/521727 "2009-12-18T10:34:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2009, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uniform-website-appearance/521727/21 "2009-12-20T11:41:45Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > I still use Macromedia HomeSite from 1997, which is little more than a fancy text editor! Works great for me. You mean _Allaire_ Homesite. Macromedia didn’t take over until 2002, where they abandoned it, and now it, in turn, is owned by Adobe who don’t even know it exists. I love Homesite. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2009, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uniform-website-appearance/521727/22 "2009-12-20T12:15:17Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > You mean _Allaire_ Homesite. Macromedia didn’t take over until 2002, where they abandoned it, and now it, in turn, is owned by Adobe who don’t even know it exists. > > I love Homesite. Oh yeah, I had totally forgotten Allaire! I love it too. I was delighted to find it still came bundled up with Dreamweaver CS2. Not sure about later versions. Adobe stole the colored code markup out of HomeSite and used it in the coding function in Dreamweaver, but the similarity stops there: DW sucks for coding compared to HS. Shall we start a support group? ETA: [They only abandoned it this year](http://www.adobe.com/products/homesite/), and it sounds like it was in CS3, but it no longer comes bundled with anything. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2009, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uniform-website-appearance/521727/23 "2009-12-20T12:55:36Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > ETA: [They only abandoned it this year](http://www.adobe.com/products/homesite/), and it sounds like it was in CS3, but it no longer comes bundled with anything. ☹ Officially, but it hadn’t had a single upgrade since 2003. However, after some investigation, the original creator who left it behind when Macromedia took it over, continued with [TopStyle](http://www.topstyle4.com/), which seems to have evolved into a Homesite clone that is slightly more limited, but covers HTML, XHTML, and CSS, and is still actively upgraded. I may transition. ---
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2009, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uniform-website-appearance/521727/24 "2009-12-21T20:31:36Z")
Google has a new tool out to help: [http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/](http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/) ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uniform-website-appearance/521727/25 "2009-12-22T20:19:07Z")
As I take a break from tweaking a site in IE: _Web is not print._ That is my mantra. You are not making a brochure on 8.5x11 with proper Pantone calibration on the printer. You are actually making a brochure on paper ranging anywhere from cue card sized to large-format poster sized. You are making a brochure that will be viewed in both portrait and landscape. You are making a brochure that does not have accurate colour representation. You are making a brochure that can’t even _display your text uniformly_\*. Your goal is not to have an exact replica for every viewer. Just like a good logo designer knows that the logo needs to look good at different sizes, on different paper types and in both colour and greyscale, a good web designer can design a site that looks good over several different platforms. \*I have had clients quibble over font rendering on PC vs. Mac. Mac looks slightly bolder. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uniform-website-appearance/521727.md?page=1)