Which Tools should I use?

Question

Hi,
I am a seasoned Java programmer with very basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. I am planning to switch career working from home producing website and undertaking SEO work. I am planning to learn new skills/tools over the course of the next six months.
Only problem is that I cant work which tools I should use for highly unique, responsive and design rich websites?
So far I have come to the conclusion I need to learn the following:-
PHOTOSHOP - To get the concept and design pixel perfect
EDGE RELOW  - To create the HTML structure and CSS framework [imported directly from Photoshop]
DREAMWEAVER - To finalise the HTML and CSS and iron out any issues which 
Does this seem like like a reasonable path to follow? Should I consider switching Photoshop with Illustrator?
Thanks

Answer 1

Very nice plan you have, I applaud you for making the move to freelancing.  Make sure you have another source of income before going 100% all in or at least 10 months of savings to live off of while you learn.
I spent my time learning HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.  I also spent time upgrading my skills on PHP and MySQL these are the 5 predominate technologies that the WWW is run on.  Unless you are focusing on Microsoft in which case you would be using .net, ASP and visual studio software and not Adobe's except for maybe Photoshop and Illustrator.
I have the full Creative Cloud Membership and have Dreamweaver installed but I rarely use it, I also have editors and IDE's from other 3rd party companies and developers but I tend to fallback using NotePad++ and just hand code as much as possible.  Syntax and Tag Hi-lighting is the most important features for an editor and NotePad++ has all that either built-in or with available addon's.  Not sure why I tend to just use NotePad++ and not Dreamweaver or some other IDE, maybe speed has something to do with it.
Reflow is a "Preview" software it is not meant to actually be used in real world projects.  Though the most recent update has improved their output codes for CSS you are still going to want to make changes and optimize it yourself.  There is no software out there that will do it all for you so you can give that dream up right away, you are going to have to do some hand coding to take what Reflow gives you and optimize it.  You are going to have to learn Html5 and CSS3 but since you will be working with clients they will have their own preexisting code so you will need to either work from that OR start from scratch if the client would be willing for that to happen without adding cost.  So you are going to need to also learn Xhtml and the differences between that and Html5.
Depending on how you learn Lynda.com has great education that is inexpensive compared to going to a college and taking a course.
The best books I have seen and purchased are those by "Murach", they replace quite a few books out there but they are not the end all be all either.
Photoshop, Dreamweaver combination are common.  I like Muse for the visual development nature of the application but it creates up to 3 separate websites one for desktop, tablet and phones.  The problem there is you have potentially three separate sites all working within one domain.   I much prefer Reflow's setup over that but the code is not production ready, maybe in another year.
A lot of people also use Wordpress so you may want to explore that and how that CMS works as well as other CMS's. 
Starting out focus on learning Html5 and CSS3 along with Javascript.  If you want to do backend development I personally use PHP and MySQL and then learning how AJAX works so you can use JS to talk to the backend and pull and submit information behind the scenes.  This is not required but the more dynamic the sites you build the more you will want this type of connectivity.