FrontPage and Dreamweaver are popular WYSWYG HTML editors. Generally, they do not require HTML knowledge to create websites from scratch (the most of actions are performed with mouse using "drag-and-drop" operations). Besides, those editors can automatically generate JavaScript and CSS, thus, they can significantly reduce costs of the development.

Are Dreamweaver and FrontPage suitable tools to design a ecommerce website based on the X-Cart system? The answer could be "YES" as well as "NO". These tools are definitely good for creating static templates which could be modified and used within X-Cart. But, both Frontpage and Dreamweaver are not capable of editing dynamic pages (HTML scripts containing PHP or Smarty logic). That's why HTML knowledge is required for making significant changes in the appearance and behavior of the ecommerce website. However, it does not require HTML knowledge to customize the layout, change images, colors and so forth.

X-Cart uses Smarty templates to separate HTML code from PHP scripts. The Smarty templates are HTML files extended with the Smarty tags. A programmer can make changes in the PHP scripts without looking into templates, and the designer can make changes in the templates without looking into the PHP application logic. X-Cart has built-in template editor and debug window to help in making the customization process easy and fast. We have chosen the Smarty templates as the basis of our ecommerce products for high flexibility and an easy syntax blending together in it. It usually takes few hours to get familiar with Smarty tags. To know more about Smarty, visit http://smarty.php.net

Web developers know how hard it is to navigate through thousands of lines of code split in many PHP files and templates. X-Cart offers you an advanced tool for editing pages in WYSIWYG manner, we call it "Webmaster mode". If the "Webmaster mode" is activated, the X-Cart debug window appears, and you can observe a whole tree of templates. You and change any text just by clicking on it. When moving the mouse pointer over a template name in the debugging console a box become visible around the template in the main window. If you click on the template file name the template editor window will open and you can edit the template right in the browser window. The "Webmaster mode" makes the process of customization as simple as Frontpage or Dreamweaver does.