who uses dreamweaver for web design?

blade007 · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:24

Looking at jobs that are available, most will ask for Dreamweaver experience and Photoshop use. Sometimes some basic php or asp.

When I make as site I code it ALL. From the CSS through to the html. I find this allows me to correct alignment mistakes between IE and FF. And I can change things very quickly, even very quick by using php includes for menus, headers and footers. Although I appreciate that this takes me longer than using DW design view.

The question is to be a professional web designer is it dreamweaver or html/css coder?

Cuchulain · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:28

blade007 said:
The question is to be a professional web designer is it dreamweaver or html/css coder?

I don't think it makes any difference, I know a few "professional web designers" who work for the BBC who'll use Dreamweaver and afaik as a company they're exceptionally strict with what get's released.

robmiller · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:33

The vast majority of web designers (ones worth their salt, anyway) will hand code HTML/CSS.

gord · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:34

You make it sound as if a dreamweaver user is a different breed of web designer. Granted, the Design View users are, i would never use that to design my site and it often displays it wrongly anyway. I use dreamweaver as you would notepad++, i like the extra functionality there and i have FF and IE on shortcuts to check the progress.

elkdanger · 18 Dec 2006 at 13:09

We use Dreamweaver here purely as a code editor and for easy project/ftp use. Sometimes when making text changes to older sites it's a bit quicker just to go into design view and make the changes, but everything we create with it is still hand-coded.

tsinc80697 · 18 Dec 2006 at 13:24

I did use DW for the FTP integration but then i found crimson editor a year or so ago, this just auto saves to FTP when I want and it has all the different syntax colour schemes so i always know what I am working with

joeyjojo · 18 Dec 2006 at 13:35

I agree with the 3 posts above. Good code view, useful to have the preview, easy ftp/testing server functionality, auto-completing code is very helpful.

steroyle · 18 Dec 2006 at 13:45

I have been in my new job now for 9 months and I code everything myself, main reason being was I was sick of designing stuff in dreamweaver and having to fix stuff so it worked in FF/IE.

I cant stand the way dreamweaver does things - it has a habbit of adding in extra lines of code that simply isnt needed.

I would personally stick with coding everything yourself as it helped me to understand page structure and all the different css elements. It seems anyone can put together a simple site in dreamweaver these days. I know some of my younger family members are being taught how to use it at high school.

So in answer to your question it doesnt really matter as where I work people use either method to do their work but I guess it sounds better to say you can do both.

toString · 18 Dec 2006 at 15:01

I use DW in code view. Perfect.
Although I say I use notepad... for my epenis!

Jet · 18 Dec 2006 at 17:37

I originally used Dreamweaver's design view. But after learning XHTML and CSS I now use the code view.

I'm not sure what features other software has but Dreamweaver has several advantages for me.

Preview in real time;
validate markup to save going to W3C;
easy to choose padding-bottom, etc. from a drop down menu than type it out;
less chance of bad links - if you move files around it automatically updates links;
and probably some other stuff I've forgot.

As long as you use it as an aid rather than letting it do the work I don't see a problem with it.