Dreamweaver: You either love it or hate it.
Part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Suite, Dreamweaver is used for coding and building websites. I have used Dreamweaver for years, only because that was what I was trained and learned with. Dreamweaver used to be about just creating great html, css, PHP pages & more. I have used Dreamweaver for building sites for almost 8 years now. I went from learning html and css to learning PHP, mainly to know how to work on WordPress sites. Despite the fact that Dreamweaver is part of Adobe’s family of design products, it doesn’t have the solid following that programs like Photoshop and Fireworks has. My point of confusion comes from the mystery of why people hate Dreamweaver so much.
Dreamweaver: Is it just me?
Some people love it. They swear by Dreamweaver and say that it’s easy to use and they can work with it efficiently, which I agree with. Others have complaints about Dreamweaver, but I have never heard one straight, undeniable truth as to why anyone should hate Dreamweaver. Maybe you just haven’t set up the right workflow. I use Dreamweaver with a couple of other products to host an essential workstation for creating and developing html and WordPress sites. I use MAMP and a local testing server, where I can test my themes live before I deploy them. I also use Firebug to inspect my site live in Firefox’s browser, which is handy when things don’t quite look how you expected. I would like to say that I code something from my head in css and it comes out flawless every time, but the harsh reality is that it doesn’t. If you can do that, that is fantastic, but sometimes I need to adjust margin or padding, or I forget about a small detail that throws everything off.
Things I Stay Away From in Dreamweaver
What I don’t do with Dreamweaver is use things like Live View. I find that this is inconsistent, and I have never really been happy with the results that it displays. Also, I have never really trusted it to begin with. I also test the site in other browsers as well, I just prefer Firefox and Firebug for fleshing out the main structure and honing things how I like.
Another thing I stay away from is anything modular in Dreamweaver. It is true, Dreamweaver has a lot of stuff that you can drop into your site via the insert panel. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean that you should. I can leap off the roof of my house onto a bed of nails, but that doesn’t mean I will enjoy the results. These modular elements in Dreamweaver are things that I tend to stay away from, just because it can be buggy sometimes, and if you have to edit something, especially via code view, it can be an absolute mess. Sifting through chunks of inline javascript can be a true nightmare.
The things I really like about Dreamweaver
Fluid Grid Layouts are phenomenal. I love the ability to go into design view and manually drag elements to the x amount of columns wide. This saves me a lot of time and keeps me from doing a lot of math. I really don’t want to have to calculate decimal percents for margins between elements. Dreaweaver does all of that for you. I can flip back and forth, using the screen icons at the bottom of the main window, between desktop, tablet and mobile sizes, adjusting the width of elements for each device. This is done using media queries in CSS, and Dreamweaver inserts the necessary javascript and css files for you.
Page templates are another feature that I like. Forget about creating pages over and over again, featuring the same elements. You create your main layout and convert it into a template. Then, any page connected to that template automatically updates without even opening it. Forget about manually changing each page’s links and nav bar. You change it in one file, and you are done.
I also like how I can save on coding time for most html tasks. Dreamweaver will try to auto complete some html, and instead of having to hand code links, I can insert them and flip a few buttons to change their parameters. Dreamweaver will automatically close tags when I type < and then /, which is nice as well. I save a lot of time when hand coding my websites.
I Guess It Just Comes Down To Preference
Some people say that they hate Dreamweaver. Some people say that they love Dreamweaver. Some where that they still code their websites in notepad, text edit, Text Wrangler, Rapid Weaver, and I am sure there are a dozen others out there. When it comes right down to it, you shouldn’t really care what others are doing. If you are creating beautiful websites, it doesn’t matter if you do it with a stick and leftover lint from your pockets. Your workflow needs to fit you and how you work. I prefer efficiency, and I am not to proud to let my program of choice auto complete some things to save me some time.
I just know what to use to save me time and what not to use to avoid headaches later. I love Dreamweaver and use it to create custom websites, and as long as it comes with my Creative Cloud membership, I will continue to use it long into the future.
Do you use Dreamweaver? If not, what do you use to code your websites? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
I love Dreamweaver! I was basically self taught with notepad (almost 15yrs ago?)then started school for web design about 3 years ago. When I finally tried DW,I felt like I was cheating after years of notepad!! 🙂 It is versatile and easy to use. Wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I love to use Dreamweaver. As i am designer and like the interface of DW
as well. My job is max. to do xhmlt/css responsive website design. No
PHP or any framework. So DW is very nice for me to use it as i dont have
to do much development 🙂
I’m a hater 😛 It’s nothing particularly personal, I just love writing my code from scratch and can do it efficiently, so I don’t want to use DW. I hear that WYSIWYGs tend to spit out sub-optimal code, semantics-wise (and the last version of DW that I played with did, but it was really old). So it’s mainly the difference between a boxed cake mix and a made-from-scratch cake for me. Scratch is more fun.
Another thing that I don’t prefer about it is that new coders often hear how great it is and use it from the start, without ever learning what they are actually doing, but that isn’t really Dreamweaver’s fault.
DW sucks big time. Sublime Text is much better.
Yeah people that use it must be retarded!
I agree with you to use whatever you prefer and makes you the most efficient. Personally I use Brackets as it has many features not found in Dreamweaver or other programs or at lease not easily found in Dreamweaver.