Miracle World Media Blog

Recently I was having a discussion with a fellow web developer on what is becoming a classic argument, as a web designer/coder is it taboo to use Adobe Dreamweaver? The guy that I was discussing this with is one of those, “I’m a web designer who codes from scratch with amazing standards and breaths awesomeness from my nostrils, blah blah” type person. You know the type of person who was hit with some magic wand and now knows everything about web design, past, present, and future. My biggest concern came when a family friend who is still in college (studying information systems) sat with us listening to our whole debate.

This post is for all those new to the web design world or those who are planning on entering it. Please do not let the “know it all” code monkeys, web standard cops, and the like deter you from learning a program that could help jump start your web design or even web development careers. With that being said I’m not saying that you should totally rely on Dreamweaver or discontinue using any other WYSIWYG tool (I’ve used Visual Studio, Aptana, Expression Web, Coda, and more. So don’t get it twisted.) What I am saying is that Dreamweaver with its large user scope is still a valuable tool for both web newbies and seasoned front-end developers.

Dreamweaver can Help New Webbies Learn the Basics

If used correctly Dreamweaver can not only allow someone who wants a new hobby and could care less what the acronym HTML stands for build a halfway decent website, but It can also help the aspiring web design/developer get comfortable with coding by hand. If you are new to Dreamweaver switching in and out of the “Code View” can help a great deal when learning exactly what it takes to complete some simple html tasks. If you are trying to get familiar with HTML, use the common tool bar in Dreamweaver add an image, table, or hyperlink, highlight it in design view and then switch to code view so that you can see exactly what has changed in your code. This is a great hands-on resource to go along with sites like w3schools.com and webmonkey.com. Many seasoned web developers will say that Dreamweaver produces too much unnecessary code and can affect the web standards compliancy. If a person is new to web design they shouldn’t be worried about this quite yet. Getting a good working knowledge of HTML tags and attributes should be first on a new comer’s list, and there is nothing wrong with a little Dreamweaving to help them do so. But I dare to say Dreamweaver can help some of us intermediate to advanced designers as well.

Dreamweaver Great Tool for Advance Developers

Currently Dreamweaver is in its 10th installment with version CS4 but I have to admit back in the MX 2004 days when Dreamweaver added better support for CSS is when I really learned to use pure CSS to develop web page layouts. Using Dreamweaver’s CSS style panel to visually insert styles into a style sheet and then checking the code the styles panel created was a great orientation when it comes to CSS layouts, now I say, “Look Ma no tables!” I’m just giving a brief example on how Dreamweaver is an excellent tool not only for performing web task quickly but can be used as a teaching resource. Knowing Dreamweaver is still valuable to an aspiring web developer’s career.

Now if you are a freelance developer creating layouts, that’s fine, however there are many mid to large scale businesses in both the private and public sectors who rely on Dreamweaver’s tools to do huge web updates, and quick solutions to massive company sites. I have heard many users say that the use of Dreamweaver is dying off or will die off due to the emergence of content management systems, well just go over to Monster.com or Career Builder and type in Dreamweaver in the keyword field, and see thousands of job listings cover your screen. If you are a computer information systems major with plans to have a career in web design or development it won’t hurt to have a working knowledge of Dreamweaver.

Dreamweaver has an extensive amount of features not only for the novice web developer but for more seasoned web devs as well, supporting backend programing languages such as .NET and PHP which can be used for rapid “simple” application development. I didn’t even mention the new Adobe Air Runtime that allows web developers use their existing skill set to produce rich desktop applications using web technologies, and yes Adobe has a free Dreamweaver extention that allows developers to take good advantage of this feature. Adobe is constantly expanding on Dreamweaver and it would be a shame to miss out because you think using it is not the trendy thing to do amongst the web design community.

To be honest I really don’t have the time to go over Dreamweaver’s many features during this post. But if you can afford it Dreamweaver is an excellent tool for both new comers to the web and seasoned vets. So please stop listening to the so called coding kings, download CS4, take a look around and atleast get familiar with the application and tell’em Media Marc sent cha

Tags: Dreamweaver, HTML Editor, Web Design, WYSIWYG