Should I buy Dreamweaver? Oh please help

Dreamweaver is a fantastic software! buy it!

Why does everyone feel the need to have such fancy features? I’m with DS here. I just use plain notepad to code everything. I don’t see the point in downloading software to do the same thing. I wouldn’t even use any features.

You need to start learning ‘proper’ layouting and this is not done via tables. Get to learn HTML and CSS to be able to code div based layouts. For this a free editor will do the job. i use Crimson Editor for close to 10 years now. Best of luck :slight_smile:

I find it easier to debug and more efficient for me…just for me, though. I have no say in your preferences (and don’t pretend to).

~TehYoyo

Well, there are some features even I like that regular notepad doesn’t deliver. Notepad mangles UTF 8, so if you deal with other languages it’s a nightmare. Notepad doesn’t maintain indents so you’re hitting tab a lot more often, and it doesn’t do block tab/de-indents… it doesn’t show line numbers down one side, when it word-wraps it has no auto-indent or indicators a wrap took place, there’s no option to show where your tabs line-up… there’s no auto-case select, no guide-line hinting for width when practicing the 76 rule.

At the same time you are right, many of them are needlessly complex and don’t really add anything useful. It’s why I like Flo’s notepad2.
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

You can turn off all the garbage you don’t want (like the illegible acid trip of colour syntax highlighting), it doesn’t destroy my workflow by forcing everything into one window, and at around a third of a megabyte it’s not exactly a massive download by todays standards.

Actually, if you do use Notepad++, you’ll be saving it as an html page, so you’ll be able to double-click it and see it in the browser as you go along. Each time you make a change in Notepad, save it and refresh your browser. Easy!

Regards,
Steve

I just use the built-in shortcut of hitting control+alt+(‘I’ for Internet Explorer, ‘R’ for Chrome, ‘X’ for Firefox, and ‘F’ for Safari). Really quite efficient.

~TehYoyo

Yet to happen with me. Don’t know what I’d do if I had different languages.

so you’re hitting tab a lot more often, and it doesn’t do block tab/de-indents…

Not really an issue with me. Takes less than a second. It’s auto configured in my brain to handle that stuff now.

it doesn’t show line numbers down one side

Not really an issue for me. I don’t do PHP much so when it gives line error code issues, it is a pain, and I do wish it had that, but I often time do all PHP updating on the actual website server while it’s online. Their editor online has numbers on it which helps.

At the same time you are right, many of them are needlessly complex and don’t really add anything useful. It’s why I like Flo’s notepad2.
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

Next time I do any serious coding I’ll make sure to grab it. As long as it doesn’t annoy me with bells and whistles I’ll probably like it :).

You can turn off all the garbage you don’t want (like the illegible acid trip of colour syntax highlighting), it doesn’t destroy my workflow by forcing everything into one window, and at around a third of a megabyte it’s not exactly a massive download by todays standards.

Thanks for that.

Definitely NOT!!! At most, you won’t need it more then 30 day trial. It is GREAT tool to learn HTML but that’s about it. Believe it or not, this was my very first professional IT training course… after 6 months… It was completely utterly useless tool.

Which I’d argue even that, since their example code, templates and auto-created things like menus are laundry lists of how NOT to build a website; which is why the handful of people who use it ONLY use it as a glorified flat text editor – defeating the point of even having it in the first place.

So as you said, after 30 days, it’s utterly useless; I wouldn’t even go that far.

i would always prefer dreamweaver bcoz of its in built FTP.

i can directly save any web page to the sever.

Yes absolutely. It is so easy to make a quick edit to a page and upload it in seconds, all through Dreamweaver. I think Dreamweaver gets a bad rap because of the WYSIWYG aspect, but it is great for hand-coding and has lots of time-saving features and integration with other Adobe products, which as a designer I like.

You’ll able to download Dreamweaver for free. You can search in google for full free version download.

Not legally. Endorsing illegal downloads of goods of any kind is strictly prohibited here.

Echoing what Kohoutek said. Moreover, not only are such downloads illegal, the programs you find as “FREE! FREE! DREAMWEEVR DL PIRATED FULL COPIEZ LOLZ” are often stuffed full of viruses, or are just virus downloads with no actual program attached. Permissum pirate caveo.

I would not use Dreamweaver. On a personal note I used it over 10-years ago for a university project, not touched it since, back then it was Macromedia. I would stay away from this, I would not consider this as being something you’d want to use as a web designer.

I use NetBeans but it really likes to eat up my RAM, so I am not too impressed with it ATM, I am looking for some alternative solutions.

I mean, I’m sure DW has a bit of stuff goin’ for it (people mentioned the FTP, but I mean - it’s just FTP, right?). It’s obviously not a terrible product, but I wouldn’t give it a rec. Not for that price, at least. There are too many well-designed code editors to choose from.

~TehYoyo

DW is a good code editor, and it’s very handy to have FTP built right in. As long as you don’t use it as a WYSIWYG editor, it’s fine, though it offers a lot more than is needed (which = bloat to a straight out coder), and is not worth buying on its own. I used to use it just because it came with Adobe CS. But now I’ve moved on. One thing I didn’t like about it is that the FTP uploading is very slow … much slower than with something like Transmit (which is similar to FileZilla).

I’d like to chime in here and promote Dreamweaver for HTML and CSS learning. While I agree that working in Dreamweaver can get frustrating if you are used to traditional WYSIWYG applications, it still can assist in learning HTML and CSS code from scratch. One thing I LOVE about Dreamweaver is the ability to see the DIVs in “View CSS Layout Backgrounds”. This view mode blocks out each DIV in its own colored section so you can see where all your DIVs sit on the page. Another thing I like is it’s ability to update links on a site wide basis if i move files around. There are MANY more features that make Dreamweaver a great learning tool for starting web designers.

I can also see where once you KNOW code really well, you could work faster in a simple flat code screen. One day I hope to be that knowledgeable proficient. But today I appreciate the features that Dreamweaver has.

And since I’ve heard often that DS might introduce code that isn’t needed, I do a lot of double checking. So far, with CS 5 I find it doesn’t add any additional code (but I have far deeper to explore).

On the downside, it does not render the JScript code I’ve used well at all, so I use a true browser for testing.

I have not tried this free wysiwyg software but it could be an alternative to Dreamweaver if you can’t afford it.

http://www.kompozer.net/index.php

RobS

You can get the same kind of view with the dev tools that come with browsers. Firebug for Firefox is probably the best, though it’s an add-on.

I’ve heard often that DS might introduce code that isn’t needed

One example I’m aware of is if you use libraries. Te include code for that is pretty yucky. Much nicer to use PHP includes.