Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Is Adobe Dreamweaver Well-Matched for Me?

By Wilkie Deforrest

The rewards of using Adobe Dreamweaver over simple html coding from start are gigantic. Adobe Dreamweaver generates a lot of the coding for the user ready to us, which makes it extremely practical for beginners, for those who have no inspiration on what they want to make, but also for people who do know how to code html, they can always insert it to the written code a lot simpler.

You have several standard views to work with. You can toggle between code view and the design view or you can combine both in a single page view. If you use both views in the same window you can track any of the changes you made immediately. Dreamweaver also has the option instantly view your webpage in Firefox and Internet Explorer and you don't have to be online for this.

If you want to change the coding, there are tools in Adobe Dreamweaver that help you to correct any of your mistakes in the language rules. There are so many great features in Adobe Dreamweaver that you would not get in regular editors.

Another great feature in Dreamweaver is the layout tool. You can use this to get an idea of where you put your navigation, menus, pictures, etc. Overall, Dreamweaver is worth learning if you are serious about web design, so why not start today and show the world just how good your website can be.

Professional Web Designers wouldn't consider using Dreamweaver Dreamweaver's code view because it generates the XHTML / CSS code for you, this results in coding that is at best sufficient and at worst overstuffed and over-complicated.

There is no substitute for having a solid understanding of standards-compliant XHTML / CSS and writing the code by hand, using which ever text editor you feel comfortable with, whether this is Dreamweaver's own code view or something else.

Adobe Dreamweaver is like a plaything and it is very useful when you are starting out with web design. Starters might find the design view instinctive. And even the controls for connecting to a database might be practical for basic tasks and also the FTP software in Adobe Dreamweaver which synchronizes local and remote copies of a site's files is very useful. Surely Dreamweaver is handier than most of the other famous FTP clients out there.

You can't really compare Adobe Dreamweaver with any product. Dreamweaver can be put into a class of itself as a kind of application you use before you learn how to code properly. Drag & drop interfaces for coding just don't feel right for me - if you can't build the system yourself, then you don't know how it will actually behave when it goes live.

The advantages of using Dreamweaver over plain html coding from scratch are endless. As said before; Adobe Dreamweaver can be put into a class of itself. You can learn how to code with Dreamweaver but also when you are an advantaged web builder, Dreamweaver will live-up to your expectations. Benefit from all the superb features that are not built into the other editors. - 15615

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