Boss say "No More Dreamweaver?"

[codythebest]

I use dreamweaver but barely use the wysiwyg editor. I only use it as a reference to make sure my code is looking the way it should graphically.

For those saying it's a handicap, because you should be able to code in notepad... that's ridiculous. Why would you ever code c++, java, or anything in notepad? Notepad is expedient for making quick edits but not a valid alternative.

So for those that keep dropping "notepad"... seriously... come on.

My 2 cents.

I have to agree. Times have changed. But I still build my little java applets or applications with notepad
But yes, I guess using latest technologies will help. Getting old I guess...

[felgall]

Most of the people I know of who are using Dreamweaver properly spend most of their time in code view.

[Another Designer]

She might have gotten fed up with all the poor code being generated by dreamweaver. I don't use any of dreamweaver's pre-built code (or design view), but rather as a syntax highlighter amongst other things. It's more of a convenience than anything else, but if too many of your co-workers are producing errors with its pre-built code, I guess one way to go about it would be to cut all ties.

If she's already made up her mind that dreamweaver is evil, it's probably best not to argue. Tell her you don't like the generated code either and you mostly use it for the interface. Then say you would say you would never use the generated code unless you customized it and it was error free. Then do it.

I doubt it would matter. I think my programming coworker is incompetent! I really doubt he was a programmer inn the past like he claims he was.
The cold hard fact is, if I stop using Dreamweaver, I am losing all those great productivity tools that Dreamweawver offers me when it comes to using other Adobe products.

You have to see the trash this programmer was putting out here. It is obvious that he was incompetent and lazy when it came to designing websites. They have to come to my side not visa versa.

[codythebest]

I doubt it would matter. I think my programming coworker is incompetent! I really doubt he was a programmer inn the past like he claims he was.
The cold hard fact is, if I stop using Dreamweaver, I am losing all those great productivity tools that Dreamweawver offers me when it comes to using other Adobe products.

You have to see the trash this programmer was putting out here. It is obvious that he was incompetent and lazy when it came to designing websites. They have to come to my side not visa versa.

It seems to me that you are comfortable with DW, so stick to it. Is it a big problem for you if your boss stops ( or says to stop) using DW? Can you still progress without it?

[Another Designer]

It seems to me that you are comfortable with DW, so stick to it. Is it a big problem for you if your boss stops ( or says to stop) using DW? Can you still progress without it?

I admit I have become so accustomed to Dreamweavers wonderful shortcuts. When you look at the quality of design that was being put out by this programmer and the quality I am doing, the improvement is 99%; and I kid you not! I believe the true problem is this programmers lack of understanding when it comes to understanding the code I give him. Heck, I have a long way to go when it comes to code, and certainly programming. But to take away the progress I have acquired with Dreamweaver because of a programmers emotional meltdowns is nothing short of immoral!

[Centauri]

me creating the tables in Dreamweaver and edititing the HTML like I always have.

all those great productivity tools that Dreamweawver offers me when it comes to using other Adobe products.

Sounds like you are using the very techniques that have probably produced 50% of the rubbish coded sites on the net....

When used as a code editor, Dreamweaver has many timesaving features that can keep productivity up (I use it myself). As an html coder it should be your job to keep up with all the latest techniques and standards in the field, and a thorough knowledge of html and css syntax and semantics should be mandatory. Time to ditch the non-semantic table layouts and unnecessary javascript produced by letting software do your work, and do it properly.

[DelvarWorld]

People still charge clients for tables generated from Dreamweaver? Really? Is that ethical?

I would argue that you're mixing design and implementation a little too closely in what you're saying. "Designs" are things done in Photoshop, Illustrator, pen and paper, etc. What if you designed mockup sites and passed them off to a coder to implement by hand? That's a pretty standard industry workflow, and it means the designers can focus on design and the coders can focus on code. There is definitely a stigma against using Dreamweaver to generate actual pages for websites. Most professors and all employers that I have had shun its use and stress the importance of hand coding. I'm with your boss 100% even if the reasoning is a little fuzzy. Making sites in DW instead of hand coding is a little 1990's.

I have to agree with your co-workers. Nothing better than 10 fingers and notepad...

Drawing on the ground with a stick is better than notepad :P. At the very least get an editor with code colorization.

[Another Designer]

Time to ditch the non-semantic table layouts and unnecessary javascript produced by letting software do your work, and do it properly.

What do you mean by this statement?

[Centauri]

What do you mean by this statement?

Write the code using the range of tools available to you in Dreamweaver, rather than let it write the code for you.

[dc dalton]

What do you mean by this statement?

It means exactly what it means, time to wake up, smell the decade and stop producing tabled websites. They are WRONG in every sense of the word!

Tell you what (and I have done this) .. I could sit down for an hour talk with your boss (and I am close enough to actually do it BTW) and I guarantee you would stop using tables instantly or you would be out the door. You see most company owners don't know (but they are learning quickly) that by creating these 1999 tabled monstrosities you are in fact excluding about 5% of your potential clients from using your website.

The users I am talking about are in fact non computer users. The amount of non computer web surfers is growing like wildfire and by using these * cough cough * wonderful 'slice and dice' Photoshop to Image Ready to Dream Weaver sites you are in fact shutting down your bosses ability to connect with potential clients!

Like I said before, I've done it many times .. all it takes is some intelligent words and reasons why their site is wrong and you would be amazed how fast a business owner changes staff.

So are you going to be with the new staff or the one that was given their walking papers?

[Michael Morris]

You will find that Dreamweaver will serve you much better once you've mastered making pages in Notepad.

Or, to use an analogy - the artisan who learned his craft with hand tools and then added power tools to his repertoire to save time will always best the guy who started with the power tools and never learned the underlying fundamentals.

For the record - when I have used Dreamweaver I've never left code view - and it's one of my least favorite programs for that purpose - though I've heard wonderful things about Dreamweaver CS4 that have me curious about giving it a go.

[Michael Morris]

It means exactly what it means, time to wake up, smell the decade and stop producing tabled websites. They are WRONG in every sense of the word!

I've heard this stated out many times without the reasoning behind it so I'll provide that reasoning for those who may still disagree with this statement.

The first and most critical reason to avoid tables as layout is that they cripple the ability of Javascript to manipulate the DOM. Because of the way browsers render tables many Javascript animation transitions in popular libraries such as Scriptaculous and Mootools do not work - or work poorly with table object.

The second reason is semantic. Although text reader browsers and spiders are getting smarter, they do have a more difficult time navigating tables.

This said, tables do have their place and pages where the designer has avoided tables where they clearly should have been used (for tabular data) get on my nerves just as much as layout tables. For example one useful behavior of tables is on print out - if you have a <thead> block most browers will repeat it for every page of the printout

Overall it's an issue of *right* tool for the job. There was a time when tables where the only reliable means of positioning graphics on a webpage. That wasn't their purpose back in the day of Netscape 2 and 3, but they worked and worked fairly well. CSS support has been flaky for a long time particularly due to Microsoft resting on their laurels and leaving IE 6 as the default browser for EIGHT years. Things are changing though. Keep in mind that if you turn in layout tables to most web firms today on your resume you will NOT get the job, or an interview for that matter.

[maggiebroon]

I would say my workflow is a lot smoother since I started hand-coding in DW. And if its generating css in the html code then you're not adding css correctly either. Writing HTML is easy!

[webcosmo]

ASP can just as easily be done in Dreamweaver as it can be in Visual Studio, can it not?

Not really. Visual Studio got way lot more things to handle the programming aspects.

Now here is the fun part. I had similar problem with the designers I used to work with. They were using DW. My problem was exactly same as your programmer, lots of unnecessary codes injected by DW. That also increases the file size. Plus its always hard to understand somebody else's code. Eventually I told them I will code the HTML myself.

ASP Programmers do not do straight copy paste of html always. They change lot of tags to ASP tags so they can apply dynamic behavior.

I don't think its big of a issue using DW as long as you and your programmer understand each other. I would say talk to her, ask her how she like to have the codes. May be a small example would help there. Then try that way. After all its a group effort you know.

And btw, you should also learn to hand code. Lot of companies ask for that on job description.

[Scott.Botkins]

I haven't used an editor in years, I find it much enjoyable by hand to help improve my skills and to master it.

[dc dalton]

I've heard this stated out many times without the reasoning behind it so I'll provide that reasoning for those who may still disagree with this statement.

The first and most critical reason to avoid tables as layout is that they cripple the ability of Javascript to manipulate the DOM. Because of the way browsers render tables many Javascript animation transitions in popular libraries such as Scriptaculous and Mootools do not work - or work poorly with table object.

The second reason is semantic. Although text reader browsers and spiders are getting smarter, they do have a more difficult time navigating tables.

This said, tables do have their place and pages where the designer has avoided tables where they clearly should have been used (for tabular data) get on my nerves just as much as layout tables. For example one useful behavior of tables is on print out - if you have a <thead> block most browers will repeat it for every page of the printout

Overall it's an issue of *right* tool for the job. There was a time when tables where the only reliable means of positioning graphics on a webpage. That wasn't their purpose back in the day of Netscape 2 and 3, but they worked and worked fairly well. CSS support has been flaky for a long time particularly due to Microsoft resting on their laurels and leaving IE 6 as the default browser for EIGHT years. Things are changing though. Keep in mind that if you turn in layout tables to most web firms today on your resume you will NOT get the job, or an interview for that matter.

EXCELLENT POST! +20 for taking the time to do something I didn't have the patience to explain.

[bals28mjk]

I haven't used an editor in years, I find it much enjoyable by hand to help improve my skills and to master it.

Let me start by this, knowing how to hand code or knowing how to code with general languages you use is obviously very important, which I think every good web developer takes upon themselves to learn. With that said..

Tell me you're one of those who thinks their brave for using notepad; those guys crack me up. Text editors aren't like training wheels, more like sitting in a comfortable chair, you don't have to sit in one but why wouldn't you?

I don't see advantages, you only gain features.

[roosevelt]

Coding with notepad? Are you serious?

Well may be for people who like their keyboard very much. But, I like using the tools and the menus to make my work easier and faster.

After you learn a language (e.g. XHTML), use an IDE to code your file. Don't waste your time with notepad, metapad or any text editor. For PHP or Ruby, you will have to write most of your codes by hand. I am still waiting for the day when we can make PHP scripts by dragging and dropping, kinda like ASP.NET.

Visual Studio is actually a very good IDE, and you can download plugins to enhance it.

Discuss with your fellow programmers what your issues are, and figure out exactly what the issue is with dreamweaver (e.g. License Cost)

Also, Visual Studio can handle all kinds of files. It shouldn't be that bad. Spend few minutes learning more about it, and its tools.

[webber123456]

There are several things to consider

--Different development tools produce different code style.
--Pure html has no Dreamweaver extensions.
--HTML and ASP should be kept separate.

That being said, yes, you can do development with Dreamweaver. After all, ASP is just text. So anything he does should not interfere with your html.

Just because he calls himself a programmer doesn't mean he is one. If he is comingling ASP and HTML, perhaps he needs to reconsider his programming style.

Visual studio does not force comingling of code. It's a developer's choice on how the code ends up.



you could change programmers....

[Michael Morris]

What is appropriate for a student isn't appropriate for a master, and vice versa. Anyone who's starting on HTML et al would be well advised to start with Notepad so that you can see the consequences of natural mistakes.

After that color context editors are the way to go. In the terminal environment vi, vim and emacs are the way (though epic flamewars have been started as to which of the three is best), outside of it Notepad++, jEdit, or even Dreamweaver's code view are a major step up.

I use Dreamweaver's design view only as a check up on what I'm doing, and then only very rarely since up until CS4 it was using an older version of Opera to render things. As of CS4 it's using Webkit (or so I've been told).

[webber123456]

...

Visual Studio definately have better integration with ASP.NET (even though you wrote ASP i assume you didn't mean classic ASP as nobody should use that anymore). ....

Wrong! Classic ASP is far more productive for the vast majority of sites out there, which are very small. Firing up ASP.net is like launching a aircraft carrier to go fishing on a pond. The learning curve is atrocious, the cost is forbidding and the .net framework keeps changing, with limited backward compatibility.

Don't get me started on trying to fix someone's site with mixed languages of C# and VB.net, a botched config file, undocumented compiled components (from some amateur) and a bloated mess of "code-behind" and "code-beside".

Not to mention Vsual Studio is PIGGGGGGG SLOOOOOOW !

Classic ASP with an AJAX library is very lean and mean.

[Michael Morris]

Not to mention Vsual Studio is PIGGGGGGG SLOOOOOOW !

Has Microsoft ever put out anything that wasn't?

[mojo3120]

Are we talking asp . net here? Bc we're in the wrong forum if so

Dreamweaver has nothing to do with the programming language. It's basically just a glorified text editor.

To question an asp programmers knowledge of html (or even Dreamweaver for that matter) is absurd

[AutisticCuckoo]

There is nothing that can be done in any other web editor that can't be done in Dreamweaver

Okay … I'm not an expert on Dreamweaver (I use it reluctantly at the office because I must). How do I replace all instances of 'foo' with 'bar', but only on lines that start with a digit?

That's a single command in Vim:

:g/^[0-9]/s/foo/bar/g

So if your statement is true, there must be an equivalent feature in DW, but I can't find it. We use DW MX 2004, though. Perhaps it was added in a later version?

[Tailslide]

I'm amazed that these arguments always seem to devolve into Dreamweaver or Notepad. There are lots of excellent HTML editors out there that have lots of extra "stuff" to help ease the pain of switching from a more complex programme such as built-in FTPs etc.

In the end though - whatever tool you use, you either code properly or you don't. The tool you use won't change that. If you're not using good coding practice (and it sounds like you may not be as it sounds like you're using tables for layout) then perhaps your boss should address that issue rather than the tool you use per se. Maybe restricting DW (since you already have it) to code view only would be a start.