Who said anything about a table layout? If the person being instructed is taught using tables for layout, then that’s not the fault of the validator.
How to code good and semantic code is the responsibility of the teacher to teach that, which is probably why the OP asked here in the first place.
Have you ever used Dreamweaver? I mean more recently and not in the days of Dreamweaver 4? Did you ever check out it’s code view? You shouldn’t really comment on DW unless you do. It’s no different than other code editors I’ve used, but much better imho. I prefer it’s syntax highlighting, it’s auto-suggest and auto-tag closing to any other code editor I’ve used, and makes my coding much faster and minimises code errors. You probably suggest using notepad or notepad++, speaking of which, what do you advice the OP to do anyway, nothing of what you said so far is of much help to her.
Also, how long do you figure it would take someone to learn this & be able to code a site?
It took me about a good three years of 8-hour workdays to learn this. I was not handicapped with a “helpful” code vomitor like DreamWeaver for those three years.
Yes, the code may validate but it doesn’t necessary mean it will be good code or semantic. You may well find-out they end-up using TABLE layout or bloated inline CSS, which in the long-run wastes you time and money when it needs any maintenance work.
You probably could create or train a Dreamweaver Monkey within a couple of weeks but the odds are they won’t really understand either HTML or CSS to any great extent. They’ll probably use the software as a crutch and go off limping if they have to do anything complex or use a different tool.
Is it more a case of learning the basics of Dreamweaver than actually coding a website, which are you are trying to instruct… Also it depends upon the previous experience of the pupil and how intelligent they are in the first place because it they start with a WYSINWYG they are likely to pick-up very bad habits.
did you or did you not ask for it then? you seem to be highly confused. Maybe next time split your questions into more threads, those that I answered weren’t particularly related to your first bunch anyway - and I didn’t answer those because I didn’t have to say anything about them, thought it’d be appreciated if I at least answer some of your questions.
I assume the first 5 times they will be slow, but when could I expect an increase in speed?
it depends what you expect the person to do. Do you provide him/her with a PSD and want him/her to slice it up and transform it into html/css? and are those layouts pretty much the same, like two columns with a header and a footer? in which case you can think of ways to reduce the workload with code libraries (possible in DW) or “templates” (not DW templates). Though, then the learning wouldn’t be as efficient, maybe implement those after the person has done a couple of layouts from ground up?
Some people ask me if using DW is ok & I say that’s fine so long as all the code validates afterwards.
What do they have to do, go line by line & check the DW code to make sure it’s correct, or is there a faster way?
what else is that supposed to mean? you were asking for a faster way to check whether somebody didn’t make an error when coding, and using those tools is a faster way to do exactly that. Those tools spot pretty much most mistakes.
Yes, I apologize, I asked for that, but there was much more I asked for & I didn’t get it, so I got confused & forgot about the DW question b/c you started giving me links to things I didn’t ask for.
with regards to using DW, only use the code view and stay away the design view.
for html/css validation, use the W3C validator. The Web Development Toolbar for Firefox includes some handy links. Speaking of Firefox addons, I also use the HTML Validator plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/249/