I think DW is suitable for beginners and UI developers (although it’s not the best!). I’ve used it for about 3 months when I was a web newbie :) then I moved forward to more development oriented IDEs such as Eclipse PDT and NetBeans.

I personally use either KomodoEdit or Vim. I guess Komodo in some ways does suffer from feature bloat, but i think it’s the right features.

Oh, yeah, And that’s coming from someone who used to use Frontpage and / or dreamweaver.. creepy!

I’m not sure that it’s fair to say people shouldn’t use it because of some idea that it’s not targeted to you, a seasoned developer. CS4 has some great features including a live view which uses Webkit. I still use it from time-to-time, depending on the task. It hasn’t become my primary editor for a couple reasons.

1. it’s slow. This could be attributed to the bloat but when I want to edit a file, I don’t want to sit around waiting for the app to load. That’s why I’ve always used more lightweight editors, even if they didn’t have a lot of features (like UltraEdit on the PC).

2. I don’t love it’s autocomplete. Now that I use Textmate, I love its autocomplete feature and it really is a timesaver.

So, basically what I’m saying is that people should choose the workflow that works best for them and if that means Dreamweaver, I have no problem with that.

Amen brother, preach on! Dreamweaver is a crutch used by the masses. ;-) Oh, also, I think the expression is “hats off”, not “hats down”.

Dreamweaver is not the evil beast that many make it out to be. Yes, people can use the design view and make an absolute pig’s ear out of their code, but provided you know what you’re doing, the code view is actually very good.

The site wide search/replace is very good, the built in FTP client is often very good and, for me, it’s major asset can be found when you need to quickly convert a lot of plain text or Microsoft Word text into HTML (

tags mostly) then copy and pasting into the DW’s design view is a life saver. Even if you have to copy it first into a text editor to remove a lot of the Microsoft Word/Excel tags.

It is however, both expensive and slow compared to rivals like Coda and Textmate.

The best tool to write your website code in is the one that feels right to you, makes your life easier and your process quicker. If that’s Textmate or Notepad++ as opposed to DreamWeaver then fair enough.

I can say that I, personally, get the job done faster and with better results using TextMate and Vim. I don’t even have a copy of DW. I think that DW might be the personal faster/better tool for some other people, but there are some advanced markup and CSS considerations that a DW-only user is not going to apply. Still, professional developers have many tools in their toolboxes. I’m not sure I’d say DW is a bad tool to have around if it isn’t your only tool.

I think the key point of your argument is true: if you are a coder, doing work directly for a client (and not within a larger and more complex web workflow infrastructure), Dw would likely never be the best tool.

But in my case, as a director of an in-house web department that manages over 50 sites (most of them sharing templates or, at least, library items), I have much more than code to be concerned about. I have content management needs, user experience needs, workflow issues such as transitioning from visual design to code, template update and site-wide link management issues, etc. It’s a broad range of web site issues, from technical to administrative. Thus, an all-in-one tool like Dw has, for me, been ideal.

In fact, if WYSIWYG editing for content managers is important (and I find that for many non-technical / non-designer content managers, it is), Dw’s strength isn’t just within itself, but the fact that it partners nicely with Contribute (Ct). Often when I defend Dw, I’m defending it more because I have so many people relying on Ct — if I replaced Dw, I’m not yet sure how (and to what tool) I would transition content managers from Ct. I’m certainly open to ideas, however!

Finally, I would argue that if you’re able to carefully editing code already, a text editor is a text editor is a text editor. Dw might indeed have been developed for web newbies, but it edits code (in code view) just as well…or badly…as Notepad or Word. (note: I do not have TextMate experience, however, so I can’t compare Dw with that)

Thanks to the author and commenters for this good discussion. I must say, I am now much more curious about checking out TextMate to see why it’s so well-loved. But I have a feeling that even if I loved it, it won’t allow me to ditch Dw completely (assuming that it doesn’t have site-wide management and workflow tools).

I see a point. But then a quetion is which one is the best tool for you.

I found Text Editor, Vim and e-text editor for pc users. Are there more choices?

A webdeveloper-oriented IDE I would recommend is Aptana Studio, which recently also got PHP support.

My favorite text editor is TextMate but there are times when you just want a little more power working with your code and I think Aptana Studio is an excellent choice for those moments.

Back in the day (8 years ago) when I was starting out, I got my hands on a copy of dreamweaver. I used it for about a month before getting so angry with it that I turned to windows notepad. Now I use UltraEdit, or for a big project Eclipse.

I agree with Marc’s thoughts about Dreamweaver. Back in the day, I developed with Frontpage & Dreamweaver. The two major frustrations I found with both packages is they tend to damage code and what is rendered in the design view commonly differed from what actual browsers rendered, which, to me, made the design view completely useless. I have since moved on to lighter, more tailored tools and haven’t looked back. I am sure Frontpage & Dreamweaver have evolved in the last few years…
I won’t touch Frontpage, but I can understand that Dreamweaver could have significant value in some scenarios due to its synergy with the CS3/CS4 suite.

I’ve been developing for about a year now and have gone through several editors. The most useful features (from a coders perspective) that i found in most editors were auto-completion, site management (some called it projects), and snippets, asset management.

I love Dw FTP support, and the code hint tools in Dw and Visual Studio are often very useful. But there are times when I can’t wait for a big app like Dw, Visual Studio, PHPed, etc. so opening up textmate or notepad++ was a must. Some other light editors i liked were Alleycode and Crimson coder, they’re light text editors with project management and simple auto-completion.

Dw does cater to a wide audience, and it’s popularity means you’re more likely to run into a web designer/developer that has it and knows how to use it. Recently it’s facilitated the workflow between my designer buddy and me. He doesn’t know much coding so he’ll use the design view, and I stick to it’s code view. I like Dw as a text editor. We’ve been able to collaborate on website build by setting it up on my ftp server and setting up a ‘site or ’project’ in Dw and be able to share the same source files and having check in/out capabilities.

I think for bigger projects a CVS or SVN solution would be necessary, and in that situation you would simply need a text editor with CVS/SVN support, good command line skills, or a CVS/SVN client, and you’ll be able to handle most scenarios.

Overall I think Dreamweaver is a great tool for both ends of the spectrum, but it truely comes down to specific needs. The coder side of me definitely wants something more tailored to me.

Dreamweaver is a tool. Textmate is a tool. Notepad is a tool. Frontpage is a tool.

Every tool serves a different purpose, all get the job done. Dreamweaver is the swiss army knife & leatherman of the editor world, as it does do just about everything. And while textmate may be a bit more streamlined towards a developer by providing you with keyboard shortcuts, auto-complete, and make it easier to write semantically precise code… that doesn’t mean that Dreamweaver doesn’t do it just as well.

As an editor, dreamweaver does some auto-complete, it does color coding and suggestions. I can write the same HTML by hand in both textmate and dreamweaver, and whichever editor I use does not affect how that HTML is rendered in the browser. It comes down to user preference of editor.

Marc, you’re claiming developers shouldn’t use dreamweaver because it has a bunch of extra features you don’t need, or it’s bloated and loads a bunch of extra stuff etc. By that same logic, web developers shouldn’t use jQuery or any other comprehensive javascript library as they include a bunch of extra stuff you don’t need specifically for a project.

If I hire a developer to write me HTML, PHP, Ruby, whathaveyou code… I don’t care if they used notepad, dreamweaver, textmate, or wave magnets over the HD disc to write the bits in binary. As long as the code they provide me works, and they provide it in a timely fashion.

The whole dreamweaver/frontpage vs. textmate/coda etc debate is like the Mac vs. PC debate, or the Linux vs. FreeBSD debate. In the end, ultimately pointless, as each one serves its purpose and gets the job done.

Use Kate. Even though it isn’t targeted directly to web devs, it’s lightweight, fast, functional, and it’s a KDE app, so you can’t go wrong there. :P It has 2 features I can’t live without no matter what platform I’m on: a file browser and embedded terminal. I used Notepad2 on Winslows with metapath for filebrowsing, but this trumps all. Has some great plugins and Snippets comprehension like Textmate. Or just compile Pate (Python for Kate) and roll your own.

BTW, this page does not render in Camino…

You’re correct that WYSIWYG editors such as within WordPress work for chunks of text, and offer the advantages of web-apps (editing anywhere). But you’re still not editing an entire page as you see it. So Contribute and WordPress or Movable Type have some similarities, but are still different and thus serve people very differently. For one thing, you can enable version control with Contribute, and rollback to previous versions. Or quickly duplicate a page to start a new one, which saves a content provider from needing to recreate that page’s layout if they do not have those skills. Or provide content providers with limited yet multiple formatting options to choose from, that you ultimately still control and test in the design and layout environment of Dw.

Aaron Abramson above said it best: debating tools is silly, because we all favor different ones for different reasons, and for work in vastly different contexts supporting different people in a variety of roles. So I use a variety of tools for different sites and clients; for some, I don’t use Dw or Contribute at all. For several, I do. I select different tools and workflows to meet a wide range of needs. The idea that a single tool option will work across an entire enterprise is wrong, if you’re serving more than just yourself through the choices that you’re making.

I find it hard to use different IDEs everyday at work when I am developing web applications. I need in an IDE the pairing of parentheses, curly braces, etc. But in Dreamweaver, I need its closest WYSWYG feature when previewing the output of plain HTML pages.

While Dreamweaver has a few things I really like, I find it somewhat lacking in features I want, despite how many it boasts already. I do really like Dreamweaver’s Site pane and the easy-to-use testing and remote FTP server capabilities; its Wrap Tag shortcut is something I use all the time as well. Another less-important thing, but still relevant for me: I just really like how Dreamweaver looks. I know I can customize syntax highlighting and such in other editors, but Dreamweaver’s built-in one is very robust and allows for a lot more control than any other editor I’ve come across.

One of my biggest gripes with Dreamweaver, however, is how incredibly slow it is. Having a well-formed, 400 line HTML document hangs for 10-15 seconds any time I copy/paste, use certain keyboard shortcuts, upload the file, or simply switch to that file’s tab from within the editor. If I open the same file in Eclipse or Notepad2? No issues, despite Eclipse having a much more robust intellisense. That leads into another gripe: I’d love to have a PHP intellisense or autocomplete like Eclipse PDT’s, where it picks up my classes and methods on the fly and gives code hints. I also really like Eclipse’s and Visual Studio’s capability to view the method or variable definition; it makes navigating through one’s project much faster. Then there are other smaller things, such as shortcut keys for commenting out code, or “smart” home/end keys; using primarily the keyboard, these shortcuts have become huge time savers for me.

So, yeah, Dreamweaver has its own benefits, but like you stated, it will never quite be what I want because of its original design. I still use it when working with some clients due to the way their projects are set up, but I jump back to Eclipse at the first chance I get. No editor will make you a better coder; some will just help you to be more efficient.

I don’t think debating tools is silly: it is how we find better tools / make our current tools better.

Maybe DW is the best tool for somebody, but maybe some other people reading this have been using DW when there is actually something much better out there for them.

Here are my biggest gripes about DW: 1. it isn’t free 2. it is slow 3. it pulls/locks you into this proprietary, slow, not free platform.

1. Mike Branski points out both strengths and weaknesses of Dw. I also hate the speed. In fact, the more I think about my perspective on this debate, I realize, “Am I really defending Dw when I curse it daily??” WTF? =)

2. Marc – You seem to really like WP. But does it allow non-designer and developer content managers to create new pages, edit entire pages in WYSIWYG mode (not just text entries in a WYSIWYG window), have menus of formatting choices, etc.? Because you seem to gloss over these strengths of Ct when promoting WP, and my understanding is they are different in this way. But perhaps I’m wrong? Also, what about rollback / version control and assigning roles to content providers? (writer, editor, publisher, administrator). I’m not aware of a tool out there that does all this, and is not proprietary. (e.g. Oracle has options…but don’t get me started on those)

3. My contention is still that as much as Dw can get under my skin, it — and, more so, its companion program, Ct — are indeed designed for non-technical web people. Which is not just a weakness, but a strength. Especially in the case of basic content management, where content contributors are really empowered by how Ct works (and, also, how it allows me to assign, constrain, and manage editing roles and access to pages, styles, and options).

I keep hearing about open source code editors, but code editing is just one part of creating web sites. Where are the open source site management and content contributor management tools? I would love to get actual names and URLs so I could check out these options. Otherwise, they’re just myth.

Trust me, I would love to get out from under the wings of Adobe if I could. I’m just not seeing the options I need to see in order to do so. Drupal seems to be the closest example I can think of, but it still needs to mature a lot to match what Dw+Ct can do. (it still has a pretty user-unfriendly interface for content editing and site administration, IMHO)

I started reading the comments then got bored. Fact of the matter, and editor is an editor. “Editor for coders”? What defines a “coder” anyway? More and more we find our selves being ahem “jacks of all trades” (lol).

If HTML and CSS is ALL you do all day long, then why not go with Dreamweaver if you have it? Can it instill bad habits? Sure. But so can copying and pasting code you don’t understand into Textmate.

It is really like the MAC vs PC thing ain’t it? Hey, I say use whatever you got as long as you know what you’re doing.

And please, I don’t think as “coders” we should still be blaming Dreamweaver for ugly HTML code. It has come a long way from the code-mangler it once was.

PS. Me personally: Notepad++ and Textmate…sometimes Eclipse. But again, who really cares as long as the job gets done.

Hey there folks;

I am reading with interest your discussion about DW and or other editors and one question kept coming up as I read everyone’s posts about using a simple text editor for coding sites. First let me state that I am NOT a “coder”, though my first site went live on Jan. 1st, 2000 and was completely hand made in notepad.

I read a Laura Lemay book on Tables, Frames (ignored) & CSS (also ignored) and then looked at Yahoo.com and created my site using their overall look as a template, so to speak. Hey, I coulda done a lot worse than use Yahoo as my basic starting framework, though I really only borrowed their page layout / navigation.

Since then I have created a few other sites (again, I am NOT a Pro developer, just a hobby among MANY others) and when I discovered DW and it’s Template integration I thought that this was IT. Soo., my question is now, how does a “Pro Coder” using a simple text editor create templates that can be used for site-wide changes on one “master document” like DW does?

I am going to guess that this is or may be, done with CSS, which is yet another tool in my (sadly lacking) arsenal that I need to get up to speed on., apparently like my lack of PHP knowledge. I’ve just started delving into Drupal (OMG., another year of Life I can see wasting away!) and it looks like the CMS “revolution” may be the way to go (Wordpress, etc).

I have read much about WP being a great blogging platform, but lacking the tools for full implementation as a real multi-application CMS framework. OK, so would much appreciate any professional enlightenment for this very green noob developer hobbyist who wants to create EASILY managed web sites (haha).

Thanks., SC

I did a quick search using terms like , “Why use Dreamweaver?”…….something like that, anyway. I’m not a great web designer but I’m not too bad and I’ve actually made a few bucks selling web site design, here and there. I’ve got a crappy looking homepage that I’m in the process of completely redesigning…but – hey – I’m getting off on a tangent, here. What compelled me to do this search was the fact that most of the advertising I see, online, seeking candidates to fill web design positions usually say something like, “Dreamweaver experience a must”, etc. Isn’t Dreamweaver a high-end drag-and-drop deal? I ‘m not that great, but I’ve just about finished this site, for my employer, and – well – I just write the stuff in Notepad or a thing called Textpad. I don;t see how you could fine tune a page with something like Dreamweaver. I have a female friend who wanted it installed on her computer and I farted around with the thing – it just seems like it would keep you from actually learning anything. And why would web design studios want to make sure that you knew how to use something like this? Seriously – what am I missing, here?

Thanks, Mark. I’m on old “guy” (57, Feb 10th) and my step-kid – who is a great graphic artist – wants to learn web design. If he could combine his current skills with web design he’d be, well, famous. He asked me about Dreamweaver (someone had told him, basically, it was the proverbial “cat’s meow”….the only way to go) and I told him that I thought they were crazy. And then I thought, “I’m old – what the hell do I know…?” I appreciate your reply and I feel vindicated; I told him to learn basic HTML, CSS, do some flash, etc. I really think that starting out with something like this is like cutting off your legs… Thanks again – very nice site, by the way.

hi guy

I think dreamweaver is a great place to start for a beginner, especially for someone who is more visual than code oriented. It’s helpful sometimes to see what is happening in the design view of DW, but the big help is DW’s script assist and color coding. Some find the script assist a little annoying, but if you are not familiar with tags, or css attributes DW will try it’s best to show you what options you have for a particular scenario.

I have used Dw since v4. When I was a newb I relied on the auto-generated code quite a bit. When something broke I had to delve into the code and “discover” why it was broken and fix it. I found it helpful in regards to the learning process. Now that I’ve been in the industry for 8 years I rarely depend on Dreamweaver to supply code to me. I pretty much hand-type all my code, whether it’s HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ColdFusion etc.

I manage 15 sites at the moment, 13 of which I designed and developed myself using Dw. With that being said, I take full advantage of alot of “the bloated” features that Dw is weighted down with. Some of which have been mentioned above. I guess in my situation it’s a trade-off of a lightwieght targeted app for “coders” for overall efficiency in the many tasks I perform on a daily basis.

The only gripe I have with Dw is the aformentioned sluggish response time when you have many many lines of code. That is pretty freaking frustrating to say the least.

I totally get the authors point. However, I will probably continue to use Dw into the future. Does this make me any better or worse of a developer than others? I certainly hope not.

What a wonderful article. Ill be using this in my work from now on. thanks again for being there.

I had looked everywhere for this article – something that I would do exactly what it said, without all the fuss and hassle. I had already wasted hours of time and who knows how much time on other blogs, so I have to thank you for this article. Thanks!

Thanks for the wonderful posting. I want to know about NetBeans, will you please post some thing related to NerBeans..

Interesting article… I think alot of people start out using dreamweaver and end up just staying with it because they are comfortable with it. With the recent changes it actually isn’t that bad for the coders. I know coders that don’t even use the view tab and just stay in the code tab. Thanks for posting this!

I started with dreamweaver and to be honest, I learned a lot more when I just started to use a plain old fashion html/text editor. You get a really more hands on feeling of html/css/js/ etc when you do it without all the dreamweaver help. Dreamweaver doesn’t fly in the job world either. Handcoding is what everyone wants.

Nice post! I’ve used Dreamweaver a lot in the past, but I’ve begun using Aptana now. It’s open source, so completely free and it works just as well.

With the high quality of open source applications, it’s not even necessary to buy development tools anymore. I mean, you have

-Filezilla
- Aptana
- IE Collection (for testing purposes)

I’ve instructed a few of my employees to use these tools. The days of Dreamweaver are over for me, to be honest

Dreamweaver is a great program to use to build a site when you have no idea how to read code and don’t have the time to learn. It is a second language and Dreamweaver is like the translator.

Dreamweaver is an awsome software, it is a little complicated, and it does require a cretain amount of time to learn and get used to it, but its defienatly the best web developing software out there. so i suggest getting more into it.
Thanks for the great post

While Dreamweaver has a few things I really like, I find it somewhat lacking in features I want, despite how many it boasts already. I do really like Dreamweaver’s Site pane and the easy-to-use testing and remote FTP server capabilities; its Wrap Tag shortcut is something I use all the time as well. Another less-important thing, but still relevant for me: I just really like how Dreamweaver looks. I know I can customize syntax highlighting and such in other editors, but Dreamweaver’s built-in one is very robust and allows for a lot more control than any other editor I’ve come across.

One of my biggest gripes with Dreamweaver, however, is how incredibly slow it is. Having a well-formed, 400 line HTML document hangs for 10-15 seconds any time I copy/paste, use certain keyboard shortcuts, upload the file, or simply switch to that file’s tab from within the editor. If I open the same file in Eclipse or Notepad2? No issues, despite Eclipse having a much more robust intellisense. That leads into another gripe: I’d love to have a PHP intellisense or autocomplete like Eclipse PDT’s, where it picks up my classes and methods on the fly and gives code hints. I also really like Eclipse’s and Visual Studio’s capability to view the method or variable definition; it makes navigating through one’s project much faster. Then there are other smaller things, such as shortcut keys for commenting out code, or “smart” home/end keys; using primarily the keyboard, these shortcuts have become huge time savers for me.

So, yeah, Dreamweaver has its own benefits, but like you stated, it will never quite be what I want because of its original design. I still use it when working with some clients due to the way their projects are set up, but I jump back to Eclipse at the first chance I get. No editor will make you a better coder; some will just help you to be more efficient.

I had been using DW thus far but after I stumbled upon PHPStorm, it has made me forget about DW, Aptana, Netbeans, Zend Studion and what not !

I had been using DW thus far but after I stumbled upon PHPStorm, it has made me forget about DW, Aptana, Netbeans, Zend Studion and what not !

I first started using Dreamweaver when I first started building websites. I knew nothing and the idea of using code-only software just wasn’t an option. The obvious benefit was that I could drag and drop and use visual tools to create websites, without any real understanding of the code.

As I created websites this way, I gradually became exposed to code view on the odd occasion where I needed to fix something that wasn’t visible in DW’s design view but was visible on a live browser.

Now many years on, I ‘speak’ fluent HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, SQL… and I never touch the designer view in Dreamweaver. I’ve learned to not trust its code and do everything myself. But I still use it, despite it having more functions than I really need.

The reason I use it is simple – it’s what I’m used to and any new software apps I’ve tried, just don’t ‘feel’ right, even though they are simplified and don’t have superfluous features. For me, changing to something more ‘respectable’ and less ‘nooby’ wouldn’t result in any benefit to my coding standard or output – it would be something I’m doing to simply become someone who ’doesn’t use dreamweaver any more’ to appear more hardcore and/or to specifically not use software that I don’t make full use of its entire feature set. Who cares if I don’t use all its features and I’ve basically outgrown it? It gets the job done and let’s face it, doing something in a barebones way on a feature-rich tool is easier than if I was stubbornly choosing to do something the feature-rich way on software with only basic functionality.

And, to be perfectly honest, there are some features of Dreamweaver that I don’t need, but still use. Aside from the convenient FTP, I also select and drop in form tags from the menus rather than hand coding them… not a big thing but saves me a bit of time.

So yeah, I’d say, for beginners, Dreamweaver is a great way to go from needing a visual platform to gradually becoming a coder. It’s also perfectly fine to stick with it if you’re used to it, even though you’re probably paying over the odds for something you don’t really need.

And that’s what it comes down to really – cost. The only real reason to move on from it is to save yourself money. Not because fellow coders might laugh at you when they see you using it.

Hrrm…..
I am the opposite from many posting.
I came from a strictly programming background, C++/Perl then got into web applications (PHP/Python), then CMS systems and content management HTML/CSS and eventually opened my own company. I learned to love Dreamweaver and had to learn how to use it…Why?
Massive content management, at work we have over 2000 websites we manage, meaning, lots of people need to look at it… from marketing folk who might come touch it, to people brought in to do a little design. It is easier to explain to them by using a standard tool, and when you have so many sites up with gb and gb of assets, dreamweaver is an absolute dream to manage and know where everything is. I always shunned it, but now I love it!

I personally use Notepad++ – lightweight, intelligent, and intuitive, the software works better than you’d expect. Leaves expensive Dreamweaver in the dust. Active support lifecycle and several neat plug-ins make this my favorite IDE ever.

Years ago (‘03), I picked up Dreamweaver for work, because my Network admin said that we had to be ADA/’standards’ compliant. So, I put away my copy of FrontPage and hunkered down with DW. I found after not too long that it taught me how to code. I would build a page in design view, and see the code populate in the code pane. That was serendipitous!

I have since moved Mac using TextMate (often using E-Text Editor when I have to use Windows) and BBEdit (as well as CSSEdit and Coda). I am considering upgrading to an Adobe CS6 license, and I was thinking that I don’t need Dreamweaver (and by extension, Design Premium), because I just don’t use DW anymore. As Jonathan Snook said, it’s slow.

To that end, I have found that BBEdit is smokin’ fast on Regular Expressions, another place where I have been consistently disappointed with Dreamweaver. They have done near nothing to upgrade a number of features in a long time, and regexes are an excellent example: their implementation was limited initially, and has not been expanded (allowing things like case conversion and look-ahead/look-behind, etc.).

So, for someone unfamiliar with coding, DW is probably still a great option. But, given the price, bloat, slow speed, and poor feature set for coders, I would say it is probably not a good buy for most coders (excepting maybe those that like the check-in/check-out features and the Creative Suite workflows).

Years ago (‘03), I picked up Dreamweaver for work, because my Network admin said that we had to be ADA/’standards’ compliant. So, I put away my copy of FrontPage and hunkered down with DW. I found after not too long that it taught me how to code. I would build a page in design view, and see the code populate in the code pane. That was serendipitous!

I have since moved Mac using TextMate (often using E-Text Editor when I have to use Windows) and BBEdit (as well as CSSEdit and Coda). I am considering upgrading to an Adobe CS6 license, and I was thinking that I don’t need Dreamweaver (and by extension, Design Premium), because I just don’t use DW anymore. As Jonathan Snook said, it’s slow.

To that end, I have found that BBEdit is smokin’ fast on Regular Expressions, another place where I have been consistently disappointed with Dreamweaver. They have done near nothing to upgrade a number of features in a long time, and regexes are an excellent example: their implementation was limited initially, and has not been expanded (allowing things like case conversion and look-ahead/look-behind, etc.).

So, for someone unfamiliar with coding, DW is probably still a great option. But, given the price, bloat, slow speed, and poor feature set for coders, I would say it is probably not a good buy for most coders (excepting maybe those that like the check-in/check-out features and the Creative Suite workflows).

Years ago (‘03), I picked up Dreamweaver for work, because my Network admin said that we had to be ADA/’standards’ compliant. So, I put away my copy of FrontPage and hunkered down with DW. I found after not too long that it taught me how to code. I would build a page in design view, and see the code populate in the code pane. That was serendipitous!

I have since moved Mac using TextMate (often using E-Text Editor when I have to use Windows) and BBEdit (as well as CSSEdit and Coda). I am considering upgrading to an Adobe CS6 license, and I was thinking that I don’t need Dreamweaver (and by extension, Design Premium), because I just don’t use DW anymore. As Jonathan Snook said, it’s slow.

To that end, I have found that BBEdit is smokin’ fast on Regular Expressions, another place where I have been consistently disappointed with Dreamweaver. They have done near nothing to upgrade a number of features in a long time, and regexes are an excellent example: their implementation was limited initially, and has not been expanded (allowing things like case conversion and look-ahead/look-behind, etc.).

So, for someone unfamiliar with coding, DW is probably still a great option. But, given the price, bloat, slow speed, and poor feature set for coders, I would say it is probably not a good buy for most coders (excepting maybe those that like the check-in/check-out features and the Creative Suite workflows).

Years ago (‘03), I picked up Dreamweaver for work, because my Network admin said that we had to be ADA/’standards’ compliant. So, I put away my copy of FrontPage and hunkered down with DW. I found after not too long that it taught me how to code. I would build a page in design view, and see the code populate in the code pane. That was serendipitous!

I have since moved Mac using TextMate (often using E-Text Editor when I have to use Windows) and BBEdit (as well as CSSEdit and Coda). I am considering upgrading to an Adobe CS6 license, and I was thinking that I don’t need Dreamweaver (and by extension, Design Premium), because I just don’t use DW anymore. As Jonathan Snook said, it’s slow.

To that end, I have found that BBEdit is smokin’ fast on Regular Expressions, another place where I have been consistently disappointed with Dreamweaver. They have done near nothing to upgrade a number of features in a long time, and regexes are an excellent example: their implementation was limited initially, and has not been expanded (allowing things like case conversion and look-ahead/look-behind, etc.).

So, for someone unfamiliar with coding, DW is probably still a great option. But, given the price, bloat, slow speed, and poor feature set for coders, I would say it is probably not a good buy for most coders (excepting maybe those that like the check-in/check-out features and the Creative Suite workflows).