To Dreamweaver or Not to Dreamweaver

yop

Lads

I got a hold of a copy of Dreamweaver Ultra 4.

Q is do I waste my time and learn how to use it or just forget about it.

If so where do you suggest I get some good coding examples or any books recommended??
It seems pretty niffy and the ability to tie in Fireworks etc

thanks

Dun

I'm using Dreamweaver MX, not Ultra Dev, and up until last week I was using Dreamweaver 4. They don't take an awful lot of learning, especially if you already have an understanding of manual html coding.

In terms of coding, it usually creates very nice clean code, unlike Microsoft's offerings. It has a universal site find and replace function, which means you can change, for example a logo on 500 pages as easily as on one page (as long as you have it coded the same on each page though). The list goes on and on, and you'll keep finding nifty little features that you didn't know about all the time!

I can't say anything about the extra coding options available in Dreamweaver Ultra Dev, but afaik it can still be used the same as Dreamweaver 4.

damnyanks

If you know html already use it otherwise learn html first then use it.

Gah, I remember back in the days of dw3 people used layers cause they were easier to position lo and behold only worked on IE 5 or so

mneylon

All of the Macromedia products, especially the MX versions, tie in with each other. If you are using Dreamweaver MX or UltraDev you can easily move backwards and forwards through FireWorks, Flash etc.

It's a wonderful application suite, but it is not perfect. As already mentioned, older versions used to produce IE specific code and if you use it to write your Javascript editing it will be next to impossible by hand. Having said that, if you are already familiar with HTML, CSS etc., you can really harness its power. There are also a lot of very good sites with extensions and tutorials etc.,
Do a quick search on Google and see what you turn up.
Try here:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Authoring/HTML/WYSIWYG_Editors/Macromedia_Dreamweaver/?tc=1

As for books.. most of the starter guides are overpriced and completely useless, though the Dreamweaver Bible is really excellent (I used the one for version 2 or 3 a couple of years ago)

NeVeR

I use Dreamweaver 4 , i have MX but it wont run on my computer,

It's really Easy, just takes about 3-4 house of trying different things and then it will be easy as pie,

If you have any Questions let me know

PiE

There's really no question, if you have it, you must :]

Dun

Originally posted by PiE
There's really no question, if you have it, you must :]

Not really - I've Front Page, but I'm not using it and have no intention of doing so. Before you ask it was part of my MS Office install.

Bard

Originally posted by yop
Q is do I waste my time and learn how to use it or just forget about it.

Learning to use Dreamweaver is not a "waste" of you're time if you're in web design.

It's the best web design/development application on the market bar none and is an essential tool in any web designers arsenal.

Go for it!

yop

Cheers Lad

Will get stuck into it now

Dun

Just noticed something about Dreamweaver today that annoyed me. If you have any pages with large tables, then this might concern you.

I have lots of tables on my pages because I have to present a lot of data. Because the table widths are generally very wide, I've been using font size 2. But I noticed that Dreamweaver has been saving the table with the <font size="2">Data</font> in each individual cell, resulting in webpages that are far bigger than what they should be.

So if you are putting large tables on your site and changing the size of the font (and perhaps other attributes too), it might be best to just put a single <font> tage just after the <table> tag and the </font> before the </table>. It seems to work just as well, and makes for far smaller pages.

What annoyed me the most is I've had to redo about 100 pages. Mind you at least the Find & Replace made up for it.

The Corinthian

Originally posted by yop
I got a hold of a copy of Dreamweaver Ultra 4.

Q is do I waste my time and learn how to use it or just forget about it.

Depends how far you want to get in this business. If you want to learn to write your own HTML (or JavaScript and later still server side code) then sticking with a WYSIWYG will result in a skills dead end while, at the same time, getting you up and running faster in the short term.

Kali

Originally posted by dun_do_bheal
So if you are putting large tables on your site and changing the size of the font (and perhaps other attributes too), it might be best to just put a single <font> tage just after the <table> tag and the </font> before the </table>. It seems to work just as well, and makes for far smaller pages.

I don't know what browser you are using.. but I'm pretty sure that doesn't work with IE6.0.. and I've never found it to work with any other version I've used.

presuming you mean:

<table><font size="2"><tr><td>test</td></tr></font></table>

The font tag should always go just before the specified text...

mewso

I've been using DreamweaverMX for a while now. In fact did our website with it, www.sdublincoco.ie , but have now moved the site into VS.Net for further development. I do find it to be good but it suffers from one thing primarily, Me. I'm a fussy little coder that would get just as much use out of Notepad.
We have some Multimedia types who benefit from the whole Macromedia stuff far more than I would. Most of these guys don't even know that much html, let alone javascript or asp.net, php etc. I think these guys need to learn this stuff but with Dreamweaver they never really have to.
Anyway I'm pretty committed to .Net now and VS.Net is my development environment of choice. But then again I'm not a Web Designer as such but a web coder. Web Designers probably have Dreamweaver, Photoshop, flash etc. open at all times wheras I have Vs.Net and Sql Server Enterprise Manager open at all times. Vive La Difference.

Dun

Originally posted by Kali
I don't know what browser you are using.. but I'm pretty sure that doesn't work with IE6.0.. and I've never found it to work with any other version I've used.

presuming you mean:

<table><font size="2"><tr><td>test</td></tr></font></table>

The font tag should always go just before the specified text...

Technically it is before .. and it is working great in IE 6. Must test in Nutscrape!

STaN

dun_do_bheal

if you know about CSS's use em!

They can really clean up your code & speed your whole website up by removing repeated font & style tags.

An example:

in your <head> section, link to your external style sheet.

Specify either a style for the <td> (not <tr>) tag or the <table> tag.

If you want a number of different styles in a table you can do the same thing with CSS's but only inserting a small value into the <td> tag.

E.g you have the <table> set to fontsize=2 color=#ffffff
but you want the titles of each column to be bold and in red.
You could specify the following in the CSS:
.columntitle { values in here }
And in your document:
<table><tr><td id=columntitle> and it will apply any styles you have specified but only to that td tag</td><td>this cell would be unaffected by the ".columntitle" class and will instead use either a style specified in the html page or a stype specified for the <body> or <table> tages in your external CSS</td></tr></table>

Hope this has helped. CSS's are really great things

Dun

I am using CSS, but just for the overall design of the site - general font settings, background etc..

The only thing putting me off implementing tables in this is that I have index tables that need to have different size text. Perhaps I'll make a seperate CSS file for those.

Thanks for putting the idea back in my head