Are you joking?! Dreamweaver absolutely sucks! It generates pages which aren't even close to valid HTML 4.01 Transitional (the default option). Make XHTML complaint doesn't really help that much. I would rather write clean XHTML code by hand, it's more efficient and much more fun. For someone used to working in Dreamweaver, it might be a little more time consuming, but it provides many more advantages than using a WYSIWYG editor.


I agree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all good tutorials and stuff teach you writing code (web development or software programming) by hand first, whether it is C (later C++), Basic, HTML (later XHTML), JavaScript or whatever else you use. Writing code by hand is clean and efficient, you know what you are doing and don't have to rely on the software. If you later decide to move out of Dreamweaver (or Microsoft Visual Studio software), you know what you wrote at least. It is also an excellent learning experience.

Speaking of which, don't you just hate books that's supposed to be a tutorial of sorts for a specific programming language, but actually is a tutorial on how to use an IDE? There was one that I encountered for C#, but only discussed actual relevant C# concepts in the latter ~20% of the book. Majority of the text was on how to use Visual Studio. And you do not even need Visual Studio to program in C#, more so a "Hello World" example!

To be fair, the intent might be to instruct those absolutely clueless about the language, but the authors could have been more considerate by not hiding the book under a title that causes people to think the book is something that it isn't. If I wanted a primer on how to use an IDE, i would get a book that specifically says it is on how to use that particular program. Surprises are good in a lot of books like literature and fiction, but most certainly have no place in references for computing.

This post has been edited by altimit: Jan 2 2008, 05:06 AM

I don't use Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG capabilities, I mostly use it because I'm a PHP programmer and the autocomplete/intellisense support for PHP in Dreamweaver is superb; as is the split code/wysiwyg feature that lets me see what my CSS changes on the DIV layouts look like in real-time, against several browser engines.

I agree though, and it's not dreamweaver that's the problem: all WYSIWYG editors are ****, some are just shittier.

yes, perhaps i was less clear... i prefer intellisense/autocomplete to wrestling with computer textbooks and/or trying to memorise every function and structure for whatever platform i'm trying to program