I've seen it here a lot, people complaining about Dreamweaver or other WYSIWYGs.. I myself find DW as best in the WYSIWYG area and have made several nice websites with it. The code seemed OK to me, although I have to say these sites were only small projects (+-20 pages a site) and they were all static. Now that I've learned to code by myself (partially from DW) I'm using PSPad, although I still like DW. Why does it create so much hatred here? What are the reasons it "sux" ?
Its not Dreamweaver, its WYSIWYG editors as a whole. Sure they're fine when you're starting out but you simply cannot beat pure semantic markup that is hand written. Not all software can produce that, and that is were the problem lies.
I loved Dreamweaver when I used it, had to usually edit some stuff by hand after the page was finished but for laying things out it sure made it alot easier.
As far as WYSIWYG editors go, DW is good. The problem is that when working on webpages, nothing beats working by hand. A human can lay out markup in a logical, easy-to-read manner. A computer (program) can only guess what that means. If you build something by hand, you know it inside and out. That means if there are problems, you know exactly where to look. What happens when you make a page in DW and it looks wrong in IE6 but okay in FF or vice versa?
Using a WYSIWYG is like getting someone else to do something for you, he's never going to understand EXACTLY how you wanted it done, he can only guess. If you want it done good, do it yourself.
Dreamweaver make sense dont youy thimk? it make web design really simple plus you have code view to mess around in I feel you need to master DW in order to see the reall results it can produce a good web site" Ive asked the same question before why DW sucks" it does the job and its easy to use its a great tool to get fimiliar with", - and it makes sense Master its features and find out the good parts that people dont know about"
You can keep using the WYSIWYG side of DW, but you will never surpass a person who troubleshoots and hand codes in terms of knowledge and problem solving, etc. The people who usually ask questions and have problems with HTML/CSS are using WYSIWYG's, and the people that answer are the hand coders.
soulscratch I agree with you thats the norm I geuss web design seems to be so complexed even a coder can vouch for this"
Another point is online WYSIWYGs ... they tend to f*** up a whole lot at random when using CMS systems.
They say sux because their english are bad, the correct is sucks. Anyway, people have different needs and the ones that dont need the DW features or need aother features says that it sux. Personally I think it rules if you use it the right way (both wysiwyg and code editing).
I've stared my website development career using DW, and making really really dumb and stupidly funny websites, after I've left DW and used notepad, I've learned how to code XHTML/CSS/PHP.. the thing is, nowdays I still use DW for autocomplete and highlighting I guess, I just hate it takes alot of my RAMs. So it's a good start to use DW if you're not familiar with HTML/CSS. - Scorpiono
Scorpiono I somewhat agree with you the note pad sites are the best online Dw is good for many things especially adding in forms
It doesn't "sux". It is starting to produce good code too, to an extent. Combine a DW designed page and a Tidy clean-up, you get a reasonable result, at least one you can easily work with and refine. The main problem, in my opinion, is its cost. It doesn't seem to be good value for money, especially for the everyday/casual developer.
krt I agree the code in the new version is a lot better and moreover DW is well appreciated by most web designers" I feel it the price that bug's people but once you've used it you will never use anything else" notepad ++ is hot as well