Decent site with Dreamweaver MX 2004 - or is it out of date?

Swift66

Hello,

I want to design a website and have access to Dreamweaever MX2004, but don't want to start getting used to it only to find out that I need to change to a newer programme to make a good site.

So will it be ok ? Are their any limitations I should be aware of?

Cheers

tricky D

Dreamweaver for production, yes. A big NO for design.

The days of Dreamweaver, etc. are numbered. Most sites use content management systems now. The idea is you design the container for the content once (maybe with a few variants) and then populate the site with the wysiwyg editor built into the CMS. If you need other stuff - galleries, ecommerce, contact forms, etc, you add it with plugins.

If you follow this route, the container is a template. As well as the look of it, there will be programming code built in to load menus, content, special features, etc. in the right places. To build the template, it's the graphic design software that's important - usually photoshop/fireworks/illustrator. You also need an eye for design and typography. Once you have the design sliced up, the html/php markup can be done as quickly in Notepad++ as Dreamweaver, but you'll need to understand html/css.

If that sounds like hard work (and it is) you can use off the shelf templates for your chosen and personalise them. The best ones make it easy to personalise with built in admin menus. A knowledge of html/css/php/javascript will still be needed to make mods to the look/feel/functionality though.

My advice: install wordpress and play with a few free templates - see what can be done. You'll achieve more, quicker than starting with dreamweaver and a blank canvas.

Liam Byrne

If you use Code View & the FTP window of Dreamweaver, it will serve you well.

Don't use it for the layout and design - study CSS & HTML in themselves, so that you can build a better site than Dreamweaver or WordPress could create.

The comments re the Content Management Systems are useful, though; very few sites are built in pure HTML these days, with the common one being a shell from either one of the CMSs or something built using PHP.

was.deevey

The days of Dreamweaver, etc. are numbered. Most sites use content management systems now. The idea is you design the container for the content once (maybe with a few variants) and then populate the site with the wysiwyg editor built into the CMS. If you need other stuff - galleries, ecommerce, contact forms, etc, you add it with plugins.

Not quite true, CS5 has the live view for editing CMS based sites which can make like pretty easy, especially where editing the CSS / PHP files of individual plugins is concerned for the likes of Joomla or WP - However MX2004 is obviously lacking this feature.

When you mention other plugins, you fail to mention that you will most likely need to edit them to match the sites look and feel as well, IMHO this is an area which DW can actually handle quite well with the live view feature as all the relevant files are ready to open when you click elements on that page.

Its NOT perfect but it can make dissecting a live sites functions, especially one you did not initially put together much easier, and I for one hope it improves in CS6.

I would get comfortable with learning CSS and HTML and then progress onto "designing" in dreamweaver, personally I find it pretty handy for editing the main templates and PHP/CSS and Templates of individual plugin files, for example. Virtuemart invoices or Product pages.

Maybe its just me, but I'm more of a visual person and prefer to "see" the Div's and where the code sits rather than just the code behind them.

You're right - dreamweaver has come some way towards embracing the modern web. The interface with popular CMSs is welsome and valuable to beginners. Truth be told, I'm still on Adobe Web Premium CS3, and see little reason to move to CS5.5 as I'm doing mostly development, and the little design work I do is amply handled by photoscape, corel and The Gimp.

Maybe its just me, but I'm more of a visual person and prefer to "see" the Div's and where the code sits rather than just the code behind them.

I think most developers are the same, but I'd rather use Firebug, or latterly Chrome's developer tools for that. It's nice to use the native browser rendering engine, and I find it more immediate.

cormee

Deleted User wrote: »

The days of Dreamweaver, etc. are numbered. Most sites use content management systems now. The idea is you design the container for the content once (maybe with a few variants) and then populate the site with the wysiwyg editor built into the CMS. If you need other stuff - galleries, ecommerce, contact forms, etc, you add it with plugins.

If you follow this route, the container is a template. As well as the look of it, there will be programming code built in to load menus, content, special features, etc. in the right places. To build the template, it's the graphic design software that's important - usually photoshop/fireworks/illustrator. You also need an eye for design and typography. Once you have the design sliced up, the html/php markup can be done as quickly in Notepad++ as Dreamweaver, but you'll need to understand html/css.

If that sounds like hard work (and it is) you can use off the shelf templates for your chosen and personalise them. The best ones make it easy to personalise with built in admin menus. A knowledge of html/css/php/javascript will still be needed to make mods to the look/feel/functionality though.

My advice: install wordpress and play with a few free templates - see what can be done. You'll achieve more, quicker than starting with dreamweaver and a blank canvas.

What you're talking about is a change in the web management processes - from, in the past, manually updating pages using web development/design software, to, the current process of using a web-based wysiwyg interface to update content. Dreamweaver does now leave the web life cycle as soon as the design/build stage is finished, whereas before it probably didn't. No doubt about it.

But OP is asking about web design, not content management or installing templates/modules, and I'd still see Dreamweaver as relevant as it has been in the past for that process, even when working on templates for CMS's.

I just finished building a site using a WordPress framework, and used Dreamweaver throughout the process. I've handed it over to the owners, and quite rightly, they won't be using Dreamweaver to update it.

On a final note, Dreamweaver has a lot of other uses besides just building websites - web development, software development, app development - I wouldn't write it off just yet.

On a final note, Dreamweaver has a lot of other uses besides just building websites - web development, software development, app development - I wouldn't write it off just yet.

Personally speaking, I haven't opened my Dreamweaver (CS3) in about 2 years. I use Eclipse and Notepad++ instead. That said:
* I've very little idea what new features have been tacked on since CS3 - think I read about some nice wordpress integration.
* I mostly work with content management systems - very few static brochure sites.

I stopped using DW CS3 mainly because the WYSIWYG rendering engine always seemed to mess up floats on me.

cormee

Deleted User wrote: »

Personally speaking, I haven't opened my Dreamweaver (CS3) in about 2 years. I use Eclipse and Notepad++ instead. That said:
* I've very little idea what new features have been tacked on since CS3 - think I read about some nice wordpress integration.
* I mostly work with content management systems - very few static brochure sites.

I stopped using DW CS3 mainly because the WYSIWYG rendering engine always seemed to mess up floats on me.

I'd say I haven't used the wysiwyg interface in a few years myself, CSS-based designs have rendered it almost completely redundant. Its only uses, that I can see, are jumping around the code and for giving a rough idea of the layout, besides that it's a liability.