Alright, so those of us in the industry that consider ourselves professionals often become snobbish when it comes down to what we do and how we do it – specifically, the tools we use to get the job done. There are many designers and developers out there who seriously – SERIOUSLY – frown upon the use of Dreamweaver for website design and development. It’s not that it’s a bad tool, for example, such as the use of Microsoft Word to produce a company brochure, but still, it’s not widely recognized as being “socially” or “professionally” acceptable. Well, my friends, I’m here to say, my name is Jeff, and I use Dreamweaver and have since 2002.
When I began my first attempt at website creation, it was at the hands of Dreamweaver MX on a PC. My first PC. I knew nothing of HTML, CSS, Javascript – but was willing to learn. So, I began. I tried and I learned, I learned and I tried. Today, I still use Dreamweaver as a part of the Adobe Creative Suite applications even though I know much, much more than I did just ten years ago. Given that technology and programming has changed exponentially since 2002, or hell, the past three to five years, Dreamweaver to some extent, has become a dinosaur among web development programming tools. However, I find that it still has its place.
Dreamweaver, if nothing else, is a great HTML and web development text editor. Yes, it inserts code that’s unnecessary and it has its own convoluted way of organizing and rendering code, but I think it’s one of the better editors out there. The application has changed over the years, both for better and worse, combining functions of other programs and applications with what Dreamweaver was originally intended for, as well as a redesign of the interface, hiding those features that were most common and introducing others that seemed hardly useful. But, what remains is the fact that it still works. After ten plus years, Dreamweaver still works and works well I might add.
Now do I recommend using Dreamweaver exclusively without any HTML programming instruction? No. That was never my intent. I learned enough to be dangerous through Dreamweaver, then I got an education in it. I wanted to know how to do things the right way, or at least, in an industry standard way. Along the way, I’ve picked up numerous other programming languages (PHP, MySQL, Java, Javascript) that have all advanced my knowledge of web development and increased my interest in the subject. However, the internet is still changing and evolving, and Dreamweaver, PHP, Javascript and all the other languages that have their foot in the web design world along with it.
My point here is, before I completely digress, is that Dreamweaver is a tool. A tool just like Photoshop, Illustrator, a hammer or a screwdriver – to get the job done. And, while hammers and screwdrivers haven’t changed much in the past century, tools that help us to build and edit the code that runs the websites on the internet will need to evolve with time. So, once again, my name is Jeff and I use Dreamweaver to build and edit websites.
