Why dreamweaver important

Cookie Policy. This Adobe application simplifies the design process of a website. Learn why programmers and designers love it If you are interested in web design, you have most likely heard of Dreamweaver, a program created in by Macromedia but now part of Adobe's Creative Suite.

Visual interface One of the first things to learn, and one of Dreamweaver's best features, is that it allows you to alternate between viewing the code of a website and a live view that makes arranging and modifying the different elements a more visual experience.

Media Queries Closely related to this are Media Queries, which are functions that tell the web what to do when the visitor is using a specific type of device or a particular screen resolution. Live preview in browser Another useful feature of Dreamweaver when designing web pages is that you can check the website directly in various browsers installed on the PC or Mac.

Manage a website Making a single web page may seem easy, but as you add pages and information to a website, organizing all the content can become a very complicated and time-consuming task. Publish directly Finally, Dreamweaver is a good tool for designing a website but it also allows you to publish everything to an external web server thanks to an integrated FTP file transfer function.

Get Domestika's news delivered to your inbox. Cookies We use Cookies and other technologies belonging to us and third parties to enable our website to function correctly and securely, and to personalize its content. Not only can you find and replace within the current page but the entire site. The fun does not stop there, you can also search just within the text of a page, source code or even within specific tags. Two seconds later 29 pages were updated and ready to be uploaded along with the latest JQuery release.

Finally, before you go using this for updating file names that have changed, read this next good point about Dreamweaver.. Eventually you will want to start making bigger and bigger sites.

You create one page that has the overall layout and functionality across your site and you turn it into a template. By selecting editable regions you then turn the surrounding code into a template managed system that is both easy to use and easy to replicate. What do I mean by replicate? Once you go back to DW you can do global template updates as normal and your new pages will be updated as normal.

The templates can have optional regions much like turning widgets on and off in WordPress. For example if you want all pages to have a login, but once the user has logged in to hide this panel, you can do this with Dreamweaver Templates. Personally I use DW templates a lot when I am doing pro typing. We used this method on a recent project and was able to make layout and functionality changes across the whole prototype just by making one edit to the global template.

With the coming of the CS series, tabs were introduced in CS3 and it became much easier to tab through files you are currently working on. This is very useful when referencing other pages or moving content from one place to another. Being able to notice this really helps me explain to learners why they are not seeing any changes they just made in their browser.

With CS4 Adobe introduced the sub file navigation bar which lists all the connected files to the current file you are editing i. This allows you to quickly switch to the CSS file connected to the page you are editing. Being able to quickly see what files are open, be able to flip from one file to another and edit connected files really speed up your development time thanks to this very good feature of DW.

When developing any web site you must check it on all browsers. You may not get your site looking perfectly the same, but you must test that it does not fall flat on its behind. BrowserLab was once a separate service offered by Adobe to check your web page in all browsers. Now Adobe has brought this into CS5 so you can instantly check your design before launch. The only way to manage large web sites is by using a CMS, it just is not practical to make every page in DW and then upload it along with all the content image etc.

This is where systems like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal come in. In the old days before CS5, we would have to create all the code separately for our template, upload it and check via the online CMS if the changes worked. Not anymore! Now DW can actually populate the Live View with information from your database, bringing life to your local code right in font of your very eyes.

At the very top of DW there are 15 items to press, ranging from menu items to quick interface changes. Secondly there are 5 — 50 things depending on how many files you have open and on the Third tier there are 15 things. So that is approximately 35 things to see, register, understand and use on just the first three tires of the interface. Learning DW for the first can be really daunting just by the user interface alone. Granted things are grouped kinda well, but here are some oddball interface items that can confuse even experienced users.

The tools that DW has to offer come at so many different points of developing a Web Site. For example you can add your own type of Database using the Testing Server environment but if you are a learner then this will be way over your head.

For me, I find it hard to sometimes explain that a lot of what DW has to offer is for professionals who make large web sites. For the simple designer, everything is surrounded by overly complicated things. As great a tool as DW is, it does take someone to show you around to enable you to climb the steep learning curve this beast has to offer.

The best way, in my opinion, is to work with someone who uses DW in their day to day work as a Web Designer. They will know the relevant tools and how to use them most effectively. As the versions of DW have increased to has the accuracy of the Design View but still it is not what you really see in the browser and that is what counts. If you are working with a dynamic site the new Live View can be helpful, but I would always trust my trusty browser over anything.

DW does have the ability to create dynamic sites, assuming you have a local server running or connect to a remote one. The only problem the code that it creates, much like any of the code snippets I mention next, are bloaty and overly complicated. It is far better to use lean specific code hand written or at least referenced from a good framework like CakePHP, CodeIgnitor or Zend.

I was personally never one for JavaScript yet I wanted my forms to be validated and my roll overs to roll over. I started using Dreamweaver code snippets back when Macromedia was at the reins and even at CS5 they are not much better. Because DW has to cater for everything the code is very broad and not specific. For example, just asking DW to validate one field on a form results in 19 lines of JavaScript. This issue I see time and time again. Using the Properties bar on text adds undefined document styles.

By letting DW add styles for you, you essentially lose control over your code and will probably mess up the web sites global styling. Adobe have since removed this from the newer versions but it is still a very real problem for many sites out there still today. DW makes it far too easy to lose control over your code which is why I always have Code View open to see what is going on.

A prime example of DW sticking its nose in is when you have just inserted an image, if you want to go to the next line and start typing, the natural thing is to hit Enter. This is unwanted and unnecessary code so I do keep an eye on your code when using the Design View. Just looking around the User Interface as I write this article I see at least 20 buttons I have never used, nor do I have plan to see image below. DW is literally packed with information of which is mainly noise.

Us Web Designers want a quick and easy method of writing our code, no need for bells and whistles that cover every eventuality. I understand I can turn some things off, but who can actually be bothered. Why not start with a simple interface and let the more advanced designers add things themselves Adobe?

Eh, well, what do you have to say for yourself? DW makes you lazy if you are not careful. DW is a tool to enhance your coding not make it. Keep your eye firmly on the coding and use the tools to only aid you. I mention that it is one tool as we all know Photoshop is also a required tool in any designers toolkit. However there are some nice alternatives from the open source world.

Dreamweaver is unmistakably powerful and this is both its appeal and its Achillies Heel. While it is very powerful and speeds up development there is just so much of DW that is never used.

Template files can be created by the user or alternatively, ready prepared templates are available. This feature makes it possible for beginners to design web pages as the workload is reduced. If your site is made up of twenty pages based around a particular template design, for example, it will have a consistent style and therefore be more user friendly. Managing and updating websites effectively Website designers can make changes to the design of a website simply by editing the Dream Weaver template files.

This eliminates the need to alter each page manually because Dream Weaver can automatically update the pages created using a template. This saves much time and effort. Furthermore, the use of templates means that the code and design are separate. As a result, changes can be made to the content without the risk of making unnecessary or incorrect alterations to the code. Customisable software Users of Dream Weaver can customise the look of the software to match their requirements.

Menus, tabs, commands, fonts and code colouring can all be adjusted to personal preference. And considering that most of your visual assets are probably being created in Photoshop or Illustrator, Dreamweaver's Creative Cloud integration makes it easy to import imagery and enables you to extract imagery, text, fonts and even colours and gradients from PSD comps to use in your designs.

As an all-in-one package that handles everything from design and coding through to publishing on most web platforms, Dreamweaver has a lot going for it if you like all your tools in one place. But if you're settled into a web workflow comprised of a set of dedicated tools that all to their job really well, we suspect you'll quickly run up against limitations with Dreamweaver. Until recently anyone wanting a more visual website builder would have defaulted to the much friendlier Adobe Muse, but with that now discontinued, Dreamweaver's your only choice if you're committed to an all-Adobe workflow.

The latest Dreamweaver is clearly aimed at professionals, but it also allows you to customise your workspace to meet your needs. By default it offers a streamlined Developer workspace for web professionals who want to create with code and see a real-time preview. There's also a Standard workspace that's a little friendlier and features visual tools for creating layouts, but it's still a code-heavy experience.

Its templates provide an easily-understandable starting place, while its built-in code hints and quick docs will help you write new code and actually understand what you're doing. If it's an easy-to-use visual web editor that you're after, though, Adobe Dreamweaver is likely to leave you cold and you'd be better off checking out our list of the best website builders to find a more intuitive solution.

Dreamweaver tends to draw a lot of shade from experienced web designers and developers who probably grew up with it and then grew out of it as they discovered better and more effective tools along the way.