Dreamweaver

I am one person who started to learn HTML on his own.  It was about six years ago when I decided that since all my friends had webpages, I was going to make one for myself.  I wanted to do it right, so I used the internet and searched for self HTML tutors.  I learned it pretty quickly and since then, I have always used Notepad to edit HTML files.

Recently, The College of New Jersey required me to use Dreamweaver to edit a website for an entry level course.  After using it, I have formulated some opinions on the software.  Overall, it is a very useful program but have some little flaws in my eyes.

Dreamweaver MX has the design and coder views.  This allows you to see what the site looks like in a browser as well as shows the code.  Since I write mainly in code, I tend to keep the coder section almost maximized, only glancing at the design section from time to time to make sure I typed things correctly.  In addition to these views, you can see your webpage in an external browser that is installed on your computer. 

Dreamweaver MX also allows you to download and upload things from the server where your information was held.  This beats notepad simply because I didn’t have to get an external FTP client to upload my site.   Another feature would be the capibility of dreamweaver to understand the difference between HTML files and other files such as CSS and PHP.  It will even help you code in these languages.  It would suggest code as you type it which helps if you generally know the language.  Dreamweaver can even help you do more complex things like XML, ColdFusion, Java, VB, and preformatted designs. 

Some little flaws would include its lack of a virtual server.  PHP is server side technology and becoming more popular in various web applications.  When I was experimenting with it, I had to either upload it to a server or download a program that would use my computer as a virtual server and mimic a real one. 

Another flaw that I could see would be when you are typing code.  It tries to autocomplete code.  When you type a tag out, it will automatically close the tag.  When I create a webste, I tend to type out the content first, then go back and format the text.  This made things complicated since I would have to copy and paste the end tag where I wanted it, which often times would be much farther in the text.

Overall, Dreamweaver is a good program that I would recomend to edit webpages.  It can organize, upload, download, and format you site with just the click of a few buttons.  It may take a little while to get used to, but after you learn the program, it becomes very easy to edit anyone of your webpages.