Dreamweaver 4 still 'good' for learning?

[FrustratedUser]

Is it an outdated product or is it still any 'good'? I can get a used license dirt cheap.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

WYSIWYG editors are good for "doing" not "learning". You want to learn, open notepad. 😉

What do you need to accomplish?

 

[screw3d]

Why spend any $$$ at all when you can learn for free?

If you have not much background on HTML, I suggest learning from http://www.w3schools.com/ first 🙂

 

[FrustratedUser]

Basically just want to play around and get a feel for how WYSIWYG editors work and also learn some HTML at the same time. w3school.com is great.
Broaden my view is a good word to use.

nvu looks cool.

The reason for DW 4 is I can get it cheap. Is anything I learn about DW with version 4 still applicable in MX?

 

[LordPhoenix]

If you've got $16 bucks lyin around, I highly recommend this book ::

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi..._1/102-4726961-5587344

-----------------------------------

I first learned HTML by NOTEPAD (the basics) and then moved on to Dreamweaver MX 2004 only to notice that you don't really learn anything in it. I've made alot of sites and now I have a visual in my head when I type in the codes so I know what I'm doing and I'm trying to go back to Notepad.

It would be better if you just started with notepad and didn't get "hooked" on Dreamweaver. You learn alot by typing codes out instead of just "making" sites on DMX2004.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
Basically just want to play around and get a feel for how WYSIWYG editors work and also learn some HTML at the same time. w3school.com is great.
Broaden my view is a good word to use.

nvu looks cool.

The reason for DW 4 is I can get it cheap. Is anything I learn about DW with version 4 still applicable in MX?

Hell, dude, if you can use Office, you can use DW or FrontPage for that matter. The only thing with a learning curve at all is their lousy built-in dynamic page tools. If you just want to fiddle with web page creation, I still say read an HTML tutorial and use notepad......you'll actually learn some stuff. If you just want to build your uncle Mike or your church a web site, then DW 4 will be perfect.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Is DW4 still used 'professionally'?

 

[LordPhoenix]

No. But DMX2004 is.

You can try it out for 30 days..

And then ... something with it.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
Is DW4 still used 'professionally'?

As far as I know, no professional uses a WYSIWYG editor...which is what I'm trying to convey to you. For creating massivly dynamic pages like I do, you need to understand HTML. Accomodating dynamic content means knowing and controlling which way sections of your page will expand. Editors will always make assumptions about what you want it to do and those may not coincide with the actual intent.

 

[stndn]

Basically just want to play around and get a feel for how WYSIWYG editors work and also learn some HTML at the same time.

There are options and softwares you can use to get a feel of how WYSIWYG editors. Things like nvu works just fine.
If you really insist on getting Dreamweaver, i wouldn't recommend Dreamweaver 4. It's quite outdated, and it still uses deprecated tags. Dreamweaver MX complies better with the web standards, but there are still rooms to improve.
No, i'm not saying NVU is 100% standard compliant either. It's all up to the web designer/developer to make use of the available tools.

From my work experience, most web designers use WYSIWYG editors (WE - i am lazy typist ;p) to create, edit, and complete their websites. On the other hand, web developers rarely use WE. The few times they would use one is when they want to create the general layout of their website. After that, it's back to text editors.

WE exist because someone wants to create the 'best of the best' sites without wanting to learn the dirty details of HTML. Well, whether you like it or not, you still need to learn basic HTML to use WE.

Sometimes WE make web design so easy that web designers and developers forget why they do web design in the first place.. And oh, not to mention the random bunch of unnecessary tags introduced by most WE.

okay, i typed too long and way out of topic... i better stop.

 

[RZaakir]

I'm a professional and I use a WYSIWIG editor (Dreamweaver MX 2004). I can code XHTML / CSS compliant pages all day blindfolded in a text editor but Dreamweaver is an excellent tool for making dynamic pages and managing site templates. It's saves heaps of time. It's also less of a pain to use a Wysiwig editor for forms (especially .NET ones) and to start layouts. The expansion of dynamic content is pretty predictable in most cases. I mean the whole HTML framework is based around boxes.

Anyhow, I think that Dreamweaver 4 is probably still a good tool to start out with, though I would recommend Homesite 5 or Homesite+ if you can get your hands on it. Dreamweaver is superior to notepad because of syntax highlighting, which can give you clues as to whether your code is jacked up or not. Homesite does the same but with Autocompletion. That's the cool thing about Dreamweaver MX 2004. It's like Dreamweaver, Homesite, and TopStyle all in one app. It's a mean .NET development tool as well though I still use Visual Studio for my assembly work.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Thanks for your replies guys!