Dreamweaver Is Dying; Long Live Drupal! 318
Barence writes "Here's an interesting blog post by a designer who reckons Dreamweaver is dying. It's not Dreamweaver's fault, though. Nor is the problem Adobe and its development team — the last Dreamweaver CS4 version was the most impressive release in years. Moreover, although Microsoft Expression Web poses a far more credible threat than FrontPage could muster, Dreamweaver remains the best HTML/CSS page-based editor available. The real problem for Dreamweaver and for its users is that the nature of the web is changing dramatically."
Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never tried it, when I do web design I do it with Gimp, Vim and Firebug. And I think that combo works great!
How do Dreamweaver compare to Vim? Is it advanced enough to not fool users to use css styled text for strong expressions?
Content Management System is not a design program (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless you want to stick to the default Drupal (or insert CMS here) themes, you'll probably want to design your own CMS template so people get a unique feel for your website. You'll still need to fall back on your classic static web-design skills using programs like Dreamweaver (or notepad).
Dreamweaver isn't dying, it's just falling into a more specialized category now. If you just used Dreamweaver as a way to update content, then you were really failing to use the program to it's full potential.
Re:Content Management System is not a design progr (Score:2, Interesting)
It's true, and Dreamweaver's autocomplete is fantastic.
I don't think there is much place for the GUI in template design, but the text editor in Dreamweaver is worth the money if you are a designer at a lower skill level.
Considering one would need the other apps in the suite, keeping Dreamweaver will be a perk.
Adobe should focus on making it a full fledged AMP (and others really) testing environment and it would be potent.
Easy local testing, their sitemanager to sync with remote, fantastic text editor, and maybe even some integration for template previewing (maybe they do?). I personally only use it to help be remember the names of various CSS properties and what they can be set too, but there is definitely potential to make designers more comfortable with interfacing with the server, as they have tied to do from the start (and I hate).
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's gobs more but those are the first things that come to mind.
Re:Microsoft is dying, long live McDonalds! (Score:4, Interesting)
I know it's popular here to bash wysiwig editors (just write the code, dammit!), but Dreamweaver has gotten MUCH better since version 4.
It's code is good, it works well with Flash, CSS and JavaScript. And if you're a designer, the Photoshop integration is pretty fantastic. Personally, I use Dreamweaver primarily for the site management tools, which are also very good.
If you haven't used DW in the past 4 years, then you haven't used DW.
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since we've got licenses for it at my day job, I use it as my preferred webdev/design IDE. It works fairly well for that sort of thing, but it's a bit of overkill for me (I'm not working on collab projects). Of course, I hand code everything. I'll say this much; it's a fast, responsive IDE regarding its UI, code highlighting, and more. When I'm doing my independent work, though, I usually use Geany for my coding, since it's multiplatform.
As a CMS, yeah, it's not very widely used anymore; why would someone use it, with so many CMS options available? A web based system is much, much more efficient, especially regarding cost. Anything that requires a software client, especially anything which requires paid licenses, is just asinine, in my professional opinion.
Re:The concept is more generic (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed.
The great majority of what I do are PHP based homegrown CMS type sites. I use Dreamweaver to manage the code, I use Photoshop and Illustrator for the graphics, and I use Firebug to figure out the CSS.
I don't use Dreamweaver to it's fullest potential because I no longer do a lot of static HTML stuff, but I still find Dreamweaver useful for PHP, JavaScript and CSS coding, probably because I've been using it for 6 years.
Re:Adapt, don't die...and even MS has the solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Fun? You must be joking. I've worked a lot with Sharepoint Designer and it's the most ungodly abomination of a software package I've ever had to touch. It makes the rest of Microsoft's applications look like they were made by NASA.
The whole of Sharepoint is gargantuan mess, from the half implemented API to the ridiculous, overcomplicated, undocumented deployment procedures (restarting the webserver every time you change code, really?), to the insane use of tables in the HTML (have a look at the html on an average system page, and see if your mind can deal with five or six tables wrapped around every single design element).
Sharepoint Designer is where you can really see Sharepoint for what it is. It has all these features that sound very nice, until you try to save an .aspx page and it replicates your previous change somewhere rather than the one you were currently checking in. You think "huh that's weird", delete, the extra code, rewrite the code you wanted to add, and check in again, and now the previous change appears three times. In the end the only solution is to delete the page and the associated content types from the site and create it again (and any pages that used it). That's the sort of wonderful behavior you can expect from Sharepoint Designer.
I've never used the WYSIWYG editor because, frankly, I'm scared.
Let me know when the funeral is (Score:3, Interesting)
... so I can neglect to send flowers.
For too long, too many self-described "web designers" have relied on Dreamweaver and its ilk to do their jobs for them. These people are not "web designers", they are graphic designers who think web documents are a blank canvas to be painted on, such as when they open a new file in Photoshop or Illustrator. The web is not a 3-panel brochure.
This delusion is fostered by their uninformed clients and bosses who only consider what looks good and how fast (cheap) it is produced. Little explicit attention is paid to usability, readability, or accessibility.
Good riddance, I say. The day these monkeys no longer have a crutch can not come soon enough.
Re:Content Management System is not a design progr (Score:3, Interesting)
Dreamweaver attempts to do the WYSIWYG which is geared towards those people who don't really know how to code.
DW has its place due to site management and debugging tools, and it doesn't force the wysiwyg. When I use it, it's usually with the mixed text/graphical view, because it is faster to zero in on certain parts of the code graphically by clicking there, then switching to the code pane.
Essentially, it's much faster to scan a picture than text, even if your markup is tidy, and it is nice to see the less-frequent available parameters for CSS in a pane rather than pull all of them from memory. DW's code has improved quite a bit over the years, too, it isn't the ugly mess it once was.
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:2, Interesting)
People used tables because that's all that was there. There were no DIV or SPAN tags, and CSS was still a pipe dream in somebody's bong. It's hard to make the claim that something was wrong from the beginning when what was right didn't exist, but I guess you don't need any real education to make revisionist history.
CSS isn't really necessary for web design. People really need to learn to use HTML correctly, first and foremost, before starting with these flavor-of-the-hour technologies. Some of these things you mention have no place in web design. Business logic should never, ever be in a web page. A web page shouldn't give an unwashed rat's ass about what database or programming language, style or paradigm is being used on the backend. I'm sure that it doesn't even matter whether you use tabs or spaces in indenting code, unless you're using Piss-on (pronounced with a lisp) :).
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:2, Interesting)
Emacs, Firebug, and Inkscape myself, but the point is well met.
Ok, honestly, I do resort to Photoshop if available. Illustrator also has some better pieces than Inkscape (though Inkscape's basic UI is far better, it does get a little bogged down on the complex stuff.)
Captain Obvious strikes again! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not news.
Modern Web-CMSes and feasable CSS made DW design capabilities and it's offline templating system completely superflous somewhere back in 2002 or 2003. In fact, I posted very much the same analysis on this issue about 5 or 6 years ago here on slashdot. Whatever is left of DW is here to stay for those doing the actuall screen/HTML design. The rext of us uses CSS frameworks and foundation templates and simply replaces the GFX and/or the colorcodes. I haven't used DW longer than 5 minutes since back in 2001.
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:3, Interesting)
How can you admit productivity gains from Firebug, yet ignore productivity gains given by integrated development environments?
Dreamweaver's more for coders than designers (Score:5, Interesting)
A designer might need Dreamweaver
Anyone doing design (artwork rather than page layout) isn't going to use Dreamweaver. It's great as a WYSIWYG html editor. From a design standpoint, it doesn't do much else. No raster or vector creation (unless you've decided to try the Celik CSS polygon method).
The only people I know who still use it are coders who find the extra features it provides in terms of editing and site management useful. In this sense, the article is quite correct -- Drupal and Wordpress and other software are eating away at the market that used to see Dreamweaver as the option for editing webpages without knowing HTML. Now CMSs do that.
Given that Dreamweaver really isn't a design tool either, usefulness as an IDE is pretty much the last thing Dreamweaver really has going for it.
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:5, Interesting)
I later realized, that such types only get their jobs, because their bosses are such types too. Up to the owner of the company. Which is the only person of the company in many cases.
And then they only have to live up to the clients' expectations. Of course the client never knows, that you could save him 90% of the cash by actually using real programming concepts like re-usability and modularity.
Next time anyone gets fired from a job due to their boss's incompetence, please tell a tabloid about how much money you could save them. And back it up with a slashdot/dailywtf story so the technocracy (i.e. the slashdot etc. community) will know that the (un)published story is in fact grounded in fact, or at least is valid [wikipedia.org] and/or sound [wikipedia.org].
Please do this, so that we can all have something funny to read, and so that the client has some clue that he's being ripped off by a salesman who is too stupid to even take advantage of the high price.
To mods:No, this is not, in fact, sarcastic.
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:4, Interesting)
A designer might need Dreamweaver, but that's most likely because he doesn't know the underlying structures. Now, I admit, the Designer-Tech profile is quite seldom though ;-))
All the good web designers I know do their own HTML and CSS. Although in bigger places, the design and implementation in to code may be split. But Dreamweaver has been dead for a while to most decent web designers.
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:3, Interesting)
There are web developers, and web amateurs. You can see them whining and bitching above.
They think that because they read a HTML book while driving the cab, and wrote 5-liners of JavaScript that you can replace with 10 characters of CSS, that they can call themselves "developers".
I know this isn't the point of your post, but I'd like to quibble with this statement. Trying to make a distinction between "amateurs" and "developers" is all well and good, but where do you draw the line?
We already have people trying to control how we can develop things by splitting the camp between "hobbyists" and "professionals" (aka Microsoft). Their intent is to imply that if you aren't paid by a big corporation (like Microsoft) that your application is obviously shit.
We also have people trying to provide "certification" (aka Microsoft) for various programming tasks, in a thinly disguised attempt to control standards.
Labeling a person an "amateur" drives a wedge between the established developers and people trying to learn the ropes. As we know, regardless of qualifications, there is a whole range of ability with respect to development. We've all met the moron who couldn't code his way out of a wet paper bag, even though he has worked on large systems before and has a stack of paper "certifying" him as qualified. And we also know of people who literally coded their way out of their basement with a huge amount of knowledge.
Those who write applications (both web applications and non-web applications) are developers. I don't care if you can only write "Hello, world."; you're a developer. But each developer has a level of ability and experience. That level must be judged individually for each person.
This can be a problem for those starting a business without development experience. How can they hire good people? Well, let's say you were trying to build a world class soccer team. Would you hire they players by interviewing them and asking them how good they were? Or would you hire a proven coach first and get him/her to help select your team? One of these two ways works most of the time. The other doesn't. Why do we always pick the way that doesn't work?
Re:Is Dreamweaver good? (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you tried the web developer extension for firefox? It lets you modify the stylesheets on the fly at least, not sure about html source.
Re:Dreamweaver's more for coders than designers (Score:2, Interesting)
I totally hear where a lot of people are coming from on this issue.
What is the fate of Web 1.0 development tools in a Web 2.0 world?
The problem is that a lot of Web 2.0 goodness, such as Ajax, dynamic content, and collaboration require databases and dynamic coding. The static HTML produced by WYSIWYG web authoring tools can never meet the user expectations of today for a better web experience.
So you could argue that WYSIWYG development tools are obsolete, and that portals and content management systems are the future, but I would only partially agree. Sure, the web is changing, but that does not mean Web user interface design, navigation design, usability, accessibility, information architecture, CSS, HTML, Web standards compliance, metadata, and cross-browser compatibility are dead. On the contrary - I would argue that tools like Dreamweaver are indispensible for ensuring that Web 2.0 applications remain "backwards compatible" with Web 1.0 standards and guidelines. :-)
As users take on an increasing level of ownership of their content, we need web designers more than ever to help ensure the aesthetics and the semantics of the web do not suffer as a consequence (anyone remember GeoCities?). Dreamweaver happens to be an excellent tool for standards-based visual Web design and development. It makes it easy to create attractive pages that pass W3C compliance tests, and with the right Dreamweaver extensions you can build full-featured, Ajax-enabled, dynamic, collaborative Web 2.0 applications much more easily.
I spent years evaluating different open-source portals and CMS systems written in different languages (ASP, PHP, Perl, and Java), and I found that they all imposed certain user interface design constraints and even the best web-based WYSIWYG editor required was still a lot less powerful than Dreamweaver. The nice thing about Dreamweaver is you get complete freedom to develop your Web user interface however you choose, without any design constraints imposed on you.
But how do you get Web 2.0 support out of a Web 1.0 development tools? Remember Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 meme map [oreillynet.com]?
The answer is components - rich, data-driven, Ajax-enabled, standards-compliant Web user interface components.
The component-based web development paradigm makes it easier to build content-driven, dynamic web applications with the latest Web 2.0 features. This is how desktop apps have been written for years, which is also consistent with the "Web as a platform" concept and the goal of making Web 2.0 applications more like desktop applications (that is, by building web applications the same way we build desktop software, we can make the web experience more like a desktop software experience).
Since I do mostly Java development today, I decided to learn JavaServer Faces [sun.com], a component-based framework for building web apps. As a long-time Dreamweaver user, I also wanted to create my JSF pages in Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver had no built-in JSF support, so I decided to write JSFToolbox for Dreamweaver [jsftoolbox.com], a suite of design and coding Dreamweaver extensions that support JavaServer Faces development.
JSF is quite popular in the Java space today. We had our first conference last September. I spoke about using Dreamweaver for Web 2.0 development in my podcast [jsfcentral.com] from the conference - check it out if you like.
One of the great things about JSF is that you get Ajax support for free with a lot of UI components, so you can simply add a rich tree component to your page for example and you don't have to write a single line of JavaScript to get the partial page rendering behavior. Our tools allow you to create Ajax-enabled JSF pages in Dreamweaver both visually and intuitively. Personally I've designed and implemented many JSF We