Can anyone use Dreamweaver?

[Salka]

Do you want to turn my PSD file into a website using Dreamweaver? Allegedly it's a 20 minute job but I hate Dreamweaver. It might be part of my coursework or something.

Facts: I have to use Dreamweaver. My course has nothing to do with web design. Please fucking help me I'm sick of it. I'll pay you somehow. Maybe money, maybe just love. We can talk about it.

[Salka]

What is this 1x1 pixel bullshit??! I know nothing about making websites but I'm pretty sure this is bullshit. WEEP.

[toblix]

Why not kickstart it?

[Salka]

Hahahahaha.

Basically we have to do this for a module at Uni, which has nothing to do with our course really other than I suppose it's to make a portfolio site. But it's to make a very basic and unattractive portfolio site in 800 x 600 'in case anyone looks at it on their phone'. A portfolio site that I'll never use, basically.

But it has to fit certain technical specifications and it has to be 800 x 600 and built in dreamweaver, which makes the whole thing particularly tedious. I keep having to make different fucking tables within tables within tables and spreading 1x1 white pixels around and I'm pretty sure - I mean, I know nothing about web design - but I'm pretty sure this is a retarded dumbfuck way of doing anything.

[Nachimir]

I honestly didn't realise Dreamweaver still existed. Sorry I can't help

basic and unattractive portfolio site in 800 x 600 'in case anyone looks at it on their phone'.

Shoot lecturers, dump bodies in concrete under new data centre.

It is indeed a retarded dumbfuck approach to web development, and more than a decade out of date.

[Salka]

Please god someone must be able to help me.

Even the tutor can't fucking figure out how to separate out all these tables within tables. This is genuinely the most dumbfuck way of FFURUACARAGHHARHGHHHGHAHRGHARHGAHRGHHH.

I'm sitting in class now, there's a whisper of '1x1 pixel' behind me, like I'm going fucking mad and hearing voices in my head just urging me to kill myself.

[Salka]

I think I've got it sorted now but man, I hate this... every year there is at least one module on my course that is completely backwards and outdated. It's really frustrating. I wish I could have spent these past few weeks learning something useful about making websites instead of learning an outdated method on an outdated piece of software that I'll never use again, to produce a site that I will never be able to use, for a course that is nothing to do with web design.

Sad face.

[toblix]

Sometimes, learning what not to do is most important.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Do you want to turn my PSD file into a website using Dreamweaver? Allegedly it's a 20 minute job but I hate Dreamweaver. It might be part of my coursework or something.

Facts: I have to use Dreamweaver. My course has nothing to do with web design. Please fucking help me I'm sick of it. I'll pay you somehow. Maybe money, maybe just love. We can talk about it.

I make websites for a living... Step 1: Don't use Dreamweaver (for anything other than a glorified version of notepad, at least). Step 2: It might take you 20 minutes... once you're au fait with HTML.

I'd suggest reading this, or posting a JPG of your site with a link to the PSD to see if some kind soul might take pity on you.

[syntheticgerbil]

I can use Dreamweaver half assed and in turn make half assed websites. That's why mine is just a collection of images that are split among tables so that I can hide my lack of knowledge. I don't really need to know though.

It can't be that hard to try to do what you are doing right? In your PSD file you can set up all the slices for exporting with the slice tool. But there's much better ways of making websites than Dreamweaver, as most have said already.

[juv3nal]

actually Dreamweaver can be really handy if you want to use nested tables to manage your layout.

the catch is that you pretty much never want to do that

[Laxan]

I just did an intro to web design module this spring and we were all given copies of Dreamweaver and told "This is what proper designers use!".

Any particular reasons why it's so bad and what software would actual people suggest instead of it?

[toblix]

Ideally you would use software that is good at letting you edit HTML and CSS directly, and not generating it based on a WYSIWIYG editor. There are plenty of great free and commercial software for this that helps you write good, correct code, and people have literally killed each other over which one is the very best. People who recommend using a plain text editor are wrong and/or not doing it professionally.

[juv3nal]

People who recommend using a plain text editor are wrong and/or not doing it professionally.

It's one thing if you're doing js or server side stuff, but for just css & html, what do you really want out of an editor (that a plain text editor doesn't provide) aside from syntax highlighting?

[Chris]

Ideally you would use software that is good at letting you edit HTML and CSS directly, and not generating it based on a WYSIWIYG editor. There are plenty of great free and commercial software for this that helps you write good, correct code, and people have literally killed each other over which one is the very best. People who recommend using a plain text editor are wrong and/or not doing it professionally.

Are you referring to straightforward code editors like Notepad++ or are you referring to more web-specific software?

[subbes]

If it doesn't come in the form of an Eclipse plug-in, I will not formally recognize it

[toblix]

Are you referring to straightforward code editors like Notepad++ or are you referring to more web-specific software?

By plain text editors, I was referring to the likes of Notepad. Not having used Notepad++, my impression is it it's a great, free tool for this kind of stuff. The first thing I'd look for is syntax highlighting; it lets you move around faster, it lets you read HTML and CSS faster, and as a bonus it ususally lets you know if you've made an error. After all, HTML and CSS are games of matching quotation marks, braces and tags. The next thing I'd look for, which I also assume Notepad++ has, is more powerful text editing features, like searching and replacing (across files), context-sensitive editing, etc. Stuff like auto-completion is also be useful, but only if it's strict and correct and up to date. Same with validation.

I work mostly in Eclipse, and I'm pretty happy with its editors for this kinds of stuff.

[shammack]

So you want vim, basically. :trollface:

[ThunderPeel2001]

By plain text editors, I was referring to the likes of Notepad. Not having used Notepad++, my impression is it it's a great, free tool for this kind of stuff. The first thing I'd look for is syntax highlighting; it lets you move around faster, it lets you read HTML and CSS faster, and as a bonus it ususally lets you know if you've made an error. After all, HTML and CSS are games of matching quotation marks, braces and tags. The next thing I'd look for, which I also assume Notepad++ has, is more powerful text editing features, like searching and replacing (across files), context-sensitive editing, etc. Stuff like auto-completion is also be useful, but only if it's strict and correct and up to date. Same with validation.

I work mostly in Eclipse, and I'm pretty happy with its editors for this kinds of stuff.

There's zero problem using Notepad... if you're good enough B-) It's slightly more of a pain, and I'd never consider it for a big project, but I could easily put together a standards compliant site in no time.

You wouldn't use it professionally because it would be a weird form of machochism, but essentially all you need is syntax highlighting from your IDE.

If I'm working with PHP, or building a big site, I use NetBeans (seems a bit faster than Eclipse to me). If it's something small, I'll use Notepad++.

Bottom line: DreamWeaver is perfectly fine if you use it as a text editor, but it's awful if you use its WYSIWYG interface. The idea that someone who doesn't know HTML could put together a site from scratch in 20 minutes is total BS, though. You could spend 20 mins reading up on the syntax.

[MrHoatzin]

I am a huge fan of Sublime Text 2, an heir to the awesome TextMate. It is multi-platform and free while still in Beta. It is slightly wackily supported because of that. It supports textmate plugins, so any textmate bundles you can just drop at it and it will play nice with them.

[toblix]

So you want vim, basically. :trollface:

Sure. If you're adept at vim, it seems to me like a great tool for HTML, CSS, javascript, basically any form of structured text. If you're not after an IDE, it's probably the most powerful tool for that kind of stuff.

There's zero problem using Notepad... if you're good enough B-) It's slightly more of a pain, and I'd never consider it for a big project, but I could easily put together a standards compliant site in no time.

You're just saying Notepad lets you put text into files. Hey, why not just echo the text directly into the file from the command line? Because there are better ways of doing it. No matter how good you are, you'll still be terribly limited using Notepad.

I am a huge fan of Sublime Text 2, an heir to the awesome TextMate. It is multi-platform and free while still in Beta. It is slightly wackily supported because of that. It supports textmate plugins, so any textmate bundles you can just drop at it and it will play nice with them.

My boss has started working in Sublime. Seems like a great editor.

[ThunderPeel2001]

You're just saying Notepad lets you put text into files. Hey, why not just echo the text directly into the file from the command line? Because there are better ways of doing it. No matter how good you are, you'll still be terribly limited using Notepad.

That's an absurd comparison. The only difference between Notepad and Eclipse when it comes to pure HTML is syntax highlighting. Yes, it would be dumb not to make it easier on yourself, but it's nothing like creating the text from a command line.

Additional features, such as debugging and autocomplete, only come in handy when you're using PHP or ASP.Net. It would be perfectly acceptable to piece together a small site, like Yufter's proposing, in Notepad if that was all you had access to.

It would NEVER be acceptable to start piecing it together with the command prompt if that's all you had access to. That would be insane.

Edited April 26, 2012 by ThunderPeel2001

[toblix]

You're wrong, and I'll get back to why.

[ThunderPeel2001]

You're wrong, and I'll get back to why.

I eagerly await your incorrect response ;-P

I've been building websites since 1998, and I've used Notepad when I've had to. It's not perfect, but if you know what you're doing, it's fine.

You can't debug PHP or ASP.Net with Notepad, so and IDE is needed in those situations.

[juv3nal]

I am a huge fan of Sublime Text 2, an heir to the awesome TextMate. It is multi-platform and free while still in Beta. It is slightly wackily supported because of that. It supports textmate plugins, so any textmate bundles you can just drop at it and it will play nice with them.

Oh hey that's pretty great, the one thing it doesn't have that prevents me from switching out of eclipse is the diff doesn't do the side-by-side scrolling eclipse's 'compare with each other' thing does. It's certainly a heck of a lot snappier and out of the box without customizing things yourself the color scheme is more legible.