Originally posted by Wayne Hefner:
This may not be the common opinion, But there is nothing any of the visual tools mentioned that I can not do in vi. These visual tools quite often clutter your code with inefficiencies that are not needed. The other aspect these visual tools try to do is make it so you don't have to understand how something works to code it. This is always a dangerous scenario when something breaks and it is time to debug and you hear the ever famous excuse **** I don't know the tool did that ****
I too come from a background of doing my html in a text editor. However, if you have to develop and manage sites for a living, DW is the quickest, most effective way to do it. It even produces fairly nice code which you can edit to your hearts content within the tool. The templating and library tools are a huge time saver and also ensure consistency. Ever had to make one small change across many many pages? DW makes it a snap. It is much easier to layout using DW than it is by hitting the code in my opinion, especially if you are using DHTML. One of my favorite features is visually laying out a page using layers, and then having them converted into a table retaining my precise positioning (try that in vi). The site management tools are also a great help.
Naturally to be effective with a tool such as DW
you should know your HTML inside and out before using it. That's the only way to ensure that the tool is going to do EXACTLY what you want it to.
While doing a small website using a text editor is fine, doing a site of any size in vi is just plain silly. Time is money in this business and you need to be able to show the client results FAST.
On a side note, all other web design tools I have used besides Dreamweaver I have found to be lousy. DW is really a good tool for someone who actually knows what he is doing in HTML, and as I said before, produces fairly nice code which you have complete control over.
Jason
Any suggestions or war stories would be appreciated.
