Getting to Grips with Adobe Dreamweaver
A company called Macromedia once decided to make the dream of many a reality by creating a piece of software designed to make website construction easy. Instead of manually creating code by hand, this software was designed to automate the process by allowing you to design how the website should look in one window, to see the code automatically created in another. And vice versa of course, as you added in code to the document you could instantly see the affect that it would have on the appearance of your pages.
Macromedia named their software Dreamweaver and it was immediately heralded as a huge advancement in the field of website design, with many developers favouring it as their tool of choice. Adobe have taken ownership of Dreamweaver now, but its popularity has not diminished and frequent updates to its functionality helps to keep the tool at the forefront of website development technology.
Whatever language that you use to create your website, you can be confident that Dreamweaver will support it. From the popular such as HTML, CSS and PHP, to the obscure and often unknown ColdFusion and Wireless Markup Language (WML), there really is support for almost any web technology. In the majority of instances the code that this software produces is clean and concise and ready to instantly transfer to your website hosting package to see your design live on the internet.
Although the advantages for using Dreamweaver are numerous, there are still some drawbacks that should be taken into consideration before purchasing this software:
- Are you just starting out as a website developer? Do you just want to create one personal website? If so you may need to consider some alternative options, as Adobe Dreamweaver is certainly not the cheapest solution on the market.
- On the whole the code produced when using this software is suitable for its purpose, but by solely using any tool to create your website for you, you will fail to learn any coding principles for yourself. If something goes wrong when your website is live on the internet how will you know how to fix it?
- Creating a website design in Dreamweaver isn’t necessarily a quick process. It will take time to understand its intricacies, and the user interface isn’t exactly friendly to complete novices so you may need to invest some time into following online tutorials.
The drawbacks to Dreamweaver may deter you from choosing it as the tool to use to create your websites, but never forget that it is a very powerful piece of software that can have great effect when used well. With many techniques available such as using templates to ensure that all pages within your website are arranged in the same fashion, and many tools that can aid in the development process, you shouldn’t immediately write it off.
Can’t decide whether it’s worth the expense? Adobe offers 30 day free trials for all of its products so why not download it and give it a go to see if this is the software that will help you to create the websites of your dreams.
Author Note: (The above article has been added to our Website Design Articles section as part of our efforts to help provide our website visitors and customers with an insight into the Logo Design and Website Design industry).
Copyright Note: (Permission is Not granted for these articles to be featured on other websites or blogs).
