One of the most important tools within web developer’s arsenal is the text editor.
It is a widely recognised and adopted convention among standards compliant, semantic web developers not to use tools which auto-generate HTML or CSS code.
I would strongly recommend to anyone not to use Dreamweaver or FrontPage to develop web pages.
These tools tend to create code which is either one or all of the following:
- Non-standards compliant
- Unnecessarily bloated
- Not cross-browser compliant
- Will not be sufficient when it comes to integration into larger systems (with PHP, Java, CFM or .NET back ends)
Use a plain text editor which does not write code automatically for you. It is OK if the text editor you use auto-suggests code to be used, but it is not good if the tool automatically writes code for you during your development process as you will never be 100% sure on whether the code the tool is generating is the code you want in the final web site.
I have been misfortunate enough to use early versions of tools like Dreamweaver and FrontPage and they have left such a sour taste in my mouth that I have (rightly so) made a decision never to go back to them again.
On a trial site I tried to build using Dreamweaver (probably somewhere around year 2001), the tool tended to inject so much unnecessary table related HTML that most of my time was spend taking out the code which the tool was putting in for me (even though I was in editor mode and not in visual design mode).
I got so annoyed with all this that I made a decision only to use straight, simple and free code editors, which only helped me with matters like code colouring, nice indentation, maybe some auto-suggestion and that’s it!
It has been one of the best development and process-related decisions I have ever made as a web developer.
If you are not able to write ‘hand coded’ HTML/CSS, then you really need to learn how to do it.
It is one of the big ways in which professionals are differentiated from amateurs within the industry and this is reflected within good web developer job ads, which will usually specify that ‘hand coding’ is an apsolute requirement.
Written by Jason Grant, BSc, MSc on 1st June 2008
Actually, I find Dreamweaver quite useful. I first used Dreamweaver 2, and had issues similar to what you describe. However, I liked the way it integrated code editing with FTP capabilities, it has a command for formatting code and one for cleaning up code that are both quite handy, and the way it color codes the code is very helpful to me. I am not sure those things off-set the price, but it sure beats anything MicroSoft has done (FrontPage or VisualStudio)
If you use such editors in design mode instead of looking at the code, you are doomed to sloppy code. Even in code view, MicroSoft products re-write my code on save, and that is intolerable to me. With Dreamweaver, however, the trick is to set your preferences and to be selective with the features you use. For instance, I turned off all settings that would allow it to change anything I have typed in and I never let it write JavaScript.
Jules on 1st September@Jules If you are using Dreamweaver in code view only and not in design view, you might as well use a free editor that gives you all those facilities (colour coding, FTP integration, snippets, validation, etc.) and is not as processor heavy as Dreamweaver. Thanks for your reply. I am currently using NetBeans IDE as my main editor. Nice, light and does everything I need it to do. Comes highly recommended. Also has a ‘Find’ option across many files, which is the main functionality I ever liked in Dreamweaver. NetBeans IDE is free as freedom also.
Jason Grant on 1st SeptemberI’ve been creating web pages for numerous years now, and everything is self taught. I started coding by hand using notepad (talk about hard work!), before moving on to editors with advanced features like syntax highlighting, auto indentation etc.
IMO, programs like Dreamweaver, FrontPage etc, only harm the web, as they create unsightly, bloated code (even if you configure them carefully).
Hand coding is the only way to go, and is actually faster than using one of the aforementioned programs, due to the fact that you don’t have to spend hours “cleaning up” the dodgy code!
Scott Sampson on 27th February