Even though I'm guilty of hitting buttons in dreamweaver that cause issues with "clean code".

I'm finding more and more I use notepad2, dreamweaver to get things started for some reason. (bad habit?) I have been using the program for 5 years.

The only thing that's cool about dreamweaver is the live view of your work. And maybe organizing ftp sites. Writing xhtml / css basically renders dreamweaver useless.

most of the guys here recommends to code manually. wow! for sure this will cause a lot of delays. dont you think guys that coding manually are for students..very good for learning.

but for a guy like me that has deadline to meet..dont u think wyswyg editor is highly recommended?

Nope. WYSIWYG = bad code. Hand = good code.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Nope. WYSIWYG = bad code. Hand = good code.

I can't agree more, if you have built your code well enough, every thing will be more like fill in the blanks afterwards besides, using WYSIWYG generates garbage code that sometimes leads to very strange results. You find yourself trying and trying and trying to figure out what's wrong which takes a very long time

DW is fast for mockups, but you have to take into account all the time that goes into cleaning DW code into working correctly across different browsers.
Hand-coding is not really that bad since you'll reuse the same code fragments/templates many times without having to do much fixing.

html code: good old notepad (love tidy coding )
images: Photoshop CS2

Originally Posted by shotokan99

dont you think guys that coding manually are for students..very good for learning.

nope....wrong conclusion
hand cooding is the best (of course --->need to be a pro for that )

lol its easy for the people that actually know HTML and CSS to talk about coding the site manually in notepad. notepad is the best text editor that actually comes with windows and its free that i've seen. but for learning upcoming web designers if u do not know anything about html coding or css dont even try writting ur own codes. it was a mess when i first tryed notepad but once dreamweaver came into place i was able to make some pretty good websites with dreamweaver. dreamweaver is just nice to make simple edits in ur sliced html file produced by photoshop but to actually build the design in dreamweaver it will make some pretty nasty codes.

If you really know something about HTML, go for txtpad. it's easy to modify or create ur webstie. otherwise use Frontpage to help u generate html code. there are some other website systems can be helpful also, like Dashboard, etc.

I learned to build websites by hand coding. I then branched out to editors. Front page and Dream weaver will give you similar results, I prefer dream more then frontpage.

I would not recomend hand coding because it TAKES TO MUCH TIME. If you are a webdesigner 99% of your site dream or Front page will be enough.

Originally Posted by Cityboy10

I learned to build websites by hand coding. I then branched out to editors. Front page and Dream weaver will give you similar results, I prefer dream more then frontpage.

I would not recomend hand coding because it TAKES TO MUCH TIME. If you are a webdesigner 99% of your site dream or Front page will be enough.

It should be the other way around. Now with the power of css and template handcoding a site is not much time consuming. And the most important is that you what is behind the layout so you can easily fix it when it breaks.

An important lesson I learn as a programmer: I spend most time fixing the code rather than writing new ones (that's the reason I'm learning test-first coding technique now)

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I'd stab myself in the eyes with a pencil and break the lead off before I recommend Dr*amw*av*r for anything. I don't care what anyone says, it's right up there with FrontPage for horrible coding.

Six months ago I would have said you're crazy, but its' true. Dreamweaver as a "wsywig" text editor is really a lot like FrontPage used that way. After going over a lot of code by hand that DW created, it's amazing the way it would use divs inside tds to control alignment, how bloated everything is, and how it manages all of your template parts with comments. I think there are basically two ways of doing it: write your own code, or let it be written for you. If you go with plan B, DW is a little better than FP in some ways, but more similar than different.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

As far as coding goes, Notepad++ is the best free text editor I've seen. I like the fact that it colour-codes your code so you can find holes quickly and easily in it (especially in ASP). If you can learn to code by hand (and it's not all that hard), you'll be miles ahead using something like this.

I've been using Notepad++ for years, and it's fantastic. It's also grown a lot, the syntax highlighting used to be just black text, and bold if it was part of the content. I love the "folding" or collapsing features. I was really hopeful about Expression, but it's just not compelling enough to pull me away from Notepad++ at the end of the day.

I like Photoshop for image editing. The Gimp is very good, too, even better in some areas, but I like the UI in Photoshop a lot more than Gimp for Windows.

most are recomending to use only css/html/images in ur website. others would say...its professional. i think everybody agress to this. and i think its true bcoz if ur going to look at the websites of well-known universities like oxford, cambridge...etc, they are very straightforward and ez to load. pure html/css..

however if ur going to visit car manufacturers site kia, land rover..etc. they are bloated with flash stuff. and at times it takes forever for them to load. does it mean that they are doing it wrong? are they not aware that professionals encourages only html/css?

Originally Posted by shotokan99

most of the guys here recommends to code manually. wow! for sure this will cause a lot of delays. dont you think guys that coding manually are for students..very good for learning.
but for a guy like me that has deadline to meet..dont u think wyswyg editor is highly recommended?

Definitively not.
In contrario, and in my opinion, wysiwyg editiors are too limited to be efficiant to do what I need to do.

I'm faster with a text editor than with a tool like dreamweaver.
The only times I had to use DW was when I had to work on a DW designed site.
The code was so bad and so messy that I could not work my way through it.

Originally Posted by Kiz

lol its easy for the people that actually know HTML and CSS to talk about coding the site manually in notepad. notepad is the best text editor that actually comes with windows and its free that i've seen. but for learning upcoming web designers if u do not know anything about html coding or css dont even try writting ur own codes.

If upcoming web designers only do one thing, it should be learning html and css.

Wow. I had no idea that so many of you guys use notepad. I agree, writing code yourself is best way to learn coding. I use Dreamweaver_8, Fireworks_8, and Flash Professional_8 for my website designing.

IF you don't know html or css, that's ok, but if you don't know anything about html or css and you don't want to learn them either then why do you try to make a site?!!! Go for Microsoft Word

guys, can i ask something regarding xml here. is it ok?