What is the difference between using HTML or Dreamweaver to make a website? Which is Better?

Question

What is the difference between using HTML or Dreamweaver to make a website? Which is Better?

Answer 1

Dreamweaver will generate HTML.

Depending on a) how big the site is, b) your familiarity with HTML, and c) the value of your time, a generator could be very useful.

I like writing everything by hand, but I rely on templates I've built, or a CMS to properly handle the chunks I write that are different per page.

Answer 2

Dreamweaver is a tool to create Html. You could use any text editor to edit to Html.

If this is all a little new then maybe take a look at google sites which is a very easy way to create basic web sites without much call developing.

Answer 3

Dreamweaver is an IDE for HTML.

Answer 4

I use Dreamweaver for development but I write HTML by hand. Dreamweaver has nice code autocompletion with syntax highlighting and website management. This allows to write HTML faster than with other IDEs.

I generally avoid using it's visual editor as the code generated is not very readable (indentation, etc.)

Answer 5

I hand-code everything and find Dreamweaver to be a pretty good editor as far as HTML development goes. You can build HTML with any text editor but having the added features of Dreamweaver are nice: of tag auto-completion, syntax highlighting, built-in FTP and code validation etc..

I would never use any of the built-in templates or form validation functions it generates - you're just digging your own "n00b grave" if you're ever asked to modify them in the future. Unless you're doing a lot of server-side coding Dreamweaver is a safe bet.

Answer 6

Since browsers render content drastically different I would highly recommend learning to do your HTML by hand. Its harder to learn, but it will make you understand and appreciate the specs, as well as let you know which browsers fail to adhere to them.

Answer 7

Hand written HTML is almost always better. I recommend SciTE, Bruce Dodson's version.

I usually write templates to generate static HTML but if you want a good free offline tool you can use Nvu/KompoZer.

Answer 8

If you are just starting designing web pages and HTML and know little about writing your own CSS, Dreamweaver is a logical choice. It's more intuitive for designers and has some useful shortcuts courtesy of its GUI: editing fonts, colors; adding and linking images, media; managing global content via a library; premade components and behaviors, etc. It is also excellent if you just need to bang out some html mockups, are nervous about writing code, and could care less about pages with clean markup and code that fit standards (at least amongst the developer community).

That said, Dreamweaver is not a real tool for making websites. I've stopped using it at version 9 (CS3), and to my knowledge it has yet to support previewing PHP in it's Design View, making it useless than just previewing in the browser for working on dynamic sites (most of the web today). Despite auto-completion, its Coding View lacks a lot of the powerful editing features that software like TextMate and Eclipse offer. It does offer a built-in FTP Client for working with remote files, but based on my experience it isn't stable.

The most important reason to only use Dreamweaver if you have to: it isn't built to teach you web design. Unless you're only producing Photoshop layouts, you have to write code to learn web design; you have to write the XHTML and CSS to understand standards and structure. And if you need something that is more than just a text editor like TextMate, try Coda; it's Dreamweaver minus the Design View (making it faster) and unnecessary fluff that generate bad markup, and has some other pros to boot.

Answer 9

By better, what do you mean?

If you want something to quickly edit an HTML page, then Dreamweaver will do okay. But really, authoring an HTML page with dreamweaver is like programming with wizards. For the simplest tasks it will do, but anything beyond that and its a recipe for disaster.

FWIW, when we look at resumes, people who say they develop with Dreamweaver get their resumes put on the bottom of the pile.

there are plenty of editors that give you code completion, syntax highlighting, FTP, validation, etc. The two I know and have used are jEdit and emacs. (Emacs is my personal favorite thus-far).

Answer 10

HTML is the base markup language used to describe the way a website should be displayed.

Dreamweaver makes it easier for people who aren't able to code in HTML to create webpages. The drawback is that it will often add bloat to your webpages and make them larger and harder for people using notepad to make edits to.

Assuming you don't know HTML you should only use Dreamweaver if you don't have the time to invest learning HTML.