i agree with you to a certain extent bubblebutt.
I think it's important that designers know how to design for web and produce their layouts accordingly with various web standards and user experience stuff in mind. Having said that...knowledge of HTML / flash is definitely a bonus but i agree with Helen that something like Dreamweaver is not necessarily the way to go. If you mention it to a proper web developer, they'll probably curse it's very existence and for good reason.
I think a happy medium is to have knowledge of the languages but form a good partnership with a web developer and work together on projects. That way as a designer you can make it look nice and the developer can make it work properly...there's one too many websites out there that look nice but are badly constructed. Many web developers won't go near the design part of the site for good reason...maybe it should work both ways?
Play to each others strengths and you will be able to produce some great work.
It's a shame that there appears to be an increasing amount of design agencies that can't see past this. Perhaps it has something to do with cutting costs...especially in the current economic climate...people want more for less!
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