Dreamweaver useful for coders?

[Alex]

I'm interested in the opinions of people who can comfortably design and build websites just using a text editor, but still choose to use Dreamweaver for its added features. What sort of things can it do which improve your workflow?

I'm thinking of possibly buying it as part of Adobe's web premium package but would really like to hear people's opinions of how it can be useful.

I have a completely open mind at the moment so hopefully this will not descend into a flame war :D

[Corrosive]

I still find DW a very useful tool for workflow despite the fact that I hand code. Code hints, live view, split view, built in FTP etc all make it a respectable platform for a developer. DW has developed a bad rap because of the people that use design view to 'drag and drop' a website with no clue about coding. If you know what you are doing then it is a great piece of software. Is it worth the money? Depends on your view because, as you say, you can build a website in Notepad++ and that is free

[byronc]

code hints, find errors i cant find - eg missing closing tags

did i mention CODE hints

I cant remember all the millions of attirbutes on each tag

just the color popup is my friend

[richimgd]

I still use Dreamweaver even though I hand code everything. As mentioned its code hinting is great and it's generally nice how it formats the code. It’s good in the way that it manages the multiple files that make up a webpage and has them all available in one place. Also with CS5 it even lists any PHP include files associated with a page. Many other editors, even free editors do all of this though.

I generally like to hand code everything so I can be sure that my sites don't get bloated out with unnecessary functionality or poorly optimised code. The trouble with using design view is you have no way of knowing what Dreamweaver is doing with the code. I do use design view occasionally just to identify parts of a page visually, but then I just straight back to the code view where the cursor is in the right place. I use a separate FTP program (FileZilla) and manually upload only the files that I know I have edited. I find FileZilla best for doing this. I don’t trust Dreamweaver automatically uploading files it thinks I have edited.

It's mainly because Dreamweaver is included in the Creative Suite which makes it worth using since I use all of the other CS products so may as well use Dreamweaver too because it fits into my workflow. I probably wouldn't buy it separately if I had to so as for what I use it for I could probably get by with a free code editor and a free ftp program and a free web browser and the multiple free developer browser add ons... If you catch my drift!

[Katedesign]

I learnt to hand code and then we got Dreamweaver... I couldn't see how to use it and have never tried. I wouldn't spend out as people say above you can get so much free!

[chris_17]

Started out with it and now would never go back to it.

I find one thing that often happens is, people will stumble into a CSS problem and can't figure it out, and start using the built in stuff and next thing you know there's inline styles or !important everywhere in the CSS.

I use Sublime which is brilliant.

[Alex]

Great, thanks for the comments. It looks like I'm going to have to buy the web premium package so I'll definitely have a play around with using Dreamweaver as an editor/FTP client to replace the notepad++/filezilla combo.

[Web_Design_Sheffield]

i mainly use DW just to speed things up. Especially when adding divs n css etc. I could code with just notpad but I remember how long that use to take so i dont think ill be going back (which sadly means i need to budget accordingly!).
As of yet i havent found any opensource alternative that can really rival DW?? Gimps had a good go at photoshop though.

[sdesign1]

It looks like I'm going to have to buy the web premium package

You don't have to - I ONLY use it as I just got used to it. Given that nowadays we are working with template files from a CMS the GUI is totally redundant - I can't remember the last time I used it. 90% of my time is spent editing CSS and 10% on the html so a decent code editor is fine.