dw-iconWe’ve all seen job adds like the title. One that bascially discounts you as a coder on the basis of your tool of choice. Once that basically says “real web designers/developers don’t use Dreamweaver.”

I do use Dreamweaver. Oh yeah I also use Notepad++ and Textwrangler. I have tried coda (great by the way) and BBedit and Aptana and many other applications for web development.

At my fulltime job it simply comes down to cost. I use Dreamweaver because it is in CS3. There is no real break through feature that I could find to justify to my boss so that they would purchase Coda. At home I use Dreamweaver because there is no good alternative on a PC. Sure there is Notepad++ but no mater how many times I have tried I can’t get the code completion to work. Really why would I waste time to get an application working when Dreamweaver works out of the box? It’s just not good practical use of my limited time. Using Dreamweaver has no bearing on my code writing skills.

The problem with Dreamweaver is that a large number of people purchased it solely on the basis of the WYSIWYG view. Really these are the people that recruiters want eliminated from applying for jobs as web designer/developers not the ones that hand write code inside Dreamweaver.

So come on people that post jobs know what it is that you want. You want good web designers/developers. Let them use whatever tool they find most reliable and easy to use. If it’s Dreamweaver fine. Focus on the end product not the tool used.

11 responses to “Web Designer Needed: Don’t Apply if you use Dreamweaver”

  1. Greg Hudy Avatar

    Amen Brother!!

  2. Dave Avatar

    I’m sorry that you’re still using web authoring tools. I’ve tried quite a few, and very last one of them blows, and for the same reason: they write code for you. I realize that novice developers may benefit from this, since they don’t know what they’re doing. But I’ve now been doing cutting edge web dev for two years, and there is no such thing as a program that can automatically generate well-written HTML and CSS. None of them do. The closest I’ve found is Visual Studio, and only because it tends to not write code for you PERIOD. It lets me write my code the right way, and provides tools to gasp help me do it faster. In all honesty, I can’t take any dev seriously who thinks Dreamweaver is a quality tool. Which is sad, because Dreamweaver is the best “web authoring tool” out there…

    1. Curtis McHale Avatar
      Curtis McHale

      @Dave what do you mean you’re sorry I use Dreamweaver? It’s a good texteditor. That’s all I use it for. I have used Notepad to fix someone’s site when that’s all that was available to me. Maybe I didn’t make it that clear. The use of Dreamweaver as a text editor is fine. The WYSIWYG tools are the things that are the problems. I whole heartedly agree that someone using the visual tools in Dreamweaver (or any similar tools) are not web developers but if you’re using the text editing capabilities what’s the problem?

  3. Jessica Lares Avatar

    I use Dreamweaver for the fact that it makes it a lot easier to handle my CSS and DIVs a lot easier, and that’s basically all I really deal with because everything I make is controlled by the script that it’s created for. I only use the WYSIWYG to give me estimates, I’ve been experimenting with website creation for ten years now and it just amazes me just how much it has changed. I think I was about 7 when I used to have this HTML program (before CSS was mainstream) and compare it to the functions we have now, it’s nothing.

    I personally don’t like the guys who use notepad to create websites, I believe there has to be some guideline that you’re having to follow, otherwise it’s just guesswork – and that isn’t exactly professional. it’s one thing to be proficient and another to not use the tools available to you. It’s hard to look like you’re really working when all you’re doing is typing multiple lines of code in a blank box, and in the end, people would rather hire the person who can show you their progress in real-time.

  4. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Oh Jessica, Dreamweaver does a terrible job at CSS and Div positioning. If you know how to code, it should take you a lot less time than to go through all the steps in Dreamweaver. You have a lot less control and the options are a lot less advanced. Believe it or not, Dreamweaver does not follow W3C standards; they add a bunch of unnecessary code that could have been written in just a third. Just because someone codes in notepad doesn’t mean they are clueless. They should be following a strict guideline. Dreamweaver won’t correct your mistakes for you. Microsoft Word checks for spelling and fixes reasonable grammar but if you don’t know English well, they won’t even pick up most of your mistakes.

  5. Joe Hendricks Avatar

    Dave I agree VS2008 rox for web dev, but most webservers use LAMP, so as others have said, Dreamweaver in code view is the best alternative for non-Windows servers. SitegrinderPro add-in for Photoshop is also a great tool that spits out the cleanest CSS I’ve seen (and plays well with Dreamweaver).

    But the main point Curtis makes is that recruiters are CLUELESS and should not be posting ‘tools’ as criteria. Instead they should be looking at work the applicant has accomplished. – Joe

  6. Curtis McHale Avatar

    @joe Hendricks.

    That last sentence is exactly what I was trying to get across.

  7. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    People who use Dreamweaver tend to rely on it way too much. That’s all I can say. If all you do is hand-write code in Dreamweaver, then those job applications shouldn’t offend you. It’s implied that saying “Do not apply if you use Dreamweaver” are for those who use the WYSIWYG interface since, after all, that is what Dreamweaver’s known for.

  8. Erick Avatar
    Erick

    The bottom line is if you’re using Dreamweaver, then you should not expect to be taken seriously as a web developer. It makes no sense to pay for a product that keeps updating itself so you that you pay for the upgrade every time when there’s great tools like aptana that are free. People that use Dreamweaver suck, all they do is rely on the little icons to generate code and end up with this awful code, so when a real coder has to fix it, it plain sucks.

    1. curtismchale Avatar
      curtismchale

      @Erick all you really do with your reply is show you’re ignorance. It’s been a while since I used DW but it was a fine code editor. Sure you could just click on the icons and get things working but you certainly don’t have to. In your world what is the ‘approved’ code editor? Are you cool enough to use Vim, Nano, Emacs….? A more accurate statement is that if you don’t know how to ‘hand code’ then you shouldn’t expect to be taken seriously. You probably also shouldn’t expect be take seriously for short sited rants in the comments on old blog posts, but I suppose it doesn’t apply to your comment does it?

  9. Ty Avatar

    Hmmm… I am actually not sure who knows what in here… but I will back up the original author in the main purpose of this post. I use ANY tool that is necessary to get the job done. If a developer before me used DW, then that is the tool. If they used VS, then that is the tool. If it’s a fresh start app, then I will choose the tool best for THAT job. As for DW. IF you KNOW what you are doing, and you are a TRUE developer, then you know that DW can be MODIFIED to do whatever you want it to do. My version (which I took the liberty to modify) writes code EXACTLY the way I have programmed it to. You all ARE aware of DW Extensions, right? I mean seriously, I WILL NOT take ANYONE seriously who talks about things they really know NOTHING about. It sounds like the majority of people who have an “issue” with DW are affraid of it because they know not what it truly is. So in close; DW is a VERY good tool if you knnow what you are doing. And that is the key… actually knowing what you are doing.