Why mention Dreamweaver on your CV?
Written May 6, 2009. 17 comments.
In a recent article I made a throw-away comment regarding Dreamweaver and its (lack of) importance in web design. During the beta phase of this site one of the testers queried me on why I felt that way. Buckle up, because this might hurt some feelings.
I don’t have a problem with Dreamweaver per se, and I still use it (although I’m constantly looking for a suitable alterative) but I strongly believe that using the WYSWYG interface for design inhibits good designers from realising their full potential.
I only use Dreamweaver for the code view, because it’s still has the best IntelliSense (code hinting) I’ve ever used. Every time I try an alternative (Aptana Studio was my most recent diversion) I always come back to Dreamweaver for the superior IntelliSense. Dreamweaver also has fine workspace management, but such things are trivial and don’t really pass as a ‘skill’ that needs special mentioning.
Dreamweaver is also a good place to start as long as you’re looking at the code to learn how things are done with the intention of one day staying in that view. But seasoned designers have no excuse to still be relying on WYSWYG.
I am basically saying that there is too much emphasis placed on designers to have Dreamweaver skills, when the reality is, at least from where I sit, saying you have Dreamweaver skills is essentially admitting you need WYSYWG to design a web page, and that means you’re not comfortable hand coding.
And if you’re not hand coding your work, then you’re more than likely putting out sites that don’t conform to web standards and don’t use semantic mark-up, or worse.
I often see two types of CV. One where the designer says he has Dreamweaver skills and the other who says he knows XHTML and CSS. The latter is always more desirable.
So I offer this advice. If you’re comfortable hand coding, you will be improving your chances considerably by saying so on your CV. Dreamweaver isn’t a skill – it’s an application. Coding is a skill and if you do it, be sure to say so.
Start of pageWho is That Web Guy?
Michael is a veteran web designer / developer / usability evangelist, practitioner of W3C guidelines, and currently head of the web dev unit at Stormbox, a branding and creative communications agency located in Perth, Western Australia.
The major issue with Dreamweaver is that if you rely on it to make Javascript, DHTML or other types of ‘specialised’ code for you, Dreamweaver tends to add a great deal of extraneous code into your documents and sometime that code ends up making your site fail W3C standards for both HTML and CSS.
If you are going to use it, be sure you know what you are doing. Learn to code with notepad first, then use the ‘code hinting’ to speed things up once you know what you are doing.
- code hinting… and now with JavaScript! :)
- colour coded code… a small, but VERY important thing that isn’t unique (even notepad++ has it), but is SO useful.
- and now with CS4, the brilliant associated files are at the top, a simple button click away… no more having to spend time looking to see which css/js file goes with whatever html page. Yay! Seriously brilliant.
No-one should trust any WYSIWYG coding… it’s always bloated, non-accessible and just plain sucks. Get yourself some decent beginners books in css and xhtml and do it the right way…. unless you just want to create a site for your cat.
Now, if only Firebug could be jammied into DW as well :) And MeasureIt .
Anyway, Dreamweaver CS4 performed OK but as I only use it for the code hinting I’m not interested in switching to it permanently.
Adobe should spend their time getting their act together on proper memory and resource management and fix up the interface and usability with Flash before adding all of the crap they keep on packing in.
I mean really, do we need the healing brush, history brush AND the clone stamp tool. Aside from some minor differences, they are essentially the same tool.
Since taking over Macromedia, the quality of Adobe software has really gone downhill. A lot of work needs to be done.
The funny thing is that back when I was in school, I learned web design on Dreamweaver MX using only tables and .gif spacers with the WYSWYG view. Thanks to my first “real” job and some great books (Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cederholm and CSS Mastery by Andy Budd) I can now code valid html and css by hand.
By the way great article and website!
Dt.
Thanks
Kashif (08 9278 2786)
I like that in Design View you can click an element visually and see what css attributes are applied to it along with a cleanly laid out specificity and overriding rules. Using design view doesn’t mean I can’t/don’t hand-code, in fact just the opposite, using the css panel, you’re typing your attribute manually while the Design View confirms what you’ve just changed (i.e. visually telling you that you’ve typed 1000px instead of the intended 100px).
Do you guys hit save and refresh your browser over and over? That to me seems like it would be the major pain.
Even if you use the pop-up css properties window, which I use to show my wife who is learning the basic attributes, that is still just another way of helping you get it done fast.
As for the other helpful features of DW, I love the parent wrapper listing in the status bar. But it would nice if it highlighted opposite ends of tags for code view as well.
BTW, I like your posts, but your photo makes you look like the creepy guy from LOST.
Hi Bob, nice meeting you tonight. And thanks for the vote!
Sorry I had to bail so soon – my youngest daughter is sick and was pining for me.
Let’s meet up for the next event – I’ll buy the first round.
Stay in touch – my email is mike@ this domain .com