Dreamweaver or Notepad? The Debate!

[r1zeek]

I have been hearing many different conflicting views lately. I personally use Notepad all the time with my sites, as I feel this is easier but there are some others who insist that I should use Dreamweaver (one even compared notepad and DW as "a mini vs a tank")

So, lets debate it, what are the pros and cons of both?
Let the debate begin!

[yamangman]

I think you need to know and learn HTML/Script/CSS through text before you can appreciate the use of dreamweaver properly. I use both in equal amounts.

[directhex]

dreamweaver's HTML generation is pretty damned good, and you can edit source & WYSIWYG at the same time. personally I use dreamweaver to shesh out design how I want it, and do browser conformance testing, then start hacking it to pieces in notepad afterwards to add in scripts & things (though dreamweaver handles them pretty well)

the big question is, is dreamweaver worth 500 quid to you as a timesaving tool?

[mike_w]

Notepad. The only thing I have ever used Dreamweaver for is editing the text on a page - it's easier in Dreamweaver than Notepad since you don't have to scroll through hundreds of lines of text to just change a small spelling error.

When I used Dreamweaver, I spend most of the time writing it manually anyway, only using the WYSIWYG view to add text.

[Spud1]

I use DW personally mainly for debugging and fixing errors in pages after they have been built - I just find the way that it highlights the different bits of code helpful for defining separate sections

Just like with Visual Studio and vI/pico - I code my C on unix in VI/Pico then debug in Visual studio

[Zathras]

Why do people use Notepad when there're far far better text editors available like TextPad or EditPlus? Personally I do quite a lot of html coding/chopping up in Textpad for speed but use Dreamweaver in Code view as an IDE when I need to do any layout or building styles from scratch. I'll echo DH and say Dreamweaver is pretty damned good and nothing like as bad as Frontpage or WYSIWIG-stylee designers of old, but it does take up a lot of resources and is slow to fire up compared with Textpad. The majority of the time I'm using IntelliJ IDEA for writing JSP/Java and I don't know how I could live without it or how I ever managed to code Java in Textpad. My productivity is so so much higher with the IDE.

[Paul Adams]

Notepad to edit the code & layout, and a browser open at the same time (on the same PC or a different one on the network) so I can hit F5 to view instantly from a real user perspective.

I prefer a basic text editor as it's like knowing "first principles" - so long as you understand the very fundamentals of what you are coding, the colours or auto-insertion of text is unnecessary.

The only IDEs I ever used were things like C++ and Turbo Pascal years ago, as it was just so easy to hit the keyboard shortcuts for "Save, Compile & Run" to test the code.

I briefly used Frontpage Express when I first started to learn HTML, for when it was quicker to create an element and view the source than try to refer to a manual or search an online site.

But then, most of my pages use ASP and SQL queries rather than individual layouts, I just use a single set of style class statements file to standardize the appearance.

[r1zeek]

Why do people use Notepad when there're far far better text editors available like TextPad or EditPlus?

I mainly use it because it is installed on every Windows machine I use and plus it takes up few resources. I did try out a text editor called "Crimson Editor" but thought it was a bit flashy, all I want is notepad with syntax highlighting (much like the view source option in FF)

[Tom]

r1zeek i have tried crimson editor and much prefer EditPlus

I personally use Dreamweaver's code view when I am at home but have EditPlus on a flash drive that I carry around for college / anywhere i might need to edit anything The colour coding makes the coding so much simpler its unbeleivable

[Moby-Dick]

real men use nano

[directhex]

ok, i lie, i don't use notepad, i use context. same thing really.

[r1zeek]

real men use nano

Tell me more!

[Zathras]

Nano is for wusses. Get down with Vi or Emacs.

[directhex]

nano is an open source clone of pine.

pine is about the easiest command-line text editor for linux in common circulation

[yamangman]

I use Emacs a lot, but never for web sites.

[Butuz]

I'd say, Use dreamweaver if your time is precious to you, use notepad if your time is not precious to you.

But whatever you use, do learn how to do proper html / css / asp / php / etc.

Butuz