[thelist] Dreamweaver and hand-coding

Juha Suni juha.suni at ilmiantajat.fi
Tue Mar 1 09:14:30 CST 2005


Peter-Paul Koch wrote:
> - Which Dreamweaver functions do you find most useful? Where can I
> find these functions? (short answers, please)

+ Code snippets (this is a must)
+ Builtin FTP
(can do all in one app, no need for ftp, ctrl-shift-U to upload to site for
live view,
it also uploads all dependant changed files like images and css-files too,
if wanted)
+ Other Site manager easyness (site-wide search and replaces, file handling)
+ code hinting and coloring, both which also support PHP and other languages
on top of HTML
+ some builtin "behaviors" (dhtml / javascript bits) that work well in all
browsers.
+ CSS style creation and editing is very fast for anyone without need to
know every
operator by heart, hand-coding CSS itself only needed in some advanced
stuff.
+ Templates are pretty good if you have several people using DW and have no
real CMS

> - Which Dreamweaver functions should we avoid?

- WYSIWYG is ok for simple CSS and table based layouts. DW, like most
WYSIWYG's, however has hard time with more complex and complete CSS layouts
in WYSIWYG mode.

- As far as I remember, working with frames was a bit painful when I last
tried it, but it was ages ago. Frames are evil anyway ;)

> - Do you have any tips and tricks for beginning hand-coders who want
> to use Dreamweaver?

+ Code coloring settings can be customized to fit personal tastes easily
(Edit -> Preferences -> Code Coloring), as can many other options (such as
"Never rewrite code in *.php files")

+ Quickly learn to use the builtin ftp so you can view changes even to
server side code in a second by just hitting ctrl-shift-u, alt-tabbing to
the browser and hitting refresh.

+ Dont be afraid to use the search and replace, even for several files at
once. If you wish DW will generate a list of found entries in different
files, ask each change one by one automatically opening the files and
highlighting the relevant parts.

HTH

-- 
Suni



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