Thread: Dreamweaver vs. Hand Coding

Once you learn how to make websites by hand and are good at HTML/CSS, websites will come out much better by hand. Hand coded websites are also a lot easier to edit, and are faster because they don't have all the junk you don't need which Dreamweaver adds.

Images and web design is not the same. Dreamweaver is the easier way to do things, but it is not better and limits your abilities. Don't compare the two.

Originally Posted by pctec

Those of you who enjoy coding the hard way will surely also appreciate this picture that was done entirely in MS Paint...

Also, anyone who has dozens of sites to build and take care of would not be doing it in notepad... unless they are insane...

IMO website design without any designing tool is more like building a castle without seeing it. I can't say anything for expert coders that develop sites by hand coding as I'm not in that level. To me it's Dreamweaver, that saves a lot of time.

Originally Posted by Diesel

IMO website design without any designing tool is more like building a castle without seeing it. I can't say anything for expert coders that develop sites by hand coding as I'm not in that level. To me it's Dreamweaver, that saves a lot of time.

I actually code using the cPanel's file manager, so I publish my code every time I add something new so I can see it.

Dreamweaver (etc...) just seems like a waste of time for most sites.

Web designers care about designs and art and pretty things like butterflies.

In most niches, the users don't even notice the designs. They come to the pages and only see what they are looking for. They are design blind.

In most niches, a design just has to be "good enough not to annoy people." For that, it's usually easy enough just to download a pre-built template, do a bit of cleanup, and get the site online.

Look at Google's home page. Do you think they would do better with a fancy design?

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

Dreamweaver (etc...) just seems like a waste of time for most sites.

Web designers care about designs and art and pretty things like butterflies.

In most niches, the users don't even notice the designs. They come to the pages and only see what they are looking for. They are design blind.

In most niches, a design just has to be "good enough not to annoy people." For that, it's usually easy enough just to download a pre-built template, do a bit of cleanup, and get the site online.

Look at Google's home page. Do you think they would do better with a fancy design?

Often I wonder Will if Google's success is because of its template compared to Yahoo! I never liked them becuase their quite the opposite. Having news and all kinds of distractions on the homepage I wasn't really interested in. It just made them slowe, specially back in the day.. when internet connections weren't too fast. Plus to there trying to be a jack of trades. A search engine is search Engine. The people come there they just the access to the search box as fast as possible. They should of concentrate less on the other stuff and focused more on their search. (Since their a search engine.)


For myself I do everything in Notepad++ . I never make a template from scratch, as I do have the most of the html tags memozied but I never understood quite how the divs get where they are in the page floating in certain parts(well actually its the css no doubt).. That probably the last thing I need to master before I can make them from scratch. For now I do as you suggest download premade ones and modify it in Notepad.

Originally Posted by Zash

I actually code using the cPanel's file manager, so I publish my code every time I add something new so I can see it.

Thats actually a bad idea Zash. If you bungle up whatever you were editing. There is no "undo" to be done. As you would edited the original copy. It would be lost. Better to use Notepad++ and FTP. And just refresh your site and see the changes. If its bad then you can hit ctrl+z and undo it in notepad.

Originally Posted by Zash

I actually code using the cPanel's file manager, so I publish my code every time I add something new so I can see it.

Yikes.... I could never do that since most of my clients and myself, have thousands of visitors a day to our sites and one screw up can leave a huge dent in income for that day until the problem is noticed and fixed.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

Dreamweaver (etc...) just seems like a waste of time for most sites.

Web designers care about designs and art and pretty things like butterflies.

In most niches, the users don't even notice the designs. They come to the pages and only see what they are looking for. They are design blind.

In most niches, a design just has to be "good enough not to annoy people." For that, it's usually easy enough just to download a pre-built template, do a bit of cleanup, and get the site online.

Look at Google's home page. Do you think they would do better with a fancy design?

I agree with the design thing, I guess I was paying attention to my recent work in dreamweaver, and I guess I use the code view 90% of the time because I write out all my own divs and stuff. Don't use tables... EVER.

Originally Posted by Killswitch

Don't use tables... EVER.

I often use tables to place two adsense rectangles beside each other.. Then I tried using divs with CSS instead of tables and it works. Except in Internet explorer 6. Such a pain.

I was denied a web design job early this year because I hand code and don't use Dreamweaver. Lol.

Originally Posted by 1901gt

I was denied a web design job early this year because I hand code and don't use Dreamweaver. Lol.

Wow... talk about discrimination, but really was that the only reason? lol

Originally Posted by 1901gt

I was denied a web design job early this year because I hand code and don't use Dreamweaver. Lol.

Originally Posted by A12Alex

Wow... talk about discrimination, but really was that the only reason? lol

Was probably due to not wanting to pay someone 3 hours of work for an 1 hour of actual work being done in Dreamweaver and result in the same.