Best WYSIWYG Editor around, great for learning HTML and ceating websites. (Adobe Dreamweaver CS4)

Member Name: sharkofmirkwood

Product:	Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
Date:	30/07/09 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, thousands of very useful features, great support from Adobe.

Disadvantages: Expensive, has very high system requirements.

I have been using the Macromedia/Adobe suite ever since I became interested in graphics & web design, when I was about 12 years old. Back then, the latest version was Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, and even so many years ago it was an amazing program. Now, however, it has improved even more, and has changed over to Adobe, who have integrated Photoshop into the suite.

I wanted to learn to use HTML and PHP to design websites, and a friend showed me how complicated and confusing this was by creating a very simple page in Notepad using code off the top of his head. After asking how he learnt HTML and managed to remember it, my friend showed me an extremely useful program - Dreamweaver.

For weeks I made small web pages using the Design View of Dreamweaver - a view that simply allows you design using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface. Basically, it allows you to view the final output as the document is being created, rather than having to save it, upload it to a server, and check it every 5 minutes.
Then, I changed to Split Design/Code View. This shows the Code View in the top half of the program and the Design View in the bottom half. As you change the design, it is updated automatically, and so is the Code View at the top. This allows you to see how the code changes to affect the design of your web page, and is an extremely useful way of learning HTML.

Other great features of Dreamweaver include the built-in FTP uploader, so you can upload a website you're working on to a server without having to switch to another program. This makes it a lot easier to design sites and update them.

Dreamweaver has all the features anyone could want from a WYSIWYG HTML Editor. It has support for MySql databases, includes a lot of templated that you can use, fully supports CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and MUCH more.

The only problem I can think of with Dreamweaver CS4 is the high system requirements that need to be met to install and run it. To install it on it's own you need 512MB of memory, although I wouldn't recommend it unless you have at least 1GB. To install the entire Adobe CS4, you must have at least 1GB of memory and a 1.8GHz processor, so make sure you have a decent enough computer before buying anything!

Summary: Excellent for website designers, even better for people learning HTML.

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