Why would you ever want to write code by hand? Well theirs a
few reasons, the first and foremost one comes from the ease of addition. Hand written
code is easy to modify later while generated code tends to be a mess, hard to
read and nearly imposable to edit without a WYSIWYG editor. The second major point
comes from the ability to jump right in to a new tag or layout method while the
generated code requires that the program first know how to do it and secondly
that you know how to find its hidden location. The last point is personal as I get
an amazing amount of satisfaction from successfully writing a site; however I’m
probably the odd man out on this one.
Problems that effect Dreamweaver
File Trees
Based on previous classes I’ve taken and taught, everyone
has issues with file management when working within Dreamweaver. Things start being
placed randomly and stuff disappears because it was stored on the D drive
instead of the C drive for whatever reason. Because of this I highly advise to
generate all necessary HTML documents prior to opening dream weaver. To go
along with this, set up a dedicated image directory where everything will be
located for the site. This will prevent a messy root directory and simplify
later modification.
Messy Code
WYSIWYG programs are notoriously bloated in their generated
code and when deleting sections will commonly leave behind large swaths of code
that will slow page loading and greatly increase the potential for formatting issues.
“Live View” and WYSIWYG are incorrect
I have had many a sit be displayed incorrectly by only
Dreamweaver in its live view or any view for that matter. As such I highly recommend
previewing any changes in an actual web browser. Also because of this I don’t have
high faith that it will give proper visual editing to more complex web site designs.
