As you may have read, I recently landed a job designing a website for a poster shop in town. While I am quite ecstatic to take on this task, it also is a little overwhelming right now (though that could be because I am finishing my hell week with school).

I plan on writing the majority of the code from scratch, it’s just the way I work. Sure, I will pull code that I have already written to save time (in fact I already have). There will also be a few things that I think could be done more beautifully if I find someone else’s code to guide me.

You could say that I am the kind of person to brag about things, I have a blog don’t I? Well, I have been telling me about this new job of mine and it seems that the first thing that jumps into that person’s mind is to ask, “Are you going to use Dreamweaver?”

No. No, I will not use Dreamweaver. Let me tell you why.

Dreamweaver has had its heyday already. That was back during Web 1.0. Now the world has moved to using the Web 2.0 guidelines and it has made Dreamweaver obsolete. The way I look at it, Web 2.0 puts an emphasis on dynamic content that can be updated on-the-fly. Think of the number of news sites and blogs and sharing sites and social-networks there are on the web. Each one expects someone to post something at any given moment. Dreamweaver hinders this.

Dreamweaver creates static pages. True, you could use it to create a page to house dynamic content but after the page is created, you won’t need the software anymore. Plus, anything you write in Dreamweaver could be written in Notepad, or any other simple text editor. I personally use UltraEdit because it is cheap and it color codes my code for me. But even UltraEdit is little more than a glorified text editor.

Some might argue that Dreamweaver helps you preview your pages as you are working on them and this feature sure as hell is something a text editor doesn’t offer. I will concede the point that it is a feature offered. I will not, however, say that anyone should need this feature. When I started learning websites eight years ago, I coded everything by hand and I used Notepad. I think a good programmer can visualize what they want the site to look like in their head and then code it.

Earlier today, I looked at the current assignments for the web class I took in high school six years ago. With the exception of one thing, they are exactly the same as the assignments that I had to do. The one exception, Dreamweaver is used. The teacher is conditioning the students to rely on this tool when in reality they do not need it. I had half a mind to send an email outlining my disgust of this conditioning (and the fact that the teacher is still teaching Web 1.0) but I always admired that teacher and wouldn’t want to upset her.

I think one of the best things someone could do before resorting to using Dreamweaver is to install some blogging software on their website (WordPress, MovableType, Drupal) and learn that to its fullest. Most websites can find some sort of use for this software and a lot of employers look for knowledge in one of these. True, there are only a limited number of things a person can do with a blog, but once you have learned that move on to a different technology (Web 2.0 friendly of course). All of these emphasize dynamic content, though they can offer static pages to be created.

I will admit, I do use Dreamweaver for one of my jobs. But it is more out of guilt than want. The site is old (well it was before I cleaned up the code and converted it to PHP files) and static. I average maybe four minor changes a week to the website. I only use Dreamweaver for a job that I could do in Notepad because my boss went out and bought the CS4 Design Suite for me to use. I would feel guilty knowing that money wasn’t well spent (even if it wasn’t).

I hope this clearly outlined why I do not use Dreamweaver, why you shouldn’t use Dreamweaver and why I will never use Dreamweaver.

So if you still feel the need to ask me; no, I do not use Dreamweaver.