I was introduced to Dreamweaver (Henceforth referred to as DW) 3.0 (the current version being 6.0 - its called Dreamweaver MX) somewhere in 1999. It had been already 3 years of using the web and 1 year of doing web design. Until DW came in, web design was just screen designs for me, which entailed a lot of hard work trying to take the design through to production. Dreamweaver has totally changed the work scenario!! Needless to say, all for good.
Well - if one is on the lookout for a software that is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) there are many options. Microsoft Frontpage, Adobe GoLive, Dreamweaver, ...many others. But believe me, no other tool even compares to Dreamweaver. DW is far far ahead of any other tool - in terms of usability, in terms of capability, and also in terms of expandability. And over every newer version, DW has only grown by leaps and bounds. In its latest version - DW MX - Macromedia has built in even functions to handshake with database, write scripts and develop dynamic websites. This is awesome as it gives you options to work on most of the available platforms. You name it and its there - asp, jsp, HTML, XHTML, XML, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, PHP, and ColdFusion.
If we see it from the basics - as you start to work on DW, you dont write a single piece of code, and you already have made tables, frames (frames have their own limitations, and so are not recommended), layers, timelines, javascripts, actions, and much more. I am personally more comfortable handling CSS using DW. It makes CSS much more understandable. And what with WYSIWYG, you can try out everything thats possible.
Then there is the Sitemap. This is one feature that makes life lot lot easier. Even people who have used other tools envy this one feature. Imagine just moving files from folder to folder and still not caring about the path changes! This is because DW takes care of path changes when you simply pick files and move them across in the SITEMAP. Smae goes with RENAMING. Just rename your files and all associated links get updated.
Version 4 onwards DW also has the history tool. Using this, one can go back to any step and undo and then restart. Also, customized actions can be created from history tool for repeatitive jobs. Besides numerous javascipts that DW writes on its own, one can also add customized scripts. And this feature has been extended like never before in DW MX - by means of snippets.
One major leap that DW has taken in its MX version is ACCESSIBILITY. This bridges the gap and brings in features that a tool should have towards creating practical websites.
Its so natural, that the web designers across the globe are always waiting to grab the newest version of DW as soon as it is released!!
One minor problem though: The color picker of DW is problematic. It has that superior feature of picking a color even from outside the application window - only, it doesn’t pick the right color! And as far I know it, this problem never existed in version 3.0!
Highly Recommended. No second thought. Dont even consider going in for any other tool in this category.