Previous Assignments
Dreamweaver Cons
For people who are already used to producing web content by other means, Dreamweaver contains an awful lot of behavior that just gets in the way. If you're used to typing in tags, then the contents of the tag, then the closing tag, Dreamweaver's habit of putting in the closing tag for you can make you crazy. If you're used to entering some text and then going back and putting a start tag before it, the same problem kicks in.
Dreamweaver encourages the use of some html/xhtml constructs that are arguably not in one's best interests to use. For example, it encourages people to set a table width in terms of pixels by making that option very visible when creating a new table.
Dreamweaver does not encourage the use of some constructs that you should use. For example, even when you tell it to make sure you're using strict xhtml with the UTF encoding, it doesn't appear to place <?xml... /> at the top of the page, which is the standard way for XML files to indicate character set. Instead, it uses a very html-specific means to indicate this -- the http-equiv meta construct inside the <head>. This means it won't play as nicely as we might like with other XML editors and processors.
Dreamweaver Pros
For people who are used to WYSIWYG word processors, Dreamweaver allows them to get work done.
The built-in support for sftp is nice. It encourages secure practices.
The built-in editors for some tag attributes, such as color selectors, are also a convenience.
ddj+@cmu.edu