Who uses Dreamweaver?

Web developers

Due to the massive increase of the web over the past ten years, a staggering number of people have become involved in the development of web sites in some shape or form. The term web developer normally refers to someone who not only builds web sites but also understands the main technologies that drive the web: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, etc.

In the past, web developers favoured hand-coding over the use of visual tools such as PageMill, FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Many found them more trouble than they were worth, a messy clutter of floating palettes. They found the previews too slow and the code generated was often messy and needed cleaning up. However, with each new release of Dreamweaver, there has been a steady stream of converts. The code generated tends to be pretty clean and working in split screen view, where code is displayed alongside a preview of what the page will look like, has done a lot to win coders over to Dreamweaver.

Web designers

Web designers tend to focus on the creative aspects of the web development process. Their primary role is to create attractive, appropriate web pages which function in a logical and user-friendly manner. Web designers need to concern themselves with many issues unique to the web, such as ease of navigation, the load time of each page and whether or not pages will be indexed by the search engines.

Dreamweaver's design tools offer assistance to web designers in all these areas. Naturally, it does not teach people how to design. However, it's WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) interface and the fact that it previews so many aspects of a web page as you design it, make it a popular choice for web designers.

Naturally, there is not always a clear cut line between web developer and web designer, they may be one and the same person.

General users

In the same way as IT and computers have become a part of most people's working life, more and more people are finding themselves being asked to provide content for their company's websites and intranets, often without any previous background in design or programming. Anyone in this situation obviously has many different skills to master. However, Dreamweaver can play a pivotal role in demystifying the whole business of how web sites are created and managed and will usually become a key tool in a newcomer's web arsenal.