So as you can see, Dreamweaver and WordPress are very different animals, although the end result is the same— getting content published online. Let's now take a more in depth look at these two tools. So we're getting a handle on what Dreamweaver and WordPress are, and perhaps you're starting to piece together the differences between these two, but let's now take an even closer look. As different as they are, I'll do my best to do as close a side-by-side comparison of the two as I can.
Let's begin with Dreamweaver. It's made some big strides over the years, especially with newer features like Fluid Grid Layout and jQuery UI widgets.
When we begin building a new site in Dreamweaver, we first have to define our site; then we begin with a blank file or possibly a template. Staring at a blank canvas and not knowing where to start can be somewhat intimidating! And although Dreamweaver will let us build fairly intricate sites, it's approach is often clunky and overly confusing. Additionally, it has a somewhat confining nature as well.
What I mean by this is, the vast majority of users are going to be limited to creating static, rigid websites; in other words traditional websites that lack dynamic content, navigation and structure. Dreamweaver's Fluid Grid Layout makes it easy to build responsive site layouts. While Dreamweaver's visual approach may sound great in theory there are some shortcomings there as well. For instance, what if you want to achieve a certain result, but no command or menu option exists to achieve it?
Even worse, what if something goes horribly wrong and half your layout gets blown out? Without having an understanding of HTML, CSS, and web design overall, fixing problems or achieving certain results can be a huge hassle. Dreamweaver does have some positives going for it, however. First, once you're up to speed with it, you can build some very nice sites and layouts. Dreamweaver's also one of those programs that grows with you as your skills develop. Beginners often start inside the more comfortable Design View, then start getting a taste for code in Split View, which gives us a side-by-side view of our layout in both design and code; and then finally, many wind up using Dreamweaver's full Code View.
Dreamweaver's Code View includes many code-assist features like code complete and code hinting, and still provides access to dialog boxes, menus, panels, and other interface elements. Now over to WordPress. As I'd mentioned earlier, it was intentionally built to be simple and easy to work with, especially for non-technical users. What's more, it's incredibly powerful, customizable, and extendible—and it gives us a much more modern approach to building websites.
There are two sides to a WordPress site: the public-facing side, which is what your visitors see, and a behind the scenes admin console. This is where we'll be spending the majority of our time, adding content, making changes, and customizing our site.
Unlike Dreamweaver, where we start with a blank canvas, with WordPress we begin with what's called a theme. A theme is the visual design of your WordPress site, and you can change your site's design with just a few mouse clicks. Generally speaking, a theme has four areas: the header, content area, sidebar, and footer—and everything's pre-formatted for you and of course, you can change and customize things to your liking. While Adobe Dreamweaver made its name as a visual website building package, that's not so much the case these days.
The modern Dreamweaver provides essential tools for professionals who prefer to code sites by hand, including code hints to save you time and on edit linting that'll alert you to errors as you go and help you keep in line with web standards.
Dreamweaver provides handy visual aids to speed up development, such as pop-up preview windows when you're adding an image to your site, as well as bare-bones starter templates that'll provide you with the basic structure of a site, ready to be customised to meet a particular job's needs. Dreamweaver used to have a reputation for providing live previews that never really matched what you'd see in your published site, but Adobe has gone to work on that.
Dreamweaver enables you to create fully responsive sites using Bootstrap, and its live view displays previews on most viewports, from mobile to full-size screens, and constantly updates as you type.
While in the wonderful world of web design there's always going to be an edge case that breaks the layout, you can be a lot more confident that what you see in the live view will match what you see on the finished site. For teams collaborating on sites Dreamweaver also provides Git support, enabling you to manage your source code and perform operations through its Git panel. And considering that most of your visual assets are probably being created in Photoshop or Illustrator, Dreamweaver's Creative Cloud integration makes it easy to import imagery and enables you to extract imagery, text, fonts and even colours and gradients from PSD comps to use in your designs.
As an all-in-one package that handles everything from design and coding through to publishing on most web platforms, Dreamweaver has a lot going for it if you like all your tools in one place.
But if you're settled into a web workflow comprised of a set of dedicated tools that all to their job really well, we suspect you'll quickly run up against limitations with Dreamweaver.
Until recently anyone wanting a more visual website builder would have defaulted to the much friendlier Adobe Muse, but with that now discontinued, Dreamweaver's your only choice if you're committed to an all-Adobe workflow. The latest Dreamweaver is clearly aimed at professionals, but it also allows you to customise your workspace to meet your needs. By default it offers a streamlined Developer workspace for web professionals who want to create with code and see a real-time preview.
HTML is the code that presents much of what you see when you browse a site in Dreamweaver. Originally launched by Macromedia, which later became Adobe, the tool provides a graphical environment for designing and publishing websites. Dreamweaver features powerful web design capabilities through its user-friendly graphical interface.
Dreamweaver is designed to be easy and provides convenient access to a variety of code options and a number of CSS styles. This is an example of the code hinting feature. It has friendly features like code hinting that make scripting faster, and it lets the designer easily apply best practices in CSS.
It is an ideal program and tool of choice for beginners and experienced designers that want code put together for them, making it a great choice for quality site development.
However, the difference in advantages and features can be seen when using a software like Dreamweaver instead. In , Adobe dramatically changed the way it sells software licenses across their entire product suite. Instead of purchasing software on discs for a flat fee with license included, you can now purchase a license for a monthly fee with annual agreements. You can also buy Dreamweaver on its own for one recurring monthly fee.
Another new licensing model emerged called Adobe Creative Cloud CC , which delivers Dreamweaver for a slightly higher fee. Dreamweaver is included in the suite as well. Adobe has updated a number of things in this release in addition to its major new functionality. There have been a number of efforts that have been implemented to address some common development issues of the past.
These include workflow bottlenecks and annoyance fixes. The team is also working on speeding up the web development process across the board. The CSS designer allows for quick determination and alteration of the properties affecting a particular element directly from the designer. Again, friendly and quick development is the name of the game. The live preview allows you to select a browser and alternatively view it on a different device by scanning the QR code.
In all, this version of Dreamweaver has been overwhelmingly well-received. Due to its countless new features , flexibility , upgrades , and improvements, this is unsurprising. As a result, Dreamweaver Creative Cloud is even starting to capture developers that used the tool previously. You do not have to be connected to the internet to use your software, just to download it. A desktop app is installed right on your hard drive , just like you would do if you installed it from a disk.
Your account defaults to a free version which limits your storage to 2 GB. Your single membership allows you to install the apps on both your Windows and Mac machines. Dreamweaver makes it easy to build and deploy your first website. The editor is packed with advanced level features , but the onboarding experience has greatly simplified using the tool for beginners. Plus, the flexibility of the software allows you to build WordPress , Joomla , e-commerce sites, and a whole lot more.
Additionally, Dreamweaver has dozens of features which often come in handy for developers of all levels. Here are a few:. This feature is a great time saver. Viewing the front-end look of your work while coding is an extremely useful feature.
While it could be distracting, many developers do prefer and enjoy having previews open. For visual workers, design view is a sharp additional tool. You can find and replace faulty code or information across your whole site in bulk. How awesome is that? This makes the software more than just a code editor, but rather a whole architecture tool. Dreamweaver actually allows you to manage files from the software itself.
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