What is it?

Dreamweaver is a web development WYSIWYG design tool. WYSYWIG stands for what you see is what you get, basically, you use these tools to build the html and other code that goes in to pages. Dreamweaver has a lot of add-ons and little macro's that help you build pages faster, plus you can view what the page looks like from within the program.
Go to [URL=http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/ ]dreamweaver site[/URL] to find out more.

There are a lot of these tools out there. They are a visual aid in building web pages. Homesite 4.5 is also a great editor, way cheaper, and in my opinion far better.

But Homesite isn't a WYSIWYG, that's the difference. It actually comes bundled with DW when you buy it. These two programs are not directly comparable.

The big difference between Dreamweaver and all other HTML editors is that it actually writes pretty good code. All of the others I've dealt with don't even come close. Of course, if you don't know what you're doing even DW will write bad stuff sometimes. The best way to use a WYSIWYG is as a complement to hand-coding skills, not as a replacement for them. If you know what the code is doing it'll be a lot easier to control how your page looks.

Another thing about DW is that firstly, it's more expensive than other editors and secondly, the learning curve is a lot steeper. The DW interface is much different from other programs - if you're using Front Page or Composer for example, the interface is much more similar to other programs. It also allows you to do a lot more than other editors, which could be confusing to first time users.

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
But Homesite isn't a WYSIWYG, that's the difference.

But it could be if you use the design tool. Important safety tip though, DON'T EVER USE THE DESIGN TOOL. It is terrible. The only thing I use it for is sometimes visualizing where my table or layout problems are coming from. Once I tried to fix something in the design mode. Well for some reason it made my tags align="middle" (yeah I know not even proper HTML, should be center) and filled it with nbsp's. After that I decided not to use it to make changes again.

I don't use my DW very often (still using version 2) but one thing I find it useful for is redesigns. It is quick and easy to select all and then set thing to default in order to strip away all those nasty font, bold, and italic tags.

In fact, who says WYSIWYG editors are useless? Even Frontpage serves one purpose for me - the ability to import an entire site off a server is also helpful for doing redesigns.

On the other hand, these are expensive programs to be "one trick ponies." Fortunately, FrontPage came bundled with Office.

I use DW all the time, although I do use the code screen a lot. I'm a bit of Macromedia junkie as I use Fireworks & Flash as well.

Speaking of HomeSite...

(don't you just hate when a thread gets hijacked)

Is anyone trying the HomeSite5 beta? I think that this will be the first version to come out under Macromedia's ownership and I'm curious as to what may change.