Hawkie,
Thanks for commenting. I was hoping that someone who appearently uses dream weaver on a routine basis would offer their opinion. It's kind of silly for php developers to be so hostile against a product that seems to have used to develop quite a few sites.
Of couse, I'll bet on the dw forums, php is considered to be something for simple amateur sites while real developers use dw.
See my issue with Dreamweaver is this... I used to use Dreamweaver for some initial layout, cause I thought it saved time...
Then I got a good handle on HTML, and now I can handcode things faster than I can do them in Dreamweaver.
The big issue with Dreamweaver was that when you ( or maybe its just me, I'll say when I instead :-) ) got into any kinda of even a slighty complicated layout, it would move things automatically around on me, or end up with a table or column 2 or three pixels off leaving a big gap down the center of my page, or insert piles of useless little empty columns and rows on me when I was moving things around. That really pissed me off.
Granted, that was Dreamweaver 4, maybe its improved... but for now, I'm faster by hand than by Dreamweaver, and its cleaner by hand as well.
I do think Dreamweaver is a great place to start learning HTML, because its reasonably good HTML that it produces and if you dont understand HTML yet, you can study what Dreamweaver has created and learn from it.
On another note, does Dreamweaver MX have support for actually parsing PHP documents, like if I put an include() statement in a PHP document and open in in Dreamweaver MX, will it actually include that file so taht I can see what it looks like the layout window of Dreamweaver?
<?
echo $superwormy;
?>
Right now Dreamweaver has minimal support for PHP and it definitely doesn't parse any PHP code. You still need to be running Apache to take care of that. What it does offer is the ability to copy and paste little snippets of PHP code and place them throughout a layout. This is mildly helpful, but it doesn't compare to programming in vim. It also has some templated statements like:
<?php if() { ?>
<?php else { ?>
and simply <?php echo ?>I use these from time to time, but only for very simple actions like manipulating data that the user sees after data has been pulled from the database. You can also use these to check form data, but I could very easily live without them.
I believe Dreamweaver also has a PHP library of functions, but I haven't looked into this and feel it's not worth the effort to browse the library when I can simply type the function out or look it up on php.net
Originally posted by stolzyboy
yeah for html it can be a time saver, but for point and click php applications, NOPE, ain't gonna happen
sure there may be point and click contact forms, emailers, etc...
little things like that, but decent custom apps dreamweaver isn't up to the task
another of my .02 cents
Think about it though - Dreamweaver is not looking to target the company who has hired the developers and coders to generate a complete custom website with tons of database interaction and custom applications happening. It is targeting the smaller buisiness with a more relaxed atmosphere or that doesn't have the technical scope to have a team of developers. So the point and click contact forms and emailers and such are exactly what they are looking for and if enough people use this with some knowledge of php they will start writing there own libraries of functions like wizards for working with db's and such.
Superwormy, my experiences with Dreamweaver are identical to yours. I never feel like I have full control. And I agree, I am faster or at least as fast by hand. DreamWeaver would probably be faster, but I always end up fighting with it on anything more than just a simple layout. By the way, I have Dreamweaver MX.
I urge anyone who has not checked out Dreamweaver MX to visit:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/productinfo/tutorials/gettingstarted/
As I said earlier, I found it very complicated to use and have no plans of switching to it... but I'm sure you'll agree- it's very different from Dreamweaver 4.
(kinda reminds me of the differences between XP and Windows 95. I think it's on that same kind of scale.)
PS- thanks for the advice on this thread so far!
a lot of my clients are 10-15 person staff, and we do a lot of intranet work for them (keep track of billing, employees, online apps into databases, etc...)
lemme know when "Dreamweaver MX" can even think of doing that point and click
i would consider this as a small company
and really how often do you need a whole development team when doing something, even if it is rather large
Pleae let me stress...
I'm not fighting on behalf of Dreamweaver MX here.
On the contrary I've already said that I wouldn't want to use it.
For all it's good points, I found it to be very complicated and basically too much effort.
I'd rather spend my time learning PHP than learning Dreamweaver MX.
The thing is... one or two people have said on this thread that Dreamweaver does NOT generate PHP script. I was merely providing a link to a site which verifies that not only can Dreamweaver MX generate script (all be it, "bad" script), but it can generate many different types of script. You literally click what type of programming language you want your site to have from a drop down menu.
Now I don't have the authority to talk in depth about PHP OR Dreamweaver MX, but I'd be very interested to hear the opinion of someone who knows both inside out.
I too have had the same experience with dreamweaver before MX came out, it was not very good at getting along with embedded code, and made some pretty ugly tables (code wise).
MX is another story. It seems it was really planned out and works pretty well.
And I'm not a fan of GUI editors (I run Linux on my workstation, and edit in pico for chrissake... 
)
Theres a HUGE difference between ' generating PHP scripts ' and modifying set templates of PHP scripts that programmers have already built into a program.
Dreamweaver MX DOES NOT generate scripts. Dreamweaver has stuff like this:
Make an IF / ELSE statement
Heres the condition
Heres what to do if it returns TRUE
Heres what to do if it doesnt
Thats only a template, Dreamweaver knows, OK, put the condition between the ( and ) after the IF
Put the returns TRUE part after the first {
Put the otherwise part after the } else {
That is NOT generating code. Thats applying a template to data a user provides.
<?
for ($i = 0; $i = $num_superwormy_post_mx; $i++)
{
echo $i . "point(s) for " . $superwormy;
}
?>
ROFL stolzyboy, you're, my new best friend, personal hero, and just a plain ole' cool guy :-)
Wow... I step away for one day, and this thread explodes!
I think the most valuable thing to take away from this discussion is that there are a lot of tools out there, but no tool is going to be able to replace human ingenuity. Dreamweaver is a good tool. I have used it myself to generate an HTML page from scratch quickly -- especially if it involves tables with lots of rowspan and colspan attributes!
Back to my chef analogy... a mixer is not going to make me a chef, but a chef will occasionally use a mixer if needed. It's a tool, good for a specific job. There will never be a kitchen appliance that can replace a chef, and there will never be a computer program that can replace a software / web designer.
By "never" I mean a very long time... I would love to be alive the day a Star Trek computer can write me a program for the Holodeck. I'll never come out. And by never, I mean never.
Hey BuzzLY,
Welcome Back.....
And are you trying to tell me that when I pick up my cordless mouse and say, "Computer, computer", it really ISN'T doing anything for me, crap I thought all this time that when i picked up my mouse to talk to it and it crashed, it thought I was an invalid voice authenticated user and would proceed to be unusable.
Hmmm.....
Maybe I'll have to call Captain Pacard??
Dear Macromedia, creators of Dreamweaver MX, after hearing about how Dreamweaver 'generates' PHP code so well, I think your next version of Dreamweaver should be able to generate holodeck programs like in Star Trek. I'd like a holodeck program in Hawaii surrounded by beautiful PHP nerd babes...
One of the scenes that was left on the cutting room floor from the first Matrix movie was a very moving scene in which Morpheus explains to Neo how the Matrix was developed entirely in Dreamweaver MX. So there, go ahead and waste your time learning to program.
Originally posted by jllydgnt
One of the scenes that was left on the cutting room floor from the first Matrix movie was a very moving scene in which Morpheus explains to Neo how the Matrix was developed entirely in Dreamweaver MX. So there, go ahead and waste your time learning to program.
That plot twist has a strange Terminator / skynet feel to it.
Originally posted by jllydgnt
One of the scenes that was left on the cutting room floor ... how the Matrix was developed entirely in Dreamweaver MX.
And that explains why it was left on the cutting room floor. That's asking a lot of the moviegoer- to believe that one 
-Elizabeth
Dreamweaver MX would have a hard time making a Laurel and Hardy movie