Stop Using Dreamweaver!

Ideas have power.  The difference between two similar ideas can be huge.  In the business of building web pages the most powerful example is the difference between "web designer" and "web programmer".

A web designer is, usually, a graphic designer who dabbles in web pages.  Some are good enough to do nothing but web pages.  Fewer still try to learn some programming.  A programmer is an engineer who understands how the internet works and uses that knowledge to make the best possible web pages.  They may not make the prettiest pages but they make pages that do all kinds of wild and interesting things.  They're also handsome and charming.  (Have I mentioned I am a bit biased?)

When designers work alone, they have to rely on WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing programs.  WYSIWYG editors are great for building a test of a site and seeing that things work.  Unfortunately, WYSIWYG editors also have a large number of drawbacks.

• WYSIWYG editors don't care about standards.  WYSIWYG editors could write code that complies with international standards, but instead they wilfully disregard these standards.
• WYSIWYG editors don't care about bandwidth.  By writing crummy code, WYSIWYG editors do in 10 lines things that could be hand-written in one.  That means 10 times the delay to download a page, and 10 times the cost for people who pay for bandwidth by the megabyte.
• WYSIWYG editors don't care about their users.  Crummy code is hard to read, hard to understand, hard to edit, and hard to learn from.
• WYSIWYG editors don't care about web browsers.  A page built to look OK in Firefox will probably look broken in IE.  Get it working in IE and it will probably look broken in Safari.  Etc.
• WYSIWYG editors don't care about the disabled.  Blind people surf the internet as much as anyone and WYSIWYG editors write web page code (HTML) that is total garbage for the blind.
• WYSIWYG editors don't care about YOU.  WYSIWYG editors like to store two copies of your site: the final version everybody sees and the "project files".  Most designers neglect to share these project files with their clients (eg: you) so that you have to hire them again to make changes.  Sometimes they share the files and those files get corrupted and are unusable.  Then the site has to be built again from the ground up and your costs just doubled.
  
• WYSIWYG editors can only dream as far as their creators.  Web pages with dynamic content, especially collaborative work, is impossible with a WYSIWYG editor.

A good programmer can get around all these challenges.  In fact, good programmers are the reason standards, browsers, and dynamic content exist at all.

"The design director of NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, recently answered readers' questions in the Times's occasional feature 'Ask the Times.' He was asked how the Web site looks so consistently nice and polished no matter which browser or resolution is used to access it. His answer begins: 'It's our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to "hand code" everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.'"  (source: Slashdot)

So save yourself the future headache and make sure you get a programmer or designer who understands HTML and can deliver.