So Why Dreamweaver?Sure, there are other web design programs available, so why Dreamweaver? What makes it so special? Quite simply, nothing else comes close to it. Don't know a thing abou104, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets, or other scary web technologies? Dreamweaver rides to the rescueand that's why it's such a popular tool. On a basic level, using Dreamweaver is almost as simple as using a word processor, but you can quickly and easily get into much higher-end functionality without knowing a thing about coding. Dreamweaver writes it all for you in the background. This saves designers massive amounts of time and frustration, and at the same time lets them build some pretty amazing sites. Pure hand coding an entire web site is thankfully a thing of the past. With the tediousness involved and the high rate of human error, it's just not an option in today's fast-paced world. Dreamweaver holds the heavyweight title as an industry-standard tool because it can pretty much handle it all: from basic personal home pages, to corporate sites, to heavy e-commerce and data-driven sites that require entire design teams to work together. In other words, with Dreamweaver in your toolbox, there won't be a whole lot you can't tackle. Using Dreamweaver is almost as simple as using a word processor, but you can quickly and easily get into much higher-end functionality. If you've ever done any hand coding yourself, or if you have the stomach for delving into th89 in your pages, you're welcome to go behind the scenes in Dreamweaver and dig in. With its double identity as both a visual design tool and a straight code editor, Dreamweaver provides an array of functions and commands to assist you, whether you want to work visually or directly with the code. You can even take advantage of both environments with a split-screen view. So build pages, build sites, build web applicationsand build 'em in a way that suits you. That's what Dreamweaver is all about. A final note before moving on: Dreamweaver is just one component of a much larger pictureMacromedia's Studio suite, which includes a few other programs to help out in your web design adventures. If you've purchased the full Studio suite, you'll also have other programs such as Macromedia Flash and Fireworks. And if you've got the Studio 8 version of the suite, you'll also get FlashPaper 2 (Windows only), Contribute 3, and ColdFusion Developer Edition. See the sidebar "A Macromedia Studio 8 Primer" for more on the suite. We won't go into these tools in too much detail, but just know that if Flash and Fireworks have your back, there'll be nothing stopping the mad designer you're sure to become! Geek's Delight
New to Dreamweaver and web design? Then check out www://virtuallyignorant.com and [http://macromedia.com/devnet/dreamweaver]
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