Making good use of Dreamweaver?

I'm primarily a coder (HTML and CSS, though) and I've been using nothing but text editors to make websites for nearly six years. I'm purchasing the Adobe suite, which includes Dreamweaver (I bought it for Illustrator and Photoshop mainly). Now, I've used DW before in the office, and have even built websites using it before, but for me it seldom has been anything beyond an integrated environment: A text editor that lets me shuffle around my code from Design view, with the added perk of quick FTP controls.

I'd be arrogant to believe that DW can't significantly increase my productivity, but I feel like, as long as I just use it as a text editor, I might as well be in the superior Textmate, which I am right now. Does anyone know of a place that teaches seasoned web designers and developers to take advantage of Dreamweaver for website projects? Because everything I see is geared towards either former DW users who need to get used to the latest version, or complete newbies who can't build a website out of code.

Purchase the book Dreamweaver 8 or CS3 the missing manual. This book has helped me out a great deal and it's one of the very best DW books available.

I don't know whereabouts you live... but I'm sure any web design course would give you an in depth knowledge of DreamWeaver. Mind you, they'd probably start from the basics which would be kinda boring...

I think it can increase your productivity. Using the different views you can code like you are used to and view what it will look like in the browser.

DW and fireworks 8 are great apps...

gazelleintense said:

DW and fireworks 8 are great apps...

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Agree with you here. Like these apps.

I don't think you should waste your money on the book. Purchase a book about HTML / CSS instead.

applemacbook said:

I don't think you should waste your money on the book. Purchase a book about HTML / CSS instead.

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Might as well go to the CSS The Missing Manual then.

I don't find really much wrong with dreamweaver but i will say though the only part i really hate about dreamweaver sometimes if when trying to deal with external css stylesheets that it wont automatically update it like as if you were to do with internal but rumors that im already hearing when adobe convention was here on the next updated versions later on in the future they will surely look forward on fixing that problem with dreamweaver & whatever else other platforms because CSS can really make a huge impact in web design.

Depending on how good you are in Flash 8 or Flash CS3 you can really get very creative with flash if you like dealing with animations especially..

For enhancing productivity for a hand coder, Coda is what you were looking for. Just try it out, I promise you it is amazing. Its got some really really cool features and none of that wizzywig nonsense...