Almost as soon as I learned to use Dreamweaver, I’ve hated it. It’s supposed to be a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) but sometimes it likes to improvise. It also likes to add code that you can’t see. One time I updated a site that had the font defined at least a dozen times each place it was used. Still I couldn’t imagine myself designing with code alone, until I learned Style Sheets. So when my computer crashed a few months ago, I didn’t bother reinstalling Dreamweaver. Instead I downloaded Filezilla and Crimson editor, and now I’m redesigning my main site in PHP, working directly with the code. I’m learning to see the output and structure in my head while I’m writing the code, since there’s no graphic interface.
I’m always redesigning my sites just because I get obsessive over it, but this time there’s a practical reason: my site is built using Dreamweaver templates, which are really just comments that Dreamweaver uses to apply changes globally to the site. This means that without Dreamweaver, changes must be applied to each page individually, because there are 10 files with the same code at the top and bottom. Using PHP, there’s just one file that outputs different information according to the users input. In exchange for having to think mathematically when you start to build, you get a site that’s easy to update and expand. Put it together with CSS and you can build with very clean code, using fewer files and causing less confusion down the road.
We’ll see where I end up with XHTML compliance when it’s done.