I am sure there are other better products for editing CSS/HTML sites, but I just feel at Home with Dreamweaver, and still refer to it as Macromedia Dreamweaver *FU ADOBE* (grins)

I too was a Dreamweaver user and i swore by it above any editor. But eventually i grew tired of the lack of PHP support and PHP hints so i eventually tried a handful of editors.

These included Netbeas, Zend Studio, Komodo and others.

All of them are either too slow or lack the management tools i required. No editors have any kind of file management on the level of Dreamweaver, and i could not find one that had FTP built into it effectively.

However, i did stick with Komodo Edit. The only thing i really miss is Move/Cut/Copy/Paste which all seem to work but actually do not. I could get the Komodo IDE but thats not free :)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Dreamweaver, Coda, Textmate and all the rest are just tools. It’s the man or woman behind the keyboard that makes the difference and always has. Someone using GIMP can produce a superior design than someone using Photoshop. Provided that person is more talented and more familiar with the application they are using.

So In closing, use the applications that work best for you. I started out with Dreamweaver 1.0 and used it until I wasn’t getting the results I wanted, in the time I wanted them. Moved on to Textmate, Transmit and CSSEdit. Used that for a while, got tired of the problems with these three and then moved on to Coda. I’ve been using Coda since it came out and will continue to use it as long as it works for me. When it doesn’t I will figure out what does and move on.

- Snippets. I have a bunch of own and when it comes down to repeating code (CSS global reset, conditional comments, meta section, comment forms, etc.), using of snippets could really speed up the process
- Built in validation tool
- Sitewide links checking tool
- Collapse / expand chunks of code
- Find and Replace

It just seems odd to me that we are still hand coding so much; it’s like we are going back in time instead of progressing. Sort of like going back to the early days of wordprocessing when one had to insert tags or code to make a word italic, or to start a new paragraph, etc.

I hope what I’ve written makes sense, I’ve been up for 48 hours trying to decide on a design ‘look’ for my own site. Pathetic that I can’t make up my mind.

Scott

To each there own I guess, but it works for me, and I’ve been able to design some decent web pages with Dreamweaver.

By the way I’m a graphic designer, not a web designer. But I do like to learn other aspects of the design field. Plus, it’s nice to get as a freelance gig. ;-)