It understands the directory structure of your ftp site. I can be editing a file, I type crtl-s, then ctrl-shift-u and the page/file slides on up to the server. I don’t have to switch windows, I don’t have to pay attention to the working directory I am in.

It’s great for finding my place in a page. I go to design view (ctrl-~), click on the spot I want to edit in the code and ctrl-~ again and I am there. It has buttons for selecting parent tags, code collapse and a good find and replace.

(one of my complaints about it is that it won’t search ALL files, just the ones it thinks it wants to.)

It validates html as you go, so you can see if you have a mistake. I can’t tell you how many times I have found nesting and tag closure errors in html that was hand coded in a text editor.

The code completion saves me keystrokes all the time.

It’s handy for finding colors. I always need to create a slightly different shade of one of the colors in my color scheme for a particular element of content…say a table row background color…and I can do that easily in DW, trying out a number of different shades til I get the one that’s right.

I could work in homesite, notepad++, or komodo edit(my 2nd choice). After 10 years I know the html and css by heart. But it would just be inconvenient.

>>The worst thing I’ve ever seen is exporting to HTML from Microsoft Word. Just ridiculously awful results.

I can do one better, I actually had to fix a site generated in MS PUBLISHER. And it wasn’t created by the owner’s relative either, they actually paid a “designer” to do it.

As web developers, where business rules allow it, we must stop always thinking backwards compatibility is a goal. IE6 is an awful browser and we shouldn’t have to jump through hoops unless the 1.5% of people that still use it (or whatever the number is) is critical for the site to be successful. I’ve even stopped caring in a lot of my projects if 24-bit PNGs with alpha transparency render poorly under IE6.

That all being said, I’m not quite sure how you would develop anything but a trivial site using something like Dreamweaver. I don’t even put it on my resume; and when I was recruiting, I would consider touting Dreamweaver proficiency as a negative (probably one of the reasons I wasn’t a successful chop-shop recruiter)

into

The worst thing I’ve ever seen is exporting to HTML from Microsoft Word. Just ridiculously awful results.

I had no idea this was still considered an unusual concept in large scale web publishing/production. I just thought everybody did it these days. It *is* the only way to assure code quality and cross-browser/platform consistency!

But we knew that already, right? :)

CSSEdit is pretty slick, though for me it just gets in the way more than it helps. But they have created a good product that helps create good code, and I’m into that!