Hi! So, I once knew basic web design and front end development. In addition to adobe graphic design software, I learned HTML and basic javascript in 1994. Gave up web design in 2001 and had been using adobe Dreamweaver and muse to manage my pilates business web site. Then when Muse pooped out I started using Wix (yes…Wix. Don’t judge me.) Needless to say, I am WAAAY the heck behind.
Last week, I began my new journey to relearn what I used to know and learn all of the advancements that have occurred in the last 20 yrs. (!!!) I am whizzing through the basic HTML and CSS tutorials, and I’m doing some breakout practice on the side. I understand how it works, but is it “okay” to use Dreamweaver for the sake of the prompts? Or, as hard-core developers, do you think its really better to just use something like notepad and suck it up to memorize all of the CSS options? Is the expectation in an interview that you know them all? Do any of you “serious” developers use Dreamweaver?
I haven’t used DreamWeaver in years, when I played with building a website once. Can’t say I remember much about it, other than uploading HTML files directly to the server.
Giving a glance at the google results, it looks like DreamWeaver uses the svn version control system - I’m not sure how commonly svn is used in the industry, but I believegit remains the industry standard for version control.
I’m a firm believer in using whatever tools make you most comfortable, but also taking the time to understand why you prefer those tools. I’d recommend taking a look at other IDEs, such as VSCode or Atom, and consider what they offer and what DreamWeaver offers and which of them best fit your needs.
Thank you. Dreamweaver was the only good one available way back when, so I don’t even know what’s out there. I’ll start with the two you mentioned and do a little googling. Thanks!
Hi,
Earlier i also used Dreamweaver text editor and it make work easy, but now with time there a several other text editor available which makes work more easier.
I agree with Atom text editor as its a 21st century Text editor and developed by Github. But i also recommend you other Text editors too like Brackets , Vim or Emacs. You can check these editors too.
Hi and welcome back! A lot has changed with the web since the beginning of the web. Some of the core stuff is still around, but a long of whats “popular” has changed, including the tooling.
I have minimal experience with Dreamweaver, but one of the main reasons its not as popular anymore are due to the after-mentioned “build your own sites” services. Its hard to justify stand alone tool to design web pages when you can use a CMS tool like Wix to design and build an entire website without any code.
On the flip side if you want more control over your site, there are tons of developer tools that have been created to make building complex websites using JavaScript. JS has gone from doing tiny stuff via snippets, to more or less controlling massive parts of the entire internet via technologies like React, and Nodejs.
For more “prototyping” I’ve heard of people using photoshop, and other tools (forgot the names off the top of my head )
I don’t believe any serious developer uses notepad for development. Its easily the less helpful tool, and memorizing all the CSS options isn’t worth it when they are a google search away. It might be useful to remember what can do what, but you don’t need to remember the specifics.
Finally its worth mentioning whats the most “trendy” right now, so you can get an idea of how far things have come. Namely stuff like JAMstack is the “newest name in the game”, which actually skips over a lot of stuff that was more popular a few years ago (Single Page Apps).
Thank you! I JUST started back on this journey last week, and have only made it through the first 5 modules of the web design “certification”. Your response is very helpful. JAMstack looks interesting and I’ll definitely spend some time with that. I guess what I’m really asking is, from a professional and interviewee standpoint, is it reasonable to use tools that offer hints or do I really need to be able to recall all of the options/variables? When interviewing for a job, do employers typically care what tool you use, or is the outcome and speed more important than the way you get there? Maybe I just need to finish a couple certifications and It will all be more clear. I am miles from being anywhere near ready to interview for anything. I just want to make sure I’m practicing and studying in the most useful ways.
Also, would you recommend doing python or javascript next? I’m excited about the possibilities of python but didn’t know if I should just go in the order the certifications are presented (if my ultimate goal is full-stack web development). If it doesn’t matter, I’ll do python next.
Depends the kind of interviews. You could be asked to do a whiteboard interview with a relatively simple problem so they can see your thought process, along with see how you deal with stress.
You could also be asked to program via some online tool during an interview to again see your though process and see how you manage. Most of these online interview tools wont have much “help” or tips.
Generally if your working on a project of any scale and the goal is to build it, you use the best tool you know for the job. This could be a full blow IDE, or a simpler editor or whatever. The most popular web dev tool today is VSCode due to its plugins and general capabilities while not being that “heavy” compared to a full IDE.
Depends on your goals. JavaScript is used for web development and has changed a lot over the years so I would recommend reviewing it at least. Python is a great starter language, and a great utility language but there is no getting around the fact JavaScript is the language of the web, so Python is just used less in general. Now if your going into something like DevOps, automation, or data science Python is the way to go (there are projects that go into this).
So if you want to do web dev again, I’d look back into JS and maybe go into Python just to checkout another language to refresh your palate
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