Dreamweaver vs. Content Management part II

My position on Dreamweaver is no secret. Last fall I was talking with a colleague and journalism professor about the need for journalism schools to teach content management principles as part of their programs. A communications professional who knows nothing about Dreamweaver can have a bright future. A communications professional who knows only a little about content management is in big trouble.

After we were discussing the course yesterday evening I opened up Google Reader and read Ken Rickard's post about Amy Gahran's wonderful Poynter Online article about just this topic. Here are some of the high points from Gahran's article:

Apparently, this j-school (like many others) offers little or no training in true CMS-based tools. Their online courses focus on Dreamweaver.

That's a big problem, because tools embody mindsets. Focusing on Dreamweaver teaches exactly the wrong mindset for online journalism: that your Web site is mainly an island unto itself.

Amen. While Gahran's comments focus on online journalism the sentiment applies to everything online. Whether it is the Washington Post, the local social club or MySpace the magic of being online is the connected nature of information.

[...] implementing basic features (such as comments or forums, or a flexible array of RSS feeds, or a decent site search engine) is needlessly complex and difficult in Dreamweaver. Journalists should be able to accept such infrastructure as a given -- not try to hack it together as an afterthought. Because online journalism without such basic features is crippled.

Again she hits it right on the head. And of course this applies not only to Dreamweaver but to Front Page or iWeb or insert your island-making web program here. Whether one wants to communicate what is happening at the local VFW post or organize huge international efforts the connected nature of information is central to giving information meaning.

If your journalism classes are part of a larger communications program, I think clarifying which tools are right for the job is even more important. The journalism class online projects should use CMS tools like Wordpress or Drupal. Leave the teaching of Dreamweaver to the PR and advertising classes, where it's much more relevant to the kind of sites created in those disciplines.

So here Ms. Gahran and I part company a bit. While Dreamweaver may be more relevant to advertising sites if they are tiny and will live for only a few moments in web-time it doesn't come close to handling PR or advertising in a substantial way. Here again the most important theme is the value of information comes from the connections between pieces of information. It is incomprehensible that any communications professional should find a job in today's world without at least a solid understanding of content management systems. Further in my small sampling of people who work on themes and graphic design for websites few, if any, use Dreamweaver or tools like it. Photoshop and Illustrator are of course common tools in the designer's stable, but Dreamweaver and Front Page don't have much place.

The sad part of this equation is that it is generally much easier to convince a dean or department head to buy a bunch of copies of Dreamweaver than it is to convince them to spend the same money hiring a student to manage a Drupal installation on a linux server.

Requiring journalism students to use Dreamweaver is about as useful as requiring them to learn calligraphy. It makes your content looks really pretty -- and it generally won't be worth a damn on a real journo job or project.

Amen.

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10 Comments

Web Tools

I really like Coda (a Mac only app), since it can edit HTML, CSS, and PHP code. Unlike Dreamweaver, it doesn't shield you from the actual code. I've always preferred hand-written HTML to the ugly mess produced by Dreamweaver and most other similar applications.

Typo

My last name is RicKard. :-)

In my view, Macromedia

In my view, Macromedia should do a similar transformation with Dreamweaver, by creating extensions that will allow Dreamweaver to be the tool of choice for template design in the Open Source CMS world. Third-party Dreamweaver extension developers have already created extensions that allow Dreamweaver to be used to build Joomla templates in a WYSIWYG environment, and Bryght has documented techniques for using Dreamweaver to build Drupal Themes... but for Dreamweaver to remain relevant in an open source world, Macromedia needs to dive in and give Dreamweaver the built-in capability of acting seamlessly as a WYSIWYG tool for contructing PHPTemplate and Smarty Themes for Drupal, Templates for Joomla -- and the same for Typo3 and the rest of the top frameworks in the Open Source CMS universe.

I've never been a big fan of

I've never been a big fan of dreamweaver, although it does come in handy for someone wanting to develop a webpage without investing a whole lot of time learning html, php, or css.

The Dreamweaver content

The Dreamweaver content management solutions provide a seamless web authoring environment. The Dreamweaver content management solutions enable creation and updating of web templates and allow web designers and developers to directly connect to their website through Dreamweaver and create, edit, and manage website content within a familiar environment. The Dreamweaver content management solutions streamline the web publishing efforts. Organizations can deploy the Dreamweaver content management solutions to protect existing technology investments, eliminate specialized developer training, and reduce deployment time of a new content management solution.

Developers can incorporate Dreamweaver into any development workflow, as Dreamweaver is built on an open architecture using web standards. The Dreamweaver content management solutions enable developers to create content templates using their development tool of choice with their existing content management solution. The Dreamweaver content management applications enable to easily create, organize, and publish web content and also reduce the time and cost of managing web data greatly. The Dreamweaver content management applications enable any user to accurately and efficiently author, publish, and manage web content from anywhere without the need to know HTML or XML. Dreamweaver provides a powerful combination of visual layout tools, application development features, and code editing support. This makes it the professional choice for building websites and applications. The robust features for CSS-based design and integration of Dreamweaver, enables web designers and developers to easily create and manage any website.

Browser-based web content management solutions are integrated into numerous dynamic, database-driven websites and intranets worldwide. The Dreamweaver content management solutions enable the right people to manage the right content at the right time. These solutions add value to the web strategies of organizations and help them maximize the value of their website information. The Dreamweaver content management solutions enable customers to easily and efficiently deliver their enterprise content to multiple channels within the organization, reuse content throughout the entire website, and maximize the value of enterprise content with real-time management and deployment.

Organizations can deploy the Dreamweaver content management solutions to manage their website content. The Dreamweaver content management solutions enable web developers to quickly and easily deliver low-cost, powerful, content authoring and management capabilities. At the same time, the Dreamweaver content management solutions ensure that the developer retains important control over the site architecture, look and feel, navigation, and other important elements of a website. The Dreamweaver content management solutions enable organization to simplify, streamline, and accelerate the production and delivery of website content. The Dreamweaver content management solutions dramatically reduce the time required in building the website, by enabling the organizations to shift the burden of content production from the technical team involved in building, maintaining, and deploying the website to the business owners of the content.

The Dreamweaver content management solutions are designed to deliver powerful website content management capabilities and require only a little contribution from the web developer. The Dreamweaver content management solutions enable web designers to easily delegate content authoring and editing to content owners while retaining control over the look and feel or design of the website. In addition, the Dreamweaver content management solutions empower the content contributors to self-publish, so that the web team resources are released to focus on managing the layout and design of the various websites of an organization.

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Dreamweaver is very powerful and useful!

I believe that Dreamweaver is undoubtedly the best content management application in the Web publishing industry.

Those who dislike Dreamweaver are most likely unaware of all the ways that it can "manage content". If Dreamweaver is not a good content management system, I don't know what a good content management system is.

I have seen and used several other content management systems in the past, and have observed that they do not offer the best user interface/environment.

Further, it is my opinion that people (who do not prefer to use Dreamweaver as their main Web content updating tool)dislike the program because:

1. They can't afford it and want a "free" software program (other open-source driven applications).
2. Can afford it, but do not want to pay the high price associated with it.
3. They have it and are intimidated by it.
4. Simply dislike the program because it is owned by Adobe and feel there should be other programs available for Web authors to choose from.

I believe Dreamweaver is the best Web content management system available. Don't believe all the "hype" about it. I use it almost everyday. I wouldn't want to use another program simply because of the fact that it is built around Web Standards.

Lastly, People don't have to necessarily learn CSS, XHTML, Javascript and Ajax to create rich websites and applications. So - give the folks at Adobe a big break and focus on your own reasons for using whatever content management system that you prefer to use.

Things changed in 2010

Both Dreamweaver and Drupal their own strength and weakness.

Drupal has proved it's strength as CMS with strong and flexible back.

At the same time By and far this software has been in the front position among web authoring softwares. Besides Dreamweaver's proven rich HTML editor and CSS editors In it's latest versions Adobe introduced new features that makes CMS themes much easier.Key features like Related file, Live view, CSS inspect and CSS enable/disable are true time savers a cool experience for CMS theme developers

There are extensions that connects Drupal and Dreamweaver
Themegenie is a Dreamweaver extension for creating and editing Drupal themes developed by us.

It is a very useful article

It is a very useful article about dreamweaver versus content management part ii. I've enjoyed reading the discussion and found it be very resourceful post.

This is indeed a helpful and

This is indeed a helpful and useful article. The dreamweaver is one who makes all kinds of dreams and thinks of nothing but the wastage of time only. this reveals the true story.