Great read
.
I hate seeing that too. However, I use those programs.
. Lol. I don't use them by themselves though. My work is always a combination. I make the layout in PS, slice it in ImageReady ( Haven't learned Fireworks yet ), save it as HTML ( However, I do NOT use the default settings. I found a quick tutorial that showed how to get IR to save as CSS, rather than saving it in Tables. ), then use Dreamweaver to edit, and add my content.
Even after all that, I'm not done, I always go back, and make sure everything looks good ( I have, however, given up on coding for IE. I just can't handle it, and I don't have that kind of time and patience anymore. So my layouts are usually optimized for Firefox, mostly because it's the only browser I use, but also because nearly everyone I know, that visits my site, is a Firefox user. ), I also have one of my pro Web developer friends go back and double check my CSS, to make sure nothing is messed up, then I run it through the W3C CSS Validator, just to be safe, lol. ( I haven't done it for my new layout yet. I'm sure there are quite a few errors that I missed. )
I've come a long way from where I started ( Back in the AOL RP Chatroom days, I would code Guild sites. I didn't have any of the programs I have now. All I had was
notepad. I'm SO glad those days are gone for me
)
I used to use frames, even recently, until I learned how to code my DIVs correctly, that is. Still trying to learn "fluid" layouts, though.
I kinda wandered off there
. My point:
Using the WYSIWYG editors
by themselves is bad, and takes no real creativity, or skill, honestly, but, using them in conjunction with one another, and actually taking the time to work with the settings, rather than leaving them at the defaults, can produce some very nice results, fairly easily.
Just to show how far I've come, lol.
One of the old Guild Sites I made ( Pure code, no images, nothing, just text ):
http://www.freewebs.com/bsovforum/index.html
My latest:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=36352473
^My website basically looks like that, but different links, and no comments at the bottom.