So...
I'm going to be designing a website for a small business.
No purchasing, just posting sales and information.

I basically just need a front page with links to a calendar, product images, printable coupons and recipes, but I'll need to update it often.

I'm familiar with lots of design programs, but I'm not familiar with coding. We're looking at Dreamweaver CS3, but I don't know if that's enough on it's own. Is DW a stand-alone product?

Do I need to get the entire honkin' expensive design suite, or can I design stuff in my printshop 21 and use it in DW?

Helpy helpy?

You are better off with DW8 its cheaper cs3 does'nt offer anthing new other than the collapse panels done with ajax cases alot of problems for me I have both cs3 and dw8 and 8 is just as good if not better. You could also get contribute 3 its also an adobe product very good for updating of page text/images etc. as its like a wordpad layout

Quite frankly, I would NOT recommend DW or any other WYSIWYG editor for a newbie. You need to learn to code HTML and CSS BY HAND if you ever want to be really good at it and know what you're doing and WHY things are done the way they are.

I agree with ladynred. That's what i'm doing right now. finished a course on html, now i'm studying css and xhtml. it gives you a better understanding.

I must disagree with LadynRed Just4Fun
If he is new to design DW is the perfect program comes with a split screen so he can view the code as he creates his page. There for he is learning HTML as he creates.

DW recommended

I agree w/ LadynRed. If you want to learn how to code in HTML and CSS you will have to unlearn DW. It puts in extra code and I wouldn't want to be limited to how it codes the page.

agree with millions and ladynred.. millions have a really good point but it would take the person longer to fully learn html... as for ladynred's suggestion, you can get really good within quite a short period of time and master it too

Thanks everyone,
My boss was sending me to take web design courses (probably in the summer), but she still needs to purchase a program for the business.
If she's going to buy one, I don't think she'll get another one later. Does that mean DW, or the Adobe web premium is not a good way to go for a small business?

Originally Posted by Jenna

Thanks everyone,
My boss was sending me to take web design courses (probably in the summer), but she still needs to purchase a program for the business.
If she's going to buy one, I don't think she'll get another one later. Does that mean DW, or the Adobe web premium is not a good way to go for a small business?

go with dreamweaver its easy to use and its the best around like I said above

you can also download the 30 day trial (fully working) from adobe.com - why not give it a spin first and see if you like it?!

DW is a good tool, yes - but AFTER you know how to code HTML and CSS by hand. As a learning tool, DW is NOT good since it creates some really ugly code in WYSIWYG mode , and that's how most newbies tend to use it.

If you were a carpenter, you'd learn how to use a saw before you tried to build a house. For your web 'house', you need to learn the code behind it before you attempt to use a tool (DW) to build it.

I can agree with that. It's like trying to cross cut a 2x4 on a table saw. Sure, if you're hardheaded enough, after whacking youself and losing a few digits I suppose you could get really good at it. But you'd just be getting really good at doing it WRONG. That's one reason why we have so many ill-coded pages out there--folks that learned DW, and DW only.

Try these tutorials: http://www.w3schools.com.
I started out by learning on Dreamweaver. I wish I had gone to this website first.

you may want a combination of both, DW you can look at some code and learn how to code with it.

I agree with ladyinred, thats the way i learnt...you can't beat good old notepad!