I am trying to learn HTML/XHTML on my own by reading books and using notepad as the text editor. My biggest weakness is memorizing all the tags. Well now I am aware that there are text editors out there that will insert the tags: Context, Homsite, and Editplus, just to name a few. I get the feeling that Homesite is the best, but I am still new to this area. I need someone with experience to guide me. I also entertained the thought of learning Dreamweaver CS3 before I saw all the negative post regarding the code it generates. A lot of posts called the dreamweaver code dirty and bulky. Is Dreamweaver really that bad? I need an experienced person to give me the Pros and Cons of both Homesite and Dreamweaver CS3.
Thanks.

I learned using plain notepad and lots of practice. It is like learning any other language, if you don't practice and use it everyday the skill weakens.

And Yes Dreamweaver is an evil contraption and i lose any respect for anyone who calls themselves a web developer and uses it.

Trust me, if you want to become a good, standards driven, ethical developer, then just write markup in a tetxt editor and use a standards book or the web has reference. There is no shame in checking a tag up if your not sure, I keep a reference book by my desk for this purpose.

Jamie

Put another vote against Dr*amw*av*r. No designer worth their salt will ever touch that product, regardless of what the legions of Macrowhores say.

I also use Homesite (v. 4.5, pre-Macromedia buyout and subsequent destruction of what was a great product). It does complete the tags, and the syntax highlighting comes in extremely handy.

There are a number of stickies on this forum indicating resources on how to code a quality website, and a number of nerds like me who can help you along as needed. Start with the stickies though: they'll generally get you where you want to go.

I think that using a plain text editor is much better then using any WYSIWYG editors.

+1 against Dreamweaver. I like jEdit...it will highlight for pretty much any coding language, and it's cross-platform, and free.

Another one that you might like is Notepad++. Both are much better then Notepad, because it highlights the code.

Another light text editor cross-platform and with color syntaxing is scite:
[ http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/SciTE.html ]

Otherwise, I you don't mind a huge java app, I should say that Eclipse + PHPEclipse + Eclipse Web Development tools rocks my world for some years now, and I've still haven't found anything to replace it without feeling a loss.

TopStyle Pro - check it out. It's not WYSIWYG, you have to code by hand, but it does syntax and code highlighting and a whole lot of other cool things. It comes with a complete HTML and CSS reference, actually several because you can set it to DOCTYPE you're coding to and what level of CSS to use. It will warn you of invalid syntax and errors. It ACCURATELY renders CSS (unlike DW) and you can preview in any browser you set up. It has an internal preview for IE and Mozilla too, so the display as you work shows you what the results are - and that's the extent of it's WYSIWYG features - real-time updates.

You DW haters are really harsh. It is a good tool for an EXPERIENCED coder. It has some very good site management tools, which I do use now and again. I only agree that DW bad in the hands of newbies because left on it's own in their hands, in WYSIWYG mode, it DOES spew some pretty bad code. So, I won't advocate it for beginners at all. That being said, even though I do have DW8 in my machine, I don't use it much and do all my coding in TopStyle

Will it might take a little time to learn all the tags, but it's time well spent. Once you've learned them you won't forget them or at least you'll know where to look to find them.

Also WYSIWYG editors still have learning curves to them.

I vote text editor.

Originally Posted by LadynRed

You DW haters are really harsh. It is a good tool for an EXPERIENCED coder. It has some very good site management tools, which I do use now and again. I only agree that DW bad in the hands of newbies because left on it's own in their hands, in WYSIWYG mode, it DOES spew some pretty bad code. So, I won't advocate it for beginners at all. That being said, even though I do have DW8 in my machine, I don't use it much and do all my coding in TopStyle

I finally uninstalled dw yesterday. I haven't used it in forever.

The templates and library items are really nice. You can define a block of html in one place, change it in one place, and dw will update all the pages in your site ... even the static html ones will be rebuilt.

Trouble is, I managed to break all of my templates nine months or a year ago, so this stopped working, and it's been preventing me from doing certain coding because of the way those regions were set up.

Steve is right about the wysiwigs having a learning curve, too ... and in dw, that's not quite like riding a bike. There's that bar at the bottom, with a lot of the commonly used attributes for a tag, where you can set the class, the align property, and others ... but the more I learn about markup, I find it quicker to just write out what I want than find it in the ui. On the other hand, the site-wide changes are so invaluable I'm building something to accomplish basically the same thing.

In order to fully master a language you need to understand it.
Therefore getting your hands dirty using notepad is the only way to do it.
Learn the tags in isolation, understand what they do and if they have multiple uses and then use them in conjunction with other tags as you get more experienced.
best of luck !

Thanks guys for all your imput

What did you ultimately decide to use?

Will, I agree with the others. I use Aptana. It's an IDE which is a text editor with a few bells and whistles. And I'm sure you would benefit from this site http://www.w3schools.com/

You guys are all too harsh on Dreamweaver. In my opinion, it's the one of the best editors out there for beginners to experts. Nothing even comes close. Just because you claim to be able to write code from scratch does not make you an expert or good web designer so I wouldn't put much weight into their opinions. If you learn DW properly, it can save you hours of hand coding. If you're just starting out, I do recommend learning by hand, even if it means switching between code view and design view in Dreamweaver and using DW as a reference tool is certainly a lot faster than flipping through a book.

I develop all of my sites in Dreamweaver. Although I spend most of my time in code view, it's handy to be able to flip back and forth between design view/code view to get a quick preview. Also, Dreamweaver supports tags and colour coding for all the scripting languages such as PHP, ASP and supports CSS as well. Once you get over the learning curve it's definately worth it.

Just stay away from Frontpage...that thing is the devil.

Although I've done my own share of raw coding, I still find it convenient to use dreamweaver. It's a hassle for me coding on notepad and previewing it on browsers each time I make some changes.

Originally Posted by akdelic

Although I've done my own share of raw coding, I still find it convenient to use dreamweaver. It's a hassle for me coding on notepad and previewing it on browsers each time I make some changes.

Alt-Tab, Ctrl-R. Don't want to excercise that left hand too much

I made the mistake of going with DW when I first started and I did not learn a thing until I stopped using it.

Originally Posted by JamieLewis

And Yes Dreamweaver is an evil contraption and i lose any respect for anyone who calls themselves a web developer and uses it.

There's nothing wrong with DW, per say, but it's like an axe - only safe in the right hands

DesignVault I agree with you that just because you can write code from scratch it doesn't make you a good designer, but I'd suggest getting to know the people here before telling people our opinions shouldn't be listened to.

blue-dreamer above sums it up nicely. DreamWeaver is a tool. In the right hands it can create good things. In the wrong hands it creates garbage.

My view is that anyone truly wanting to be a web designer should learn how to code by hand. They don't have to always code by hand, but it's important to understand how it's done. All WYSIWYG editors will spit out some unnecessary code or sometimes leave you with a problem that needs to be corrected by hand.

If you don't understand the code then you are at the mercy of the tool creating that code.

I can see from your site that you obviously do understand how the code works. You have a really nice site and if you can create that in DreamWeaver more power to you. I'm not going to argue that DreamWeaver can't be useful.

Myself I find it just as quick to build a site from scratch by hand as I do from building it in a WYSIWYG. While DreamWeaver may have a nice code view I'll save the few hundred on it since I get everything I need in free editors.

When I see people on forums asking about what editor to use I advise a free code editor and learning the html, css, etc, because I think that understanding will take them farther than relying on the WYSIWYG. And in this case the OP specifically mentioned wanting to learn html/xhtml. The OP will learn quicker and better by writing the code by hand.

I agree though that there's nothing wrong with DreamWeaver and as WYSIWYG editors go it's the best one out there.

Fair enough, I just find it unfortunate that people are so quick to bash DW. I find many designers think they are more "1337" just because they can code from hand, and because of this they are naturally better than those who use visual editors. Anyhow, I don't mean say your opinions do not matter but rather it's personal opinion and it shouldn't fully sway anyone from using a visual or text editor.

Yeah, DreamWeaver is good if you use it to help you, not to do things for you. You need to know, cause it never does anything quite how you want it anyway. Plus all programming languages have to be typed in by hand anyway.
DW (CS3) is too expensive, I'll admit. That's assuming you get it legally of course, which any proper designer that wanted it would. Just if you have no money, or just making one site, 30 day trial or a free program is best I think.