I was just curious as to how Dreamweaver CS4 handles using the box model, compared with Freeway. I’d struggled with it in the previous version of Dreamweaver, so I downloaded the trial (very apt) version of CS4 and found an online tutorial to go through.
Whilst Dreamweaver does a better job of separating the html structure from the CSS styling and positioning, it would take me half as long again to do a particular page. The process is not intuitive, is beset with filling in modal dialogue boxes, and is just plain clunky. It feels like I’m running an OS9 or Windows application.
To work efficiently, you pretty much need to know in advance the precise dimensions of the site structure, how you intent to style the boxes, and to also understand a little about how CSS works and handles naming things. With Freeway I can juggle things about and defer naming, styling, and precise positioning and dimensions until a later time if I want to. In Dreamweaver, whilst this can all be deferred, it gets very awkward to put it in later.
To be fair to Dreamweaver, there may be other ways to get the information into place quickly, other than endless dialogue boxes. It may be that the tutorial was just awkwardly written. In either case, it wasn’t obvious as to how to get a page constructed using the box model without following the instructions to the letter. Having used the box model in Freeway was only of limited help.
Keeping an open mind is always a good idea, but for now, I’m sticking with Freeway. We just get along.
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