Website Design – Top Features of Dreamweaver

A Web Design Company or a professional web designer uses many tools to assist in web design. There are many web design software available in the market. Some may be available free of charge but professional tools have to be purchased. Dreamweaver is one of most of the most popular web design software available in the market today. Dreamweaver can be purchased either independently or as part of a combined Software suite that includes other useful web development tools such as Flash and Fireworks.

Although an experienced Web Design Company or a professional designer can build a website purely by hand coding HTML in a standard text editing software, using a professional web design tool or software is highly recommended.

Some of the features that make Dreamweaver the leading web design software are discussed below:

Graphical Interface for designing websites

Like other popular Web design software, Dreamweaver provides an easy to use Graphical user interface to help build different pages of a website. With Dreamweaver, a web designer can design a website by dragging and dropping objects as opposed to having to code it from scratch. Dreamweaver offers a WISYWIG method for web design. WYSIWIG refers to ‘What you see is what you get’. It is a common terminology in software design used commonly to describe software in which content displayed during editing appears almost identical to the final output. This makes the web design process easier and more efficient as you are able to view the end result while editing the web-page.

Can be used by Web Designers as well as non-technical users

Dreamweaver has many built in features that make it relatively easy to design a professional corporate or personal website. It is popular with both, professional web designers as well as non technical users with limited web design and development experience. It makes it possible to design a website without having to code any part of it. This has also made Dreamweaver popular among non technical users. Although use of advanced features will require some web design skills and experience, basic features can be utilised simply with the help of self-thought tutorials easily available with the software and available on the internet.

Design as well as Code view

The latest version of the software, Dreamweaver CS series has been regularly voted as the best web design tool for coding and design professionals. One of the main reasons behind Dreamweaver’s original rise to popularity as a professional web page designing tool, was its introduction of the split view workspace showing both editable layout as well as code view on top of the other. This allowed experienced web designers and developers to be able to edit the code directly in code view while being able to see the design in real-time in the design view.

Database Capabilities

Gone are the days when experienced web developers preferred to build websites purely by coding it by hand. Innovative web design software such as Dreamweaver is equally effective for designing static HTML websites as well for designing dynamic database driven websites. Dreamweaver works equally well for designing database driven websites.

Support for CSS, JavaScript and XML

Advance support for handling JavaScript, Ajax and Xml is another reason behind the success of recent versions of Dreamweaver. Ajax is a popular new technology that is used widely in development of modern websites. It combines JavaScript, CSS and XML to update website content without requiring a new page or reloading of the page. The new Dreamweaver CS series includes built in support for handling new web design approaches including Ajax. This has proved for experienced web developers and designers who are able to utilise the latest technologies in designing websites.

Dreamweaver includes professional support for handling CSS Styles. The built-in CSS Panel makes it easy for a web designer to create and edit style sheets.

Group Working

Dreamweaver also offers Group working capabilities. This can prove particularly useful for a Web Design Company or a Team of web designers. It allows a designer to ‘Lock’ a page to prevent other team members from overwriting or editing the same part of the web page. The notes feature of Dreamweaver on the other hand allows web designers to keep a note of their changes.

Built in FTP

Dreamweaver has built-in FTP software that allows web designers to manage the completed files on server with ease. Traditionally a Web Design Company or a web developer would use different software tools for designing a website and for updating files on the server. Dreamweaver makes this easier by combining FTP capabilities into its design software.

Summary

Dreamweaver is one of the most popular Web authoring tools used by Web Design Companies and Web Developers. A Web Design Company can not only save time by designing a website faster but also produce better quality of designs. It can allow a Web Design Company to keep better control over projects thereby allowing them to work on multiple web design projects simultaneously. Dreamweaver can also prove useful for businesses that wish to manage their web design and development in-house within their own company. It can be beneficial for both; experienced developers as well as non technical users who wish to design websites themselves.