I also push the styles off to classed tags and divs. CSS is great. The dual view that is built in to Dreamweaver is a great tool to see automatically what you just edited and how it changed your layout. It's better than saving your files and then opening them up in a new browser and have to keep refreshing it every time you make a change. Another great tool is the preview in browser feature where you set up your managed sites and you can right click on a file and preview it in multiple browsers. You must install the browsers yourself they aren't pre-installed with Dreamweaver. I test all my sites this way: IE, Opera, Safari, Netscape, Firefox. You can download trials of DW I highly recommend it. I bought it for my home business the entire Adobe Creative Suite Web Premium I love it.
I believe hand coding is the best practice but like other people have stated you can use dreamweaver in standard code view and it's exactly the same as using notepad.
I have been working on a new design for my online portfolio and a few features that I have been finding very useful are the validators, the ability of find and replace that you can use throughout your managed sites which can save someone a great deal of time when working on a large site.
I learned how to develop web pages when I was in high school using notepad. Since then I have completed my Bachelors in Information Technology Web Development. Dreamweaver brings alot more to the table other than just having the WYSIWYG feature. I hand code through DW and also use the split mode at times and I haven't found that DW would add unnecessary code to my pages. Front Page on the other page adds a bunch of garbage code to one's page.
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I also push the styles off to classed tags and divs. CSS is great. The dual view that is built in to Dreamweaver is a great tool to see automatically what you just edited and how it changed your layout. It's better than saving your files and then opening them up in a new browser and have to keep refreshing it every time you make a change. Another great tool is the preview in browser feature where you set up your managed sites and you can right click on a file and preview it in multiple browsers. You must install the browsers yourself they aren't pre-installed with Dreamweaver. I test all my sites this way: IE, Opera, Safari, Netscape, Firefox. You can download trials of DW I highly recommend it. I bought it for my home business the entire Adobe Creative Suite Web Premium I love it.
I believe hand coding is the best practice but like other people have stated you can use dreamweaver in standard code view and it's exactly the same as using notepad. I have been working on a new design for my online portfolio and a few features that I have been finding very useful are the validators, the ability of find and replace that you can use throughout your managed sites which can save someone a great deal of time when working on a large site. I learned how to develop web pages when I was in high school using notepad. Since then I have completed my Bachelors in Information Technology Web Development. Dreamweaver brings alot more to the table other than just having the WYSIWYG feature. I hand code through DW and also use the split mode at times and I haven't found that DW would add unnecessary code to my pages. Front Page on the other page adds a bunch of garbage code to one's page.