Is it "unprofessional" to designs websites through Dreamweaver?

Question

If you have a web design company, and you've always written the code yourself, is it unprofessional and will make you look stupid if you start using Dreamweaver to design the websites (so as to save time)?

What if you still write/tweak some of the code?

Answer 1

It all comes down to money. If you are making $300k a year then it doesn't matter how you do whatever you do.
If you are making $5k a year however, you can "look" as professional as you want :)

Answer 2

On the contrary, it's much more professional to be using Dreamweaver to create websites. This is what is done in the real world! When you start building very advanced websites, you're going to have to do lots of testing with remote servers using server-side scripting, database management, style sheets, etc. Not using something like Dreamweaver with all of that is just flat out ridiculous.

Remember, just because you use Dreamweaver, doesn't mean you have to stop writing every single bit of your own code. The beauty of Dreamweaver is that it allows you to build websites with knowing very little code, but at the same time can't hold back a professional developer with tons of programming knowledge. In turn, even for developers who know all their stuff, Dreamweaver can streamline their development while at the same time can serve as a valuable learning tool to web development beginners who want to transition to a more professional role.

But again, Dreamweaver is a very common tool for professional web developers to use. That's part of why the price tag is so large!

Answer 3

Nope, actually what we do is we design the website in Photoshop, it helps us easily go through revisions with the client, ensuring that when we begin to develop it, it is exactly what they want. We slice it and create images in pieces for the website with a program called imageready. We can save images as jpg or gifs, depending upon what type of image they are. Imageready outputs a folder with all images and an HTML file. You can then open it in Dreamweaver, create a template, rollovers, apply stretch headers, repeat backgrounds, and import flash animations.... in my opinion - a designers opinion who does both print and web - doing code yourself limits how GREAT and CUTTING EDGE a good website design can be.

Some of these were somewhat cheaper websites, but they all started out as photoshop files that we sliced and brought into Dreamweaver so we can tweak the code ourselves.

http://www.lavertychacon.com/
http://www.capitol-casino.com/
http://www.capitolinvest.com/
http://projects.webtenet.com/busy_bee_dogs/

Some web programmers and devlepors call it unprofessional because now graphic designers are able to develop a website without building the code from scratch because Dreamweaver builds it for you. It eliminates the need for a developer all together... making higher salaries for graphic designer and a declining need for raw and talented programmers and developers.

Answer 4

It's by no means unprofessional, however it gives you much less flexibility than coding it yourself.
It saves time so why not do it, though I personally don't like Dreamweaver, because it inserts a lot of superfluous coding which takes up loading time.

Answer 5

No. If its saving time and you know what to do then that makes good business sense to me.... You can complete more sites using Dreamweaver than spending a lot of hours manually working on one project.

Answer 6

I doubt a $600 piece of software is unprofessional.

Answer 7

sounds ok to me. why not use the tools that are out there?