As a WYSIWYG editor, Dreamweaver can hide the details of pages' HTML code from the user, making it possible for non-experts to easily create web pages and sites. Some web developers criticize this approach as producing HTML pages that are much larger than they should be, which can cause web browsers to perform poorly. This can be particularly true because the application makes it very easy to create table-based layouts. In addition, some web site developers have criticized Dreamweaver in the past for producing code that often does not comply with W3C standards.
However, Macromedia has increased the support for CSS and other ways to layout a page without tables in later versions of the application.
Dreamweaver allows you to pick most browsers installed on your computer to preview websites. It also has some site management tools geared towards novices, such as the ability to find and replace lines of text or code by whatever parameters you specify, up to the entire site. The behaviors panel also allows creation of basic JavaScript without any coding knowledge.
With the advent of version MX, Macromedia incorporated dynamic content creation tools into Dreamweaver. In the spirit of HTML WYSIWYG tools, it allows users to connect to databases (such as MySQL and Microsoft Access) to filter and display content using scripting technologies such as PHP, ColdFusion, ASP, and ASP.NET, without any previous programming experience.
A highly regarded aspect of Dreamweaver is its extensible architecture. "Extensions", as they are known, are small programs, which any web developer can write (usually in HTML and Javascript) and anyone can download and install, which provide added functionality to the software. Dreamweaver is supported by a large community of extension developers who make extensions available (both commercial and free) for most web development tasks from simple rollover effects to full featured shopping carts.
