My former employer hired a new creative director to come in and organize things. His first day there he asked everyone in my group if we "used WYSIWYG editors at all such as that Dreamweaver piece of [expletive deleted]". I told him that I used Dreamweaver/Ultradev to create the general layout of a page and then, if needed, I go in and clean up the code with either the built in editor or something like Homesite. Anyway, I could tell that wasn't the right answer.

Ultradev is quite a step forward for Macromedia. The built in site features, such as the Template generator are worth the price alone. With the template generator you can create a page and select which areas of your page can be edited. Then you can hand it off to other designers and not worry about them messing anything up (that you created). Even if you have already built a site, you can create a Template and apply it to any page within the defined site. I can't say enough about this tool.

If you use any FTP programs like CuteFTP, etc., you no longer need them. The built in FTP program is a cinch. You don't even have to navigate to the directories. Just select a file, right click, PUT. The file(s) you selected will automatically be put up on your predefined server.

If you have used past versions of Dreamweaver then you basically know Ultradev. Ultradev finally corrects many of the problems earlier version of Dreamweaver couldn't handle. And this is probably why a lot of web developers don't like Dreamweaver. A lot of people think it creates a lot extraneous code, which in reality it does but for a reason. The guys at Macromedia created a product that would create code that would work on almost all browsers. You are guaranteed compatibility if you use any of their built in extensions like rollovers.

It's sad that my former employer, as well as many others have such a negative attitude towards Dreamweaver or Ultradev because with Ultradev, I can almost guarantee however long it takes a hand coder to create a page/site, I could do in half the time.

Recommended: Yes