Saturday, May 31, 2014

Lavie Struggles with Dreamweaver CS 5.5

One of Lavie’s new job duties in the land of re-employment is to maintain the website of her employer.

They use Dreamweaver CS 5.5 as their page development software.

So now that it is Lavie’s job, they had her enroll in an on-line Dreamweaver CS 5.5 continuing education class through the local community college. Great!

Only you really can’t buy Dreamweaver CS 5.5 any longer (well maybe you can but the pricing is either crazy high or questionably low) and the only installed copy was on another staff member’s system (who couldn’t leave for the few hours every few days Lavie would need to work on it) and the install disks have gone AWOL.

I was able to find a legitimate 30-day trial download for CS 5.5 available buried deep in the Adobe FTP site’s archives. That (and a VM) were able to get Lavie though the class successfully.

However, that is not a valid long-term solution. So unless the original CS 5.5 install disks turn up at her workplace allowing for the transfer of the license/software from the current worker’s system to Lavie’s, then we may have an issue.  There is no desire on anyone’s part to purchase the latest subscription based CS version model to just get Dreamweaver.

So I started looking for a Dreamweaver alternative that might closely match the foundational learning that Lavie has gone through.

I found two.

Microsoft Expression Web 4 (Free Version) - Official Microsoft Download Center - This product is 100% (just no support) and while professional web page developers have some valid points about the way it handles certain page-coding methods, as long as you know the basics of page code to clean things up to your liking, it seems to be a pretty good alternative. Lavie things the application workspace can be tweaked to appear very similar to the layout she became accustomed to in Dreamweaver.

openElement - Web Design & Authoring Software - The interface for this product is radically different from Dreamweaver and Microsoft Expression Web. However, it is being actively updated and once you get your project going, the interface becomes very navigable. Lavie actually liked the way this one seemed to operate over the more familiar Dreamweaver when she looked at it.

These other web articles provide some additional background on the above applications, as well as other alternatives that might meet other needs better.

Of course, all of these WYSWYG web page editors are no replacement for familiarity with web page code itself. There are lots of great resources to hone your skills. Here a just a few I myself find helpful.

Cheers.

--Claus Valca

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