The wrong idea about web design

I've been looking through the forums and I see that alot of people design their site by hand coding them selves, I have never seen it like that. I have just design the site by using dreamweaver or fontpage as I like to see what it looks like, how do I get out this habit

Mellie05, you just have to bite the bullet. Prepare for the dreaded shakes, since it's an addiction to tables! hahahahaha

I have used Dreamweaver since 1998 and have designed so many sites using tables I can't even count. I joined here and realized there was a new way. Wasn't convinced it was better until I spent time here listening. I still wasn't convinced but me being the kind of person that wants to "prove I can learn new things" to myself, started with a few basic tutorials. I was already knowledgable to a point with CSS using Dreamweaver's CSS section.

You can still handcode in the code design and then flip over to the design code to see what you did. Usually it shows you an accurate design so you know if you are on the right track or not. Sometimes the design view will be off and when you check it in a browser you see you do have it correct.

I found peaking at the design view was a great way to know if I had it right.

Here's a nice beginner tutorial off the adobe site. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamwea..._concepts.html

Good luck!

I preview my site in Firefox as I build it, no need for a WYSIWYG editor, then I test in IE 5 - 7, Safari etc...

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I hate IE 6. Just sayin....

I'm with Lchad in handcoding in Dreamweaver. And like her, it wasn't until I got here that I discovered the fun of CSS. It is so absolutely fantastic I wish I had known this when I started out. But redesigning, has shortened the learning curve. I still flip to design view to see if it looks right and them back to code. And remember, the best designers never ever stop learning. That's the same in any type business that is really successful.

I am a hand-coder as well. I code all of my sites in PSPad which is a free text-editor for Windows. But Karinne and Sara have convinced me to give the code view in dreamwever a shot, so I might try that for a couple of sites.

I'm on a Mac, and I use skEdit with Safari for testing. No DreamWeaver for me. Although I used to think DreamWeaver wasn't good for web design, some people here have convinced me otherwise if you use the code view. It's a hard habit to break; when I first started out, I used Netscape Composer, lol. To me, hand coding makes it more fun and safe, because you know that the code will be leaner and valid.

Sara, Linda ... it's party time!

mellie05: I'll tell you what I tell everybody about DW. STICK TO CODE VIEW! Don't use the WYSIWYG (ie: design view). Hand-code your site

WYSIWYG - what does this stand for? ?

It stands for...What you see is what you get!

which is very misleading... as generalyy what you see is definatly NOT what you get .... no substitute for testing in multiple browsers in my opinion.

This is an absolute. I have a number of browsers on my computer and just run the pages through one after another. Time consuming, but in the end, you have a design that works for just about everybody.