Hi,

Once and a while I use an email question as the basis of a blog post. This time, someone wanted to know about Dreamweaver and PHP:

Hi Stefan,

I am looking to get some videos on using Dreamweaver cs4 creating dynamic sites with PHP and MYSQL, do you have any videos on this using the drag and drop features etc with some code writing also?

Many thanks

Andy

My answer:

Hi Andrew,

The short answer:

Dreamweaver’s drag and drop features are very brittle. I was a beta
tester for DW CS4 and the programmers themselves told me that they would
be looking to trash it for the next version of Dreamweaver – they knew
it was a mess.

… It can be used for simple things (and prototyping), but the code is so messy and
convoluted, that any changes that you will probably have to make to
your project could be a nightmare. You are much better off learning PHP
and using Dreamweaver as a PHP code editor … and it’s pretty good at that.

In my basic course on PHP, I use Dreamweaver as the code editor and I
touch on in as far as how Dreamweaver can be used to write PHP code. You
can see a bunch of sample videos here: http://www.killerphp.com/videos/

Let me know if this helps,

Stefan

Hi,

I just released a new set of Dreamweaver video tutorials that cover Dreamweaver CS3 and CS4. You can find them here:

Dreamweaver Videos

For these videos, I’ve upgraded both the video and sound quality … and I had to invest to make this happen. So I hope you guys will see and hear the difference!

The video course runs a total of about 7 hours, spanning over 30 videos.

Thanks,

Stefan

www.killersites.com

Hi,

I just released a new video tutorial that introduces the new CSS option in the properties panel.

In a nutshell, Dreamweaver CS4 has made it even easier to add and modify CSS code in your web pages.

You can view my growing collection of Dreamweaver CS4 in the Dreamweaver section of killersites.com.

PS: Firefox on the Mac sucks bad.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

Hi,

I wanted to announce that I just released a 6 page article on Dreamweaver CS4 … concentrating on it’s PHP and database features.

Check it out: Dreamweaver CS4 Introduction to the PHP toolset.

I also plan on creating a bunch of supporting dreamweaver CS4 video tutorials to help fill in the details not covered in this chapter. I hope you find it useful.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

I just released a video that goes over my top 3 favorite new features in Dreamweaver CS4:

• Workspaces
• Code Navigator
• Related Files

Video tutorial: new features in Dreamweaver CS4

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook