Dreamweaver is (or was, back in the day) a good implementation of a category of software that does not really exist any more.
Back when the web stated, creating a web page meant mostly writing html, with a bit of graphics and scripting thrown in. The idea was that by using Dreamweaver, regular people (i.e. not expensive software developers) could do the layout and formatting of web pages. And it worked pretty well for that.
But it turned out that "creating html from text and image content" is not a job any more that needs specialized software.
On one side of the spectrum, web developers do not create static html any more, but full-blown web applications where html is just the output. If you are using e.g. a js templating framework, a visual tool like Dreamweaver wont help you very much.
On the other side, if you're a business user putting text on web pages, you are probably not creating html pages, but entering the text in the web interface of e.g. a CMS system.
I have fond memories of using Dreamweaver back in the day at school, but this seems way to little and way to late. Sure, maybe as a developer this isn't aimed at me (maybe it's more for pure mockup designers?), but what does it do that various Jetbrains products + Chrome dev tools don't?
I mean less was released in 2009 and sass even earlier than that, being that late to the party isn't a good thing. I think you need a great plugin ecosystem to make a success of an editor now, how are they going to encourage (or even support) that?
Well more like Dreamweaver is so far behind that it's trying to at least catch up a little to stay in the rearview mirror. Developers with a any design background probably started with Frontpage, then Dreamweaver then maybe Coda, and if they code for a living they most likely went to TextMate, then went to Sublime and now everyone is moving to Atom. (of course devs who don't like Guis use VIM or other alternatives).
On paper, a lot of the features Dreamweaver is adding like css code peak is nice, but something that Atom and others can simply add as a plugin if users want it. Dreamweaver is bloatware and won't be gaining much of any modern Atom users, but rather a good solution for people who don't know how to code well but their job require them to interact with code so having a heavy GUI like DW can help them get by.
I just use the code view in Dreamweaver quite often, not because I don't like Atom or VS Code, but because neither of them are good with S/FTP. A lot people still use Coda for this fact too. I still use VS Code when I get a chance. Not every project needs a repo, or a local environment. It may not be best practice, but some clients will force your hand into "cowboy coding."
Looks like an improvement, but if I can't design angular views, react components, backbone views, or ember templates, than it is not much use to me. Javascript is integral to all the design work I do at this point.
Dreamweaver was messy even back in the first part of the new millennium. All the other tools from Macromedia were pretty awesome, but Dreamweaver created too much of a mess for me to use for web development.
Back when the web stated, creating a web page meant mostly writing html, with a bit of graphics and scripting thrown in. The idea was that by using Dreamweaver, regular people (i.e. not expensive software developers) could do the layout and formatting of web pages. And it worked pretty well for that.
But it turned out that "creating html from text and image content" is not a job any more that needs specialized software.
On one side of the spectrum, web developers do not create static html any more, but full-blown web applications where html is just the output. If you are using e.g. a js templating framework, a visual tool like Dreamweaver wont help you very much.
On the other side, if you're a business user putting text on web pages, you are probably not creating html pages, but entering the text in the web interface of e.g. a CMS system.