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As discussed earlier, the HTML editors are those software applications which are used to design, create and manage high end web sites without writing HTML code. With HTML editors like Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver, anyone can make web pages. From novice to professionals to web experts, everyone is using these editors to effectively mange their web sites. But as every technology has its own merits and demerits, the HTML editors also have its own virtues and vices. Let’s have a look at both the positives and negatives of the editors, as it will lead to better understanding of these kinds of applications.

Advantages of HTML Editors:

1. HTML editors allow you to draft web pages quickly. The most impressive aspect of these editors is that you don’t have to know about HTML codes at all in order to design your web site.
2. HTML editors not only help in creating the web pages, but it also maintains the site map and global structure of the whole web site. Thus, if in future the web site becomes complex you don’t have to face any type of issues while updating and maintaining it.
3. HTML editors help in maintaining consistency throughout the whole web site. If your web site contains large number of pages and if you want a particular element to be displayed on the top of each web page (for example your company logo), then instead of putting the element one by one on each of the HTML document you can simply put it one any one page and the editor will update it on the remaining ones.
4. HTML editors let you to insert complex elements into the web page with ease. For example: you can quickly insert flash animations, fireworks file etc. into your web site.
5. Forms, tables, frames and other important elements can be easily managed via HTML editors.
6. Not only in web designing, but the HTML editor also helps in generating the scripts for the web sites.
7. HTML editors also let you to easily embed DHTML effects into your web page.
8. With the help of HTML editor library, you can easily manage and access the frequently used resources.
9. HTML editors are WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) applications. So, you can easily know how your web page will finally look like on the web browser.

Disadvantages of HTML Editors:

1. No doubt that HTML editor makes it easy to create and maintain web sites but they are overloaded with lots of features. So, it is difficult for a newbie to first of all understand the working of the editor properly.
2. HTML editors are poor in error reporting. It may not very much effective in telling you about the bugs in the code.
3. The programming style (style of writing the HTML code) of a HTML editor is entirely different than your style. The editors write the code in a complex and professional manner. So, it would be difficult for an amateur web developer to understand it.
4. Due to lots of features, the HTML editors have become overcrowded. It is very difficult to know about all the available features and their usage.
5. No HTML editor is complete in itself. As the web standards are updated, these editors start getting obsolete.

Just like Microsoft FrontPage, Dreamweaver is also a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web development software. It was originally created by Macromedia, but later on in the year 2005 it was owned by Adobe systems. Thus Dreamweaver is now known as Adobe Dreamweaver. This application is used for developing high quality web pages without getting involved in HTML coding. All the designing can be done in the design mode easily.

If we look at the sole objective, there is no difference between FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Both of them offer excellent tools to create exciting web sites. But still, some people prefer Dreamweaver as they find it more interesting, easy and rich in functions than FrontPage. Dreamweaver allows viewing websites in many popular browsers. It has got a variety of tools and functions which can be used to add multimedia in the web pages. For example tools like flash tool, real player tool, windows media player tool and quick time tool can be used to embed and watch movies in different formats on the web sites.

One unique feature of Dreamweaver is that you can configure it to write the HTML code in the way you want. For example; if you want that all the tags should be in bold, then you can configure the Dreamweaver to generate the code in that way. Dreamweaver also supports syntax highlighting for the codes. It makes it easy to use java scripting and DHTML to control the behavior of different objects. There is a library which makes it comfortable to use and modify an HTML element which has been repeatedly used in different web pages of a web site. For example; suppose you need to use and design a navigation table on every page of your web site. In that case instead of putting the formatting the table on every page, you can define it in the Dreamweaver library. Once added in the library, you need to put the table and design it on any one page of the web site and it will automatically get added and updated on the rest of the web pages.

Apart from this, Dreamweaver supports a lot of other useful functions such as CSS, templates, forms, tables, automatically updatable hyperlinks, interactive frames, rollover images and much more. Adobe Dreamweaver can be used on both Macintosh and Windows operating systems. The recent version of the application has been improved to support CSS, java scripts, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, java server pages and PHP. Overall, Dreamweaver is fully power packed with captivating features. This program is used worldwide and is a real head turner. It is a mighty competitor of FrontPage.

The whole look and design of Dreamweaver is better than any other HTML editor. FrontPage 2003 supports Dreamweaver compatible web templates. You can use both of them creatively to make stunning web pages. Dreamweaver has been improved to work hand in hand with Microsoft Word and Excel. The latest version of Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver CS3 is fully loaded with high end features such as fireworks, spry effects, browser compatibility check, CSS management and lots more. No doubt, Dreamweaver is all time favorite of most of the web designers and HTML professionals.