I remember back in the days of middle school it seemed like EVERYONE was crazy about this thing called “Photoshop.” At the time, I was still using my family’s Windows Millennium Edition with Dial-Up, so I of course knew nothing about it. Ah the days when I actually went outside and played soccer with my free time.

Now, eleven years later, I find myself using things like Photoshop and other Adobe products more than I use the shoes I wear (it was a close call, deciding that comparison, seeing as I use both for more than 12 hours a day, the tie-breaker being the fact that I sometimes take my shoes off when I’m frustrated with a piece of code, and so therefore am using Dreamweaver more than I am my shoes). And while I was very “OMG DREAMWEAVERZZ” in the beginning, I can now say with certainty that I am a dissatisfied customer.

While things like Photoshop and Illustrator are indeed the best graphical software on the market, my main grievances come from using Dreamweaver.

I remember when I was learning how to write code for web, I was broke, working at a spaghetti restaurant to pay my bills, and had no spare cash to afford the outrageous prices of Creative Suite (yes, I did just call the price outrageous). So I did the poor man’s programming option: A free FTP software (filezilla), and TextEdit to write the code.

Soon, I was able to afford Creative Suite, albeit with the help of my parents under the guise of “my one and only Christmas gift,” plus building a website completely from the above process (this should tell you what it’s like trying to buy Adobe Software). I’ve been using Dreamweaver to do the majority of my web-design work, and have now reached a point where I’m quite fed-up.

Ignoring the fact that Dreamweaver already runs slow and bogs everything down on my machine, ignoring the fact that some weeks Dreamweaver just won’t open for some inexplicable reason forcing me to uninstall and re-install the software, ignoring the fact that trying to teach new users how to use Dreamweaver is like teaching a toad how to ballroom dance, the biggest problem I have with Dreamweaver is all the unneccessary features that almost never get used, yet meanwhile slow down the system, and often cause minor problems that shouldn’t appear in a system that costs as much as it does.

Take this morning for example. I’m building several new pages in ColdFusion for my work. Since a lot of the new pages look like the old ones with several changes, copy-and-pasting becomes instinctual. And lo and behold: THE PASTE OPTION DOES NOT WORK. I did Command + V, I went to the edit option, I even pasted the code in a text-editor, my browser, and a word document just to make sure the clipboard was working (hint: it was.). The only time the paste option DIDN’T work was when I was trying to paste stuff into Dreamweaver. Closing out the program and re-opening didn’t work, turning off features I’m not using didn’t work, at this point I think I’d have more success trying to pierce the Great Wall of China with my face. Thanks Adobe!