# Adobe Dreamweaver

21 Hacker News commenters recommended Adobe Dreamweaver and 19 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for its visual WYSIWYG editor and productive site building, especially alongside Flash in the 2000s. Common caveat: keystroke lag and messy generated code.

## Why people recommend it

- Visual WYSIWYG editing (4 comments): "Judicious and careful use of Dreamweaver (its visual editor and properties bar) enabled me to write exactly the code I wanted." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46180923)) "WYSIWYG tools like Visual Basic (and the mac equivalent now known as Xojo) and Dreamweaver" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498840)) "Quick shoutout to Dreamweaver 6.0 which was a power, WYSIWYG editor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47253593))
- Nostalgia for early web days (3 comments): "I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00's!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178918)) "I was a big Dreamwever fan back in the 2000's" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46179979)) "Really loved this stuff back in the day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074708))
- Boosts productivity (2 comments): "I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00's!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178918)) "Adobe Dreamweaver, which (obviously) increased our productivity tenfold." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178622))
- Pairs well with Flash (2 comments): "I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00's!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178918)) "dreamweaver worked really great together with Flash and vice versa" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46491498))

## What people warn about

- Bloated, messy generated code (4 comments): "they went completely overboard with it and you'd get lots of tiny little slices everywhere" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46193554)) "DreamWeaver absolutely destroyed the code with all kinds of tags and unnecessary stuff." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46179179)) "lots of unreliable and unoptimized code that will go live" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49556067))
- Keystroke lag while typing (3 comments): "2-second latency to process keystrokes on AMD's best CPU from 2 years ago and the incredulous attitude Adobe support has about the problem makes it a non-started" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708992)) "Adobe thinks it is totally normal that it takes 1-5s for a keystroke to appear when you are typing into Dreamweaver." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46724650)) "IIRC it just felt way more laggy than Notepad++" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48729114))
- Hard to scale complex projects (3 comments): "DreamWeaver and WordPress both had limits on the complexity of site they could build" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49936123)) "it did end up being more of a hindrance than a benefit the further you went in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48727272)) "you'll hit a wall with Dreamweaver as the project gets too complex" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46593407))
- Adobe maintenance concerns (2 comments): "2-second latency to process keystrokes on AMD's best CPU from 2 years ago and the incredulous attitude Adobe support has about the problem makes it a non-started" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708992)) "Adobe probably thinks Dreamweaver isn’t worth maintaining" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46725273))

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Adobe Dreamweaver", https://hackerapproved.com/p/adobe-dreamweaver/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).