Adobe Dreamweaver
HTML editor in Developer tools
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.
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.
40 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 21
- criticize it
- 19
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 21 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Visual WYSIWYG editing
“Judicious and careful use of Dreamweaver (its visual editor and properties bar) enabled me to write exactly the code I wanted.”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Using LLMs at Oxide” “WYSIWYG tools like Visual Basic (and the mac equivalent now known as Xojo) and Dreamweaver”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Web development is fun again” “Quick shoutout to Dreamweaver 6.0 which was a power, WYSIWYG editor.”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Building a New Flash” - Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “30 years of <br> tags”
Nostalgia for early web days
“I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00's!”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Using LLMs at Oxide” “I was a big Dreamwever fan back in the 2000's”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Using LLMs at Oxide” “Really loved this stuff back in the day.”
Comment from 9 May 2026 in “Using Claude Code: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML” Boosts productivity
“I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00's!”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Using LLMs at Oxide” “Adobe Dreamweaver, which (obviously) increased our productivity tenfold.”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Using LLMs at Oxide” Pairs well with Flash
“I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00's!”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Using LLMs at Oxide” “dreamweaver worked really great together with Flash and vice versa”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Macromedia Flash, from an Animator's Standpoint”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Bloated, messy generated code
“they went completely overboard with it and you'd get lots of tiny little slices everywhere”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “I failed to recreate the 1996 Space Jam website with Claude” “DreamWeaver absolutely destroyed the code with all kinds of tags and unnecessary stuff.”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Using LLMs at Oxide” “lots of unreliable and unoptimized code that will go live”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “The asteroid currently hitting front end web development” - Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Announcing .self: A New Top-Level Domain Designed to Support Self-Hosting”
Keystroke lag while typing
“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”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Nested Code Fences in Markdown” “Adobe thinks it is totally normal that it takes 1-5s for a keystroke to appear when you are typing into Dreamweaver.”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Why does SSH send 100 packets per keystroke?” “IIRC it just felt way more laggy than Notepad++”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Announcing .self: A New Top-Level Domain Designed to Support Self-Hosting” Hard to scale complex projects
“DreamWeaver and WordPress both had limits on the complexity of site they could build”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Sites in ChatGPT” “it did end up being more of a hindrance than a benefit the further you went in”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Announcing .self: A New Top-Level Domain Designed to Support Self-Hosting” “you'll hit a wall with Dreamweaver as the project gets too complex”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Vibe Coding Roast” Adobe maintenance concerns
“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”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Nested Code Fences in Markdown” “Adobe probably thinks Dreamweaver isn’t worth maintaining”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Why does SSH send 100 packets per keystroke?”
What people said
40 of the 42 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Marvel at the Dreamweaver-enabled design”
“DreamWeaver solved that ages ago.”
“DreamWeaver and WordPress both had limits on the complexity of site they could build”
“it's code was typically a mess”
“Dreamweaver let me see all the s easily.”
“lots of unreliable and unoptimized code that will go live”
“those tools sucked in comparison to what ai is doing.”
“Then it hit Illustrator and Dreamweaver.”
“the trusty HTML soup Dreamweaver would spit out”
“The first thing it asked me when making a new website was ... what the resolution of my user's screen is?”
“IIRC it just felt way more laggy than Notepad++”
“it did end up being more of a hindrance than a benefit the further you went in”
“because it produced unmaintainable code”
“But the code view was solid.”
“Really loved this stuff back in the day.”
“in the same way FrontPage and Dreamweaver back in the day”
“clients would cancel a website project because their teen told them they could do it for them much cheaper with DreamWeaver or MS Word”
“(X)HTML generated by Dreamweaver or FrontPage”
“Quick shoutout to Dreamweaver 6.0 which was a power, WYSIWYG editor.”
“They all did a few things better than the modern web but failed in so many other ways.”
“Adobe probably thinks Dreamweaver isn’t worth maintaining”
“Adobe thinks it is totally normal that it takes 1-5s for a keystroke to appear when you are typing into Dreamweaver.”
“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”
“The sites load really fast.”
“you'll hit a wall with Dreamweaver as the project gets too complex”
“WYSIWYG tools like Visual Basic (and the mac equivalent now known as Xojo) and Dreamweaver”
“Dreamweaver produced mess”
“dreamweaver worked really great together with Flash and vice versa”
“Editing on WYSIWYG Dreamweaver is way more fun.”
“they went completely overboard with it and you'd get lots of tiny little slices everywhere”
“Judicious and careful use of Dreamweaver (its visual editor and properties bar) enabled me to write exactly the code I wanted.”
“I was a big Dreamwever fan back in the 2000's”
“I just sat here for 5 minutes and I wasn't able to finish that sentence.”
“it was at least possible to use it as a starting point”
“DreamWeaver absolutely destroyed the code with all kinds of tags and unnecessary stuff.”
“I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00's!”
“Adobe Dreamweaver, which (obviously) increased our productivity tenfold.”
“some large scale companies that went under because of platforms chosen to develop their products in”
“I'm hearing good things about Dreamweaver”
“does give you the sense that making a website is easy”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.