I completely disagree. Why do you need DW to create and fill tables? If you know how to code, why can't you code your tables by hand? Maybe I misunderstood your statement?
DW works fine as a web editor as long as you know how to use it. Why is everyone against DW? Were most people just born with the knowledge of coding? I don't think just reading a book will cut it. I loved DW in the beginning because I could use it in split view and see the code (thus learning it) while seeing the "visual" representation. I think just reading a book would have been very overwhelming. But that's just me...
I think when people knock on DW it's the old, embittered designer coming out of them..
I started with notepad and coding all HTML by hand, in high school. When I got to college and was working for the campus IT department, I got nominated to teach computer programs to the campus as kind of a free education seminar series - and one of those programs was dreamweaver. I had never used it before, so I didn't know how to use it properly at the time.. God forbid one of those students corners me in some dark alley someday, and demands to know why I taught them layout with tables so long ago..
I still use DW today. However, I almost never work in "Design" view. Most of the projects I work on are getting to be too complex for a WYSIWYG editor. The reason it's handy still is that i can browse files quickly and instant uploading of files upon saving.
While a lot of really bad websites have been made with DW, a lot of really great designers got their start by playing around with it. It has a fairly high cost for a development tool, which bars the entry to only genuinely interested consumers.
And I mean, come on. At least it's not FrontPage.
