Dreamweaver - responsive navbar, forms and slideshows

I've started to handcode small, simple websites using HTML and CSS. But I'm coming up against the same problems: making responsive navbars / dropdowns, simple contact forms, slideshows and show/hide content. I don't know anything about JavaScript and this is probably beyond my understanding (I'm a graphic designer).

Let me suggest one thing,  Post your questions in small chunks with your initial effort/code and a brief explanation as to what do you expect the code to do and somebody here will try to help you out.

Although you can buy extensions for DW but if you really want to learn HTML/CSS then the best thing is to start coding like what you have already started and through experience and seeing what others are doing will teach you more than simply buying off-the-shelf solutions.   These are suitable for professional developers who are charging for their services and you look to me as a hobbyist and so doing it yourself is better with a little help from users here.  

Good luck.

I've spent a little bit of time looking at DW, Brackets, Sublime and Atom. I really like that in DW I can insert pre built snippets and pre built HTML and CSS. I think I'll learn a lot from that, it creates better code and it will speed things up. I think this is what I'm looking for - a little help (without using a framework which I don't like: too much code). The big thing that I really don't like about DW is the way I can't see my open documents/files/pages. They are arranged horizontally in tabs forcing the user to scroll right. And how can you tell if one of the documents has been edited, but not saved?

Dreamweaver's Insert menu contains a bevy of Bootstrap Components you can quickly insert into your Bootstrap projects.  Navbars, Carousel sliders, Accordions, forms, etc...   With just a few mouse clicks, you can create a responsive starter page in no time.  File > New > Starter Templates...  See Screenshot.

Hi markeeeee

Dreamweaver is not a full-blown WYSIWYG by any means - you need at least some basic HTML/CSS skills as a minimum IMO.  For Bootstrap components it will offer some help otherwise you'll need to purchase some 3rd party extensions for help with layouts, components and navigation features, I believe P7 are the best option for these.

Dreamweaver CC 2015 is the last version that included the original/native code editor, CC 2017 introduced a integrated Bracket code editor, a dumbed-down version of Brackets, its taken two-years or more to fix a lot of issues that caused, I'd say CC 2019 is the most stable Dreamweaver for a few years (personally I still prefer CC 2015).

Yes, Bootstrap is bloated, but a lot of people find it an easy way to learn and a lot of the popular WYSIWYG tools out there are 'Bootstrap Builders' - its a personal choice and you can 'clean-up' redundant Bootstrap stuff (always make a backup first). Then next choice is whether to use a Javascript framework or go 'Vanilla'. jQuery makes life easier but is dropping in popularity and you might also want to do some research into other frameworks like React, Vue and Angular.

Sometimes its horses for courses, how much time do you want/can you afford to spend on learning? What does the project require and what is really important to you? Learning can be fun but it can be time-consuming too 🙂

There are several companies that produce paid for extensions which work with DW, specifically covering navigation and sliders. I don't know if that's an option you have considered. There is also a wealth of solutons if you Google for Codpen, a place where other developers share their work, lots of pre-bulit slideshows and navigation solutions, which you can just copy and paste into your own code and tweak it a bit.

People either love of hate frameworks, I personally hate them as they restrict your ability to move forward, you think less, that's the very reason you use them, so to break out requires a lot of discipline. There is absolutely nothing like coding our own solutions as this has the benefits of expanding you're knowledge BUT its a long and winding road and that also requires a lot of discipline to maintain.

Depending on youre long term goals - I would encourage you to keep learning if youre in it for the long-run, if not then it probably isnt worth the effort, just go for the cheap route and options.

There are other alternatives like Webflow and Wix which have prebuilt navigation and slideshows. Wappler is another one but it does by default use Bootstrap, although you dont have to use Bootstrap and it does have a lot of pre-built component like slideshows etc however be warned it produces niche coding which may well hinder your chances to get a job in the industry, if ever you require to do so.