Absolute BUNK!
um...
no.
People who get PAID to do web design don't fiddle about with WYSIWYG editors and templates; they build it from scratch; and that's only in the rare instance where the client wants a entirely new web-site; usually it just involves adding something to the existing architecture- an existing architecture whose method of creation is largely unknown. Dreamweaver and Frontpage insist on throwing in their own cruft into any web page you open, and frontpage and dreamweaver AFAIK are nearly useless for proper server-side scripting. "Oh here, click a few buttons, add some images! awesome! Now it looks nearly exactly the same as the thousands upon thousands of other 'professional custom-built sites' that were made with Dreamweaver!"
by "notepad" of course I assume kpac means nearly any text editor- basically, a editor that let's you edit the plain text of the HTML,XHTML,CSS, or what have you, rather t hen rely on fancy graphical widgets and ponies and unicorns and happy go-lucky elves to do the work, which is good, since the aforementioned ponies and unicorns and happy elves are all nearly illiterate, so all the variables will be something along the lines of "var1" and they will make sure to spread a single page out into at least 5 different files, for some reason publishing both a HTML and XHTML file for every one. you yourself recently said Geek-9pm that you prefer it all in one place.
A text editor let's you do whatever you want. a WYSIWYG editor is a bordered helper- a wizard, if you will, that has controlled inputs and controlled outputs and no matter how vehemently their users claim they are flexible they are about as flexible as stressed concrete when compared to writing a site via a text editor.
Yes; dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG are designed not for designing web-sites but for Rapid Web-site development; they make the process easier. They by no means make it more flexible then working with the base elements.
What your saying is equivalent to:
"but if you want to be a good programmer you should learn Assembly"
and responding with "absolute bunk"
Absolute? No. Understanding the down-level semantics of Assembly, or the instruction set of whatever platform is being targeted, is beneficial even if your working in a scripting language. to say that people should completely ignore the fact that HTML,XHTML, CSS, Javascript, and other technologies exist in favour of allowing such things to be manipulated only by the WYSIWYG frontend is to say that Assembly should be forgotten in favour of RAD development tools like *shudder* powerbuilder.
Easier != Better
