Shiela,

Dreamweaver is a great layout tool. I use it on all of my sites and many of them are taking over someone else's work. While we create many sites in ColdFusion, the sites we take over can be asp, php, jsp... the list goes on.
An asp.net site would work fine in dreamweaver and I would lean more towards that as a develpment platform. You can download a 30 day trial version to test it out.

Kris
www.iknowtek.com

If you are doing .Net development I would strongly suggest VS.NET. Dreamweaver is very good when it come to straight HTML development and developing around MM products such as CF, Flash and Fireworks.

.NET has a complex array of classes and features. There are a great deal many more tools in VS.NET geared toward .NET development which you will find very useful. Plus the community for VS.NET has a very large base.

Also the source control for DMX has a lot to be desired compared to Visual Source Safe which comes with VS.NET. DMX is more of a lock so it doesn't get overwritten type of source control, while VSS is a real versioning source control with a database for recovering previous versions of a document. VSS also integrates very tightly with VS.NET.

While I wholeheartedly agree with you Byron, as an ASP.Net web developer I use Dreamweaver, and choose it over VS.NET for web applications.

It has good support for ASP.Net, and because the HTML that is output is very clean because it's not using FrontPage Extensions... ew. And we all know that if you want to be W3C Compliant, FrontPage is your worst enemy.

I think what it mostly boils down to is personal preference/opinion. But that's my two cents.

I won't agree more...
Dreamweaver&VSS makes everything on track. Source control in Dreamweaver is very neccessary.
Furthermore, I often edit my web files outside the office where I generally work. I mean with internet connection I can access remote VSS database to perform source control in Dreamweaver. I manage to do so just by using a third-party VSS software named SourceAnyWhere specifically designed for VSS remote access.
Its tight integration with Dreamweaver and extraordinary access speed enables me to manage my changes smoothly in Dreamweaver anywhere(via internet).
I'd like to share it with you all.
BTW, you can visit the link below to have a look firstly,
http://www.dynamsoft.com/SAW_DreamWeaverIntegration.html

I have always heard vs.net pages have to be majorly tweaked to create compliant code.

Hands down Visual Studio is better for .NET development. The Intellisense and debugging options alone should make this a no brainer. After you rough out your app in VS, then if you want to get all pretty with it go to your Macromedia suite and tweak the layout to make it nice & pretty (Fireworks & if you have to, Dreamweaver). Typically though, my process is to develop the app entirely in VS.NET and get all teh code built - then go back and plug in the components into a nice & pretty layout that I did in Fireworks. I don't usually even use Dreamweaver.

well that all might change with Crap assed Adobes takeover ove Macromedia, sad sad day

And in all fairness Scott, aren't you more of a backend end guy and not a frontend guy? which does make a difference.

admittedly a backend guy more than a frontend guy - but that still doesn't change the fact that I use Dreamweaver less than Fireworks.
If you are going to CODE - use Visual Studio. If you are going to layout a site, use Fireworks and slice it up. If you are going to RAD (Rapid Application Develop) then use Dreamweaver.

what i was getting at was if you are just doing the backend code then use whatever but to design and/or put the site together for visual and not just code then use dreamweaver.

So what are u .net guys do when avalon or whatever is released and .net is forgone?

I guess I'm not understanding your process then. What exactly are you doing in Dreamweaver that you can't do in Fireworks for design & layout of a site?

I still think if you are designing and laying out a site you do it in Fireworks - not Dreamweaver.

Avalon's not going to replace .NET - Flash maybe, but not .NET.

why in gods green earth would you do a layout in fireworks? Thats so in the rearview mirrow......
Do the images in fireworks but not the whole layout.

Instead of saying "Don't do this" explain WHY not to do it...care to expand your answer?
I actually should reply - Why on God's Green Earth would you NOT do the layout in Fireworks?

You sound like my wife when I say "Honey, did you not see the oil light in the car 300 miles ago?" while she is stranded on the side of the road with an overheated car, and she retorts "Your hair is so..."

what do you want explained?
I guess to you a page layout is a big image that consumes the page, that really hasn't been even in practice to a large scale since before I came into doing this.

Sure in the olden days you made a big psd and used hot spots but those days are long gone for most of use.
Practical use of a web site would be minimal images and maximum content in which a graphical layout does neither.