Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
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Dreamweaver CS3 is the first Adobe-branded version of the feature-rich Web-site editor that was last released as Macromedia’s Dreamweaver 8. After Adobe bought Macromedia, it began integrating Dreamweaver with Photoshop and other applications in the Adobe Creative Suite, and Dreamweaver CS3 is the impressive result.
In its basic interface and features, it’s the same Dreamweaver that advanced Web designers know by heart, but Adobe has brought it into the 21st century with full CSS support through tools that validate and manage style sheets, as well as a new graphic interface for Adobe’s “Spry Framework,” a set of JavaScript code snippets built into Dreamweaver for displaying dynamic elements such as collapsing menus, database items, or XML feeds. Any developer can download the Spry framework separately, from Adobe’s site, and use the code in any Web editor, but only Dreamweaver has it built in.
The new version is an essential upgrade for any Dreamweaver user who wants to build up-to-date CSS-based code, and it offers effortless drag-and-drop integration with Photoshop. Potential newcomers may want to compare Dreamweaver with Microsoft’s compact Expression Web before taking the plunge. Both programs let you create sites from templates that impose design consistency, and both automatically display syntax options when you’re editing code. Dreamweaver, however, gets bonus points for supporting Secure FTP uploads, and it’s the only choice if you want automated code-completion on PHP and ColdFusion pages. Dreamweaver also includes prebuilt dynamic widgets such as an “Accordion” that expands to display hidden data when a user clicks on a title.
Even more now than in earlier versions, Dreamweaver acts like a powerful, smooth-running machine, with up to a dozen control panels, multitabbed inspectors, toolbars, and other controls arrayed around its editing screen. If you like the feeling that you can do anything on the page in the editing window, and that you can fine-tune even the most complexly organized Web site, Dreamweaver is the program to choose.
On the other hand, Dreamweaver’s overstuffed menus and toolbars can be intimidating and confusing, and you need to pay close attention to its messages that remind you to upload auxiliary files to your remote site when publishing. I was also frustrated by the way Dreamweaver’s right-click menu lacks the context-sensitive options in Expression Web’s menu, and by the way Dreamweaver exiles its tools that manage dynamic data to hard-to-find property panels away from the main editing window. Expression Web also uses property panels when you want them, but it offers a compact set of commonly used options from the right-click context menu.
I also found Dreamweaver’s WYSIWYG editing more fragile than Expression Web’s. I kept colliding with baffling error messages or nonfunctioning code if I deleted something from the WYSIWYG window but forgot to remove the invisible tag that contained it. The code for Spry widgets, for example, sometimes got corrupted so that dynamic elements stopped being dynamic—and Dreamweaver would only tell me that the code seemed to be broken, not how to fix it. Also, Dreamweaver’s help system manages to be bloated and inadequate at the same time, with a sprawling list of topics but laconic explanations of the actual steps. It’s infuriating to find that links on the local help pages to “related information” usually turn out to be exactly the same page, but on the Web instead of on your local machine.
Despite its problems, Dreamweaver remains a colossus among Web editors, and the only one that comes with an application—Adobe Device Central—that previews your pages as they’ll appear on mobile phones and other portable devices. If there’s a feature that you want to add to your site that you can’t find on the menu, you can probably add it through the massive library of freeware extensions that users have contributed to Dreamweaver’s online resource. Expression Web gets many basic jobs done much more elegantly, so it keeps our Editors’ Choice—by a nose. But Dreamweaver is much improved, and it’s the only Web editor that does everything. You may find that for some tasks, Dreamweaver is the only way to go.
Do you have any experiences with Adobe Dreamweaver CS3? We would love to hear from you and get your opinion! Please see rating section below!
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Tags: Adobe, cs3, design, dreamweaver, graphic, Review
Posted on: December 9, 2009
Filed under: Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
3 Reviews
Hannes
December 10th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
I can not tell you how much I love this software. There are so many useful features, that I could spend pages discussing them. But, I’ll just stick to my top 5 favorite features.
#5- Professional Layouts
Dreamweaver doesn’t offer colorful templates like some web development software does, but it gives you something better. It gives you professional layouts, using CSS and div tags. This allows you to create pages that can be viewed on a variety of browsers. The web sites look fantastic.
Div tags give structure, but also a very clean look.
#4- Templates
Frames are going fast. But creating navigation bars and other content that is repeated on multiple pages is a pain, especially when you need to change it. This means you have to update every single page.
But, with Dreamweaver, you can create templates with “editable regions”. To make a page, you create it from the template, which copies everything from the template to your new page. Let’s say you have a navigation bar on the template. Every page you make from that template will have the navigation bar. If you update the navigation bar on the template, the pages created using it will be updated too. It works great and saves SO MUCH TIME.
#3: The look and feel of Dreamweaver
You can customize just about everything in Dreamweaver. Not only does it come with settings like “Coder” and “Classic”, but you can freely move around the windows and panels to fit your taste. You can dock them to the right and on the bottom or just float it wherever you want.
#2: Advanced CSS support
When you set the font size of text in Dreamweaver, it doesn’t change the font with HTML, it uses CSS. Some people don’t like this because they are uncomfortable with CSS, but I disagree. CSS is much cleaner than using HTML for formatting, and it can be reused, by defining classes or redefining HTML elements (very useful for big sites.) CSS is also more professional than HTML formatting. It is also more easy to understand.
#1: Related and dependent files
Let’s say you have a page that links to two CSS files and three JavaScript files. You could open one of these files by finding it in the Files panel, but when you have a big site with a lot of folders, this can be frustrating. But, with related files with Dreamweaver, the files that a page connects to are conveniently located right above the source/design view. So if you need to access one of those JavaScript files, you can just click its name and it opens. Also, when you upload a page to a server, Dreamweaver uploads the dependent files of that page too. So if you uploaded the page in the example above, it will also upload the CSS and the JavaScript files (if it needs too) automatically. This can also save time.
I would HIGHLY recommend this for anyone who builds websites. Even if you have no experience, this is very simple software to use. There is minimal learning curve, and it is totally worth the money.
Tanja
December 10th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
I’ve been using the Dreamweaver CS4 beta for almost 5 months now and find that it fits my work style very nicely. There are some obvious changes like that it now looks more like Adobe’s other programs. It’s not so much the similarity of looks in the interface that helps as that the working panes and panels have been integrated into a working whole on the Mac in the same way as Windows. Since I use both platforms that’s nice. Since the workspace is pretty customizable and since you can save your workspaces, I can imagine that experienced developers will end up having some pretty individualized views. I originally thought that it might take some time to learn the new workspace but it’s so logically designed that it seems natural.
If you hand code at all you’ll really appreciate the new features. Most of my design work now is focused around building themes and templates for Wordpress and Drupal. Before CS 4 I was hand coding the sites and only used Dreamweaver as a site management tool for static sites. That is to say, not that much. There are a few new features that have changed Dreamweaver from just another arrow in my quiver to my main go to program, Live View and Related files are the two that are getting the most press. They’re great but there are some others.
Live View displays a real time look at how the page displays in a WebKit browser. Since Dreamweaver now supports side by side views, on a 20″ or larger monitor that allows for simultaneous windows showing the code and the results. I love that.
What makes it even more useful is the Related Files feature. Click on a server side page, like a main CMS template file and Dreamweaver will automatically offer a set of tabs for related server side files, CSS or JavaScript. Click on the sidebar or footer files and the code view shows up. Make a change and Live View updates the preview. This works really well for multi file templates on blogs or content management systems. On the down side, Dreamweaver does not support Ruby or Python so you can’t use it for frameworks like Ruby on Rails or Django. Though it does work with Cakewalk, a PHP framework. I don’t use ASP or ASP.net so can’t comment on those or on ColdFusion.
Dreamweaver also now supports syntax highlighting for major JavaScript frameworks. I mostly use jQuery, but MooTools, Scriptaculous and others are supported too. There are some more widgets for Adobe’s framework, Spry if you want some built in Ajax.
The last feature that makes a difference for me is Code Navigator. Click on a page element and you can have the associated CSS rules pop up for editing. Brilliant. And the CSS wizards seem to have been updated, too. I find even the best wizard is slower than direct coding so haven’t really given that part of the program a good look.
I’ve also found CS4 to be both a little faster and more stable than CS3 and that’s in beta. Hopefully, when I get the boxed copy, I’ll experience the same results.
If you use Dreamweaver for designing visually and stay away from working in code you may or may not find the new features quite as exciting as I do, though they aren’t trivial. Live View is certainly nice and the improved CSS handling should make it easy to not design with tables. The expanded Spry functionality will make it easier to add Ajax widgets to a page.
Orjan
December 10th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Dreamweaver combines the simplicity and speed of a visual editor with the precision of a code view. You can develop your websites fast, and still also have the option of tweaking the code to meet your exact wishes.
Trained developers will appreciate the efficiency of getting basic tasks done automatically. Hobbyists and students will appreciate the help, and the opportunity to learn.
Since it’s from Adobe, it works well and has plenty of support.
I use Dreamweaver to update my website and to develop my online course, but you can use it for all your coding tasks, from the most basic to the professional. It’s easy enough for beginners to use, without the clunkiness of authoring programs designed to be foolproof.
I can’t imagine a better choice.
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