Mac Design Magazine

Dreamweaver Enters Generation OSX Review: Dreamweaver MX From: Macromedia, Inc. Phone: (800) 457-1774 Web: www.macromedia.com

Since it’s debut in 1997, Macromedia’s Web development software has become the designer’s choice for professional Web development. According to Macromedia, Dreamweaver holds an 80% market share for Web development software. DW has come a long way since its birth. Starting out as a basic visual editor with a few bells and whistles, DW now boasts tools for creating Web applications for industry standards such as ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, Java, Microsoft.net, XHTML, XML, and now Web services.

In 2000, Macromedia introduced Dreamweaver UltraDev, a version of Dreamweaver that included tools for creating Web applications such as ASP, JSP, and ColdFusion. With the introduction of Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia has combined Dreamweaver and Dreamweaver UltraDev to make DW MX one of the most powerful all-in-one apps available today; especially when you consider that DW MX is available for both Windows and Mac users.

Let’s Hold Hands And Sing Kumbaya

For the first time in the Web’s existence, developers, application programmers, and designers can work together within one environment to build dynamic, professional Web projects with the tools available in DW MX. Considering the amount of interactivity that happens between programmers and designers on sites, this could smooth out a lot of existing problems within corporations and Web design firms.

Another plus with Dreamweaver MX–and this has been happening since version 1–is that Macromedia continues to make DW liquid in many ways. With the introduction of extensions a couple of years ago (where third parties can develop application plug-ins for DW to perform tasks and create applications right from within DW) to incorporating Web services (where developers can manage content such as live traffic reports, weather reports, stock info, etc., provided dynamically from outside Web sites), Web developers can grow with this fast-paced industry using DW MX.

Just a Snippet Over The Ears, Please

This is a cool new feature of Dreamweaver MX. Ever have a really cool way of displaying a photo with a caption to “float” within a story? You got the table code all right so that the story text flows around the photo, but not too close to it as to make it look weird. Months later, you are working on a new Web project and you run into the same situation. “Okay, how did I do that table again?” Now you’ve got to search back through all of your old HTML files to find that one bit of coding.

Not anymore. If you have something that you use a lot (tables, entire layouts, functions, etc.), save it for later use in the Snippets Panel. Now, each time you need that code, you open the Snippets Panel and scroll down to the name you saved the snippet under (i.e., “Photo Table”) and bam! it’s placed into your page.

Dreamweaver MX Highlights:

• Application Development – HTML, XHTML, XML, Web services, ColdFusion (Windows only), ASP.NET, ASP, JSP, PHP

• Pre-Built Code Libraries – Create database insertion and update forms, recordset navigation pages, and authentication pages. You can also test layouts by populating the design view with live data.

• Site Set-Up Wizard – This new feature walks users through something as simple as setting up an account with an ISP or creating a dynamic site for the first time.

• Developer Community – With Dreamweaver MX Exchange, you can download over 700 free extensions that customize and extend DW MX.

• Pre-Built Layouts & Code – Whip up a Web page in no time using professionally designed page templates, forms, JavaScript functions, and more.

• Code Hints – Write code even faster (that is, if you write code at all) with this new feature. While typing code in–duh–code view, tag elements and end tags pop up, allowing you to choose from a menu of code instead of typing it all by hand.

• Standards Checking – With DW MX, you can use U.S. Law and international standards compliance-checking features for pages and entire sites.

• Cutting-Edge XML – DW MX’s support for XML is amazing. DW MX allows editing, validating, importing schemas, and XML code support. There’s default XHTML creation (to ensure standards compliance) and easy conversion from standard HTML to XHTML.

Multi-Technology Environment

One thing that DW MX can do for you is save you the headaches of having to remove code inserted into your page by programmers because your visual editor can’t handle it. So even if you don’t do the code work, you can still edit your design without broken tags. Now, if you do code, you’ll love the fact that you can work with all of the major server side technologies working on the Web today. DW MX handles ColdFusion, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, and PHP. These are the cutting edge technologies that high-end sites are using to get content to their site visitors. Now, you can use one development environment to handle all of them.

See How Compatible We Are?

Dreamweaver MX is continuing Macromedia’s trend of keeping up with the latest technologies and advancements in the Web business. DW MX is fully Carbonized to support Mac OS 10.1 user interface improvements. DW MX also now supports SSH-enabled (secure FTP login) transfer of login info directly from DW’s FTP interface. Since Dreamweaver version 3, DW has been capable of producing wireless content. Macromedia Exchange currently has extensions for DW for producing wireless content for Nokia devices and iMode development.

DW MX continues to improve on Dreamweaver’s support of Flash technology. You can accelerate graphics, animations, and HTML editing between DW MX and the new Flash MX. DW MX also supports Flash MX ActionScript editing which includes code hints and color-coding. As with previous versions of Dreamweaver, DW MX is tightly integrated with Macromedia’s Fireworks for editing graphics and HTML. With a few clicks, you can go from Dreamweaver MX to Fireworks MX, optimize a graphic for download speed, and be right back in Dreamweaver to finish off the design.

Final Thoughts:

While there aren’t any major upgrades as far as design goes, there are still many reasons to grab Dreamweaver MX. With the additional support for the very latest technologies such as ASP.NET, PHP, and JSP, Dreamweaver continues to produce the very best Web development tool on the planet.

For those of you anxiously waiting for an OSX compatible version of Dreamweaver, this is it. DW MX is smooth and works beautifully in the aqua world of OSX. So if you are tired of launching OS9 whenever you need to work on Web projects, that alone is worth the upgrade. But you won’t be disappointed when you start working in it. You’ll find this latest version of Dreamweaver full of hidden gems and easier access to often-used tools.

– Rick Tracewell

Mac Design Verdict

Hot: OSX compatible and chock full of new features.

Not: Nada. Improved on any flaws in previous versions.

Rating: *****

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