Macromedia Dreamweaver 3.0

MacromediaÆs Dreamweaver has established itself as an indispensable tool for professional Web designers, providing both pixel-level layout and fast editing access to the underlying code. Dreamweaver 3, which builds on its past successes, is a Web authoring tool thatÆs as simple as FrontPage, yet as versatile as GoLive.

You can use Dreamweaver 3 to visually design and manage cross-browser Web sites without sacrificing HTML control. It combines visual page editing with HTML source code control. The Quick Tag Editor lets you quickly modify, add or remove the tag defined for the current selection without leaving the design view. You can also customise the Dreamweaver interface and instruct it to ignore any tag structure that you need to define.

Built into this latest version of Dreamweaver is support for Roundtrip editing; meaning that designers can have better control over the level of editing that is automatically applied to various areas of the HTML coding. Previously available for only the HTML and XML portions of a document, Dreamweaver 3 now extends this capability to include support for Server Side markup languages such as ASP, Java Server Page, Cold Fusion Markup Language and PHP. In addition, Dreamweaver 3 comes bundled with AllaireÆs HomeSite 4, an excellent code editor in its own right.

HTML styles provide the ability to create paragraph and character styles using standard character markup (bold, font etc.). Inline image maps allow you to add hotspots, change links and targets, and apply behaviours directly in the Document window.

Dreamweaver is closely integrated with Fireworks 3, which is a major advantage if you are working with graphics-intensive pages. Commands to edit and optimise graphics in Fireworks are included in DreamweaverÆs menus. æInsert Fireworks HTMLÆ makes it easy to import HTML, JavaScript, images, image maps, and behaviours that result from a slicing operation in Fireworks.

If you are not interested in replacing your own graphics program with Fireworks, Dreamweaver lets you link to multiple external graphics and text editors. æImproved HTML InspectorÆ includes an option to show line numbers in the margin and can be tabbed with other palettes. New objects let you add dates, e-mail, navigation bar, jump menu objects, special characters, create framesets, and insert rich media content from Flash 4, Shockwave 7, and Generator. This allows designers to streamline workflow between applications like Photoshop, Fireworks and Microsoft Office.

æClean up Word HTML takes HTML files created in Word 97/2000 and formats the code the way you want.

Tabular data object lets you import formatted data from spreadsheets or databases into Dreamweaver HTML tables.

DreamweaverÆs site management options have also been expanded, including improved synchronisation between local and remote sites and an option to automatically remove orphan files. The Site menu is now available directly from the Document screen, allowing you to launch FTP transfers and check files in or out for editing easily. You can check in and check out where you need it, directly in the Document window.

æSynchronise filesÆ let you synchronise the local and remote version of your site while æDesign notesÆ let you keep status and notes about each file and share these notes with other team members. Native Macintosh codebase provides support for Navigation Services, rendering images through QuickTime, and a host of other performance enhancements.

You can launch and edit any file in the Site window to open it in an external editor, and define multiple editors for each file type-even differentiate between different kinds of graphic and text files. DreamweaverÆs new History Palette lets users automate Web production by recording moves and saving steps as reusable commands. It lets you visually undo any action, select and replay any number of steps, and save these steps to a command file to be used later.

Dreamweaver DOM gives JavaScript coders access to the structure of Dreamweaver documents at authoring time, making it possible to accomplish and even automate complex tasks such as sorting tables, applying styles and removing tags. Unfortunately, these Javascript macros cannot record mouse movements, which prevents you from including certain selection actions. On the plus side, Dreamweaver 3.0 now includes a Clean Up Word HTML command for removing Microsoft-specific code from Word 97/2000 HTML documents, and to quickly format and sort tables.

Sadly, DreamweaverÆs interface is still cluttered with too many floating palettes and not enough keyboard shortcuts-a far cry from the neat FrontPage interface. However, the good news is that customisable menus and shortcuts are now defined in an XML file-menus.xml-located in the Configuration menus folder. Though definitely not a task for beginners, an experienced designer can assign keyboard shortcuts for most of the commonly used commands with a little bit of editing.

Others:
Microsoft FrontPage 2000
Adobe GoLive 4.0
Allaire HomeSite 4.5 RC 3