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Version 4 of Dreamweaver, Macromedia's entry into the visual Web design tool market, is the absolute best solution for both novices and seasoned professionals to use for turning out decent-looking Web content. The fourth release of Dreamweaver may not be enough of an improvement over its predecessors to justify paying for the upgrade if you already have a copy, but that's not a problem since early versions of this software were hard to improve upon. First off, Macromedia went to the mat with this one and cleaned up problems with the user interface that drew complaints from users of the earlier versions. Those improvements include a consistent look for every part of the program, along with the addition of dockable tabs and a comprehensive menu bar to the top of the screen. The bar will be familiar to users of other recent Macromedia products - Macromedia's customers can now count on one interface for all that company's tools just like Adobe's can. But with the improvements in Dreamweaver 4, Adobe GoLive no longer holds the crown for best design tool interface. Designing tables into Dreamweaver documents is easier than in previous versions, as is adding spacer images and other elements (although adjusting tables once they're made is still a problem). The Site Asset panel tracks media elements such as images, scripts and Java applets, along with external links, fonts and color palettes. That allows the dragging of elements into the document instead of having to type the same code in over and over again on each page, a process that eats up time and often results in inconsistency. Those of us who prefer to get our hands dirty by messing with actual HTML will also be pleased with this tool. Dreamweaver has, from its very inception, been respectful of HTML documents previously created and doesn't monkey around with existing code nearly as much as other tools do. The new menu bar has Dreamweaver's traditional 'Show Code' and 'Show Design' views, along with a new split-pane option that shows both the code and the actual page side-by-side. That addition will save you from having to load the page in a browser to check every changed tag, an annoying problem with any other Web editor. Editing the code is easier than ever with an included reference list of HTML tags, JavaScript elements, and CSS codes from O'Reilly publishing. Highlighting a section of the document in either source or design mode pulls up a list of definitions for every bit of code used in the highlighted area - a real help for anyone who hasn't quite memorized every part of the XHTML standard yet. DreamWeaver 4 also includes a JavaScript debugger to make sure the scripts you create work correctly. But beware of JavaScript generated by Dreamweaver itself - some of the simplest scripts turn into 25-line behemoths when the editor puts them together. And for those who don't want to design with Dreamweaver in either mode, the site management features of this tool have been improved as well. The Site Asset panel mentioned above is an excellent way to track abandoned elements of the site and follow what pages include them. Dreamweaver's Site Reporting features also help quickly identify problems with the code - BEFORE those angry e-mails start flooding in. Overall, DreamWeaver 4 isn't enough of an improvement over previous releases to justify an upgrade (especially at the $159 upgrade price), but the latest improvements put it further ahead of GoLive and FrontPage. Dreamweaver remains the hands-down king of visual Web design tools. Highly recommended.
Overall Ranking:
Reviewed by Paul Rickard, April 2001. | | [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
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(Four 1/2 out of Five)
Buy for MacOS