HTML Editor Reviews | Reviews and Discussion of (X)HTML Coding Tools

Review: Dreamweaver 8

When I first began building web pages, I used Dreamweaver and its WYSIWYG functionality. The sites always ended up looking ok, but the code they were built upon was a mess. It has now been a while since I graduated into hand-coding sites and using (X)HTML/CSS to lay them out. It’s also been a while since I used Dreamweaver for any of my projects; recently, however, I renewed my acquaintance with Adobe’s (neé Macromedia’s) flagship website creator (on PC) in order to work with a client who only uses Dreamweaver (and Design View at that) to manage her template-based website.

What I Like

• Library Items, Templates, and site management features for non-database driven (i.e., static) websites.
• Excellent code collapse feature.
• Code hints/code completion for supported languages.
• Three options for code completion, including ‘Never,’ ‘after >’ or ‘after </’ (the last option is great).
• FTP management, remote file syncing, and background file transfer.
• Paste Special option in Design View to strip all formatting from pasted text.
• Built-in O’Reilly references for supported languages.
• Being able to edit content in Design View, rather than (or in addition to) marking it up by hand.
• Excellent Search and Replace functionality – the best out of the programs I’ve used so far.
• The ability to (un)comment a section of code at the press of a button, using the new coding toolbar.

Gripes

• Price – $399 US is high compared to most other editors on the market, but Dreamweaver does offer a lot of functionality.
• A bit resource heavy – you won’t want to open it up for minor edits.
• Large download (56MB) for anyone not on broadband (minor critique).
• CSS Rendering in Design View needs to be improved.
• Problems with Libraries and Templates. Occasionally, Library items won’t update properly across a site once you’ve made edits and saved them. I also found that this occurs most often with Library items created in Dreamweaver 8 and then modified in an older version of Dreamweaver. I also ran into problems editing Templates in Code View, only to be told that I’d modified an un-editable region, when clearly I hadn’t. Very annoying.
• I didn’t like editing style sheets in Dreamweaver and ended up switching back to TopStyle much of the time for CSS. I like the way TopStyle closes curly brackets when editing CSS files, for instance.

Wish List

I’m not really sure how much more could be added to Dreamweaver aside from improvements to features that already exist. However, here are a few things that could possibly be included:

• Column text selection and editing.
• Built-in file comparison utility.

Overall

Dreamweaver is chock-full of excellent web development features, and I’ve really just skimmed the surface with this review. There are only a few things that keep me from using it more and recommending it to other users: the price, the “feel” of Dreamweaver’s CSS editing capabilities, and the way it renders CSS layouts in Design View. At the same time, Dreamweaver’s FTP management is unparalleled by other editors and even other FTP programs I’ve used, as is its Search and Replace functionality. I typically enjoyed using this product, and I would argue this is the best version of Dreamweaver I’ve used to date.

34 Comments

1. Dreamweaver 8 has many improved features in CSS, accessibility and validity. But the basic interface for writing CSS has stayed the same since version 3 or 4. I would particularly like to see the method of attaching new stylesheets made more intuitive for new users.

   Comment by Virginia — May 18, 2006 @ 6:22 pm

2. I think writing CSS via an interface can be more trouble than it’s worth once you’ve gotten the basics down — it’s just faster to write CSS manually and/or with the help of code hinting/auto-complete. At the same time, the interface can be excellent when you’re just learning. I agree, though, that DW’s interface isn’t the best for CSS. I think programs like TopStyle, Style Master, or CSSEdit (since their focus is CSS) provide better interfaces. Thanks for the comment!

   Comment by Eric — May 18, 2006 @ 6:49 pm

3. Once you are advanced enough to be comfortable working in DW’s Code View, then it doesn’t matter what your tool is. It could be DW or it could be Notepad. You’ve mastered CSS either way. (Notepad doesn’t have those wonderful code hints you find in DW, though.) But for beginning to intermediate users who are depending on DW to help them along with CSS, the business of attaching stylesheets, exporting styles, and getting styles in the right locations is a little confusing. That’s the process that hasn’t changed since version 3 that I’d like to see improved. To Macromedia’s credit however, getting almost all the CSS properties in one dialog that lets you wander through options for colors, fonts, margins, positioning, list-style, etc., was a brilliant achievement. And DW8 has wonderful advancements such as inheritance and cascade help and Design View style rendering for different media types.

   Comment by Virginia — May 19, 2006 @ 9:00 am

4. I love writing code in Dreamweaver, but the feature that has me completely hooked is the way it manages FTP file transfers. It allows me to specify staging and production servers, and lets me upload without having to manually navigate to the proper source and destination folders. Unless I’m totally missing something, no other app I’ve tried (editor or ftp client) lets me manage sites in this way. I wish someone would show me that I’m wrong :) While I love DW, I’d really enjoy jumping to something a little lighter-weight. DW just has too many features that I will simply never use.

   Comment by Bart — May 22, 2006 @ 8:59 am

5. Bart: I agree, the FTP functionality of DW is awesome (aside from DW 8′s pesky “upload related files” feature). Synchronizing files works really well, and you’re right — I haven’t seen an app that handles file transfers quite the same way.

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