Comments on: Review: Dreamweaver 8

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 22 May 2006 15:44:34 +0000

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.

By: Bart

Bart — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:59:12 +0000

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.

By: Virginia

Virginia — Fri, 19 May 2006 15:00:10 +0000

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.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 19 May 2006 00:49:25 +0000

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!

By: Virginia

Virginia — Fri, 19 May 2006 00:22:18 +0000

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.