Dreamweaver 3.0 Upgrade

Rating:
Summary: A great program, but make sure you need the new 3.0 features
Review: Dreamweaver is the leading WYSIWYG Web editor, and with good reason. No other product comes close to its broad package of functionalities.

Dreamweaver was the first WYS editor to balance page formatting with page structure. WYS Web editors like FrontPage have a justifiably bad reputation: they tend to produce heavy, badly formed HTML, and often won't let you clean it up. Dreamweaver allows the page designer complete control over code in a fully WYS environment. The HTML you give Dreamweaver will be the HTML it uses. Yes, it comes with commands that will correct your HTML, but any such correction will be based on the criteria you choose, and can be enabled or disabled at your dissertation.

Site management is handled very well. Without having to add any server-side extensions as in FrontPage, one can check-in and check-out files, lock them, and do link checking. Site management is through the near-ubiquitous FTP protocol, using simple drop-and-drag to move files.

One of Dreamweaver's greatest strengths is it's extensibility. There are many plug-ins freely available, written in JavaScript and HTML, which bring additional functionality to the software. External editors can be specified for each file type, and included with Dreamweaver is Allaire HomeSite, the best HTML source editor available for Windows.

If you currently own Dreamweaver 2, take a close look at the feature set in 3 before upgrading. While 3 adds some useful features, you might not need them. Dreamweaver 3.0 does not make fundamental changes in the software.

One new feature I do use is the command that cleans up Word 2000 HTML. This saves substantial time when having to deal with the XML and CSS mess that is a Word 2000 HTML file. The Quick Tag Editor is also a nice middle step between the WYS interface and the full HTML Source Editor. I have also found 3.o to be somewhat more stable than 2.0.

Rating:
Summary: A great program, but make sure you need the new 3.0 features
Review: Dreamweaver is the leading WYSIWYG Web editor, and with good reason. No other product comes close to its broad package of functionalities.

Dreamweaver was the first WYS editor to balance page formatting with page structure. WYS Web editors like FrontPage have a justifiably bad reputation: they tend to produce heavy, badly formed HTML, and often won't let you clean it up. Dreamweaver allows the page designer complete control over code in a fully WYS environment. The HTML you give Dreamweaver will be the HTML it uses. Yes, it comes with commands that will correct your HTML, but any such correction will be based on the criteria you choose, and can be enabled or disabled at your dissertation.

Site management is handled very well. Without having to add any server-side extensions as in FrontPage, one can check-in and check-out files, lock them, and do link checking. Site management is through the near-ubiquitous FTP protocol, using simple drop-and-drag to move files.

One of Dreamweaver's greatest strengths is it's extensibility. There are many plug-ins freely available, written in JavaScript and HTML, which bring additional functionality to the software. External editors can be specified for each file type, and included with Dreamweaver is Allaire HomeSite, the best HTML source editor available for Windows.

If you currently own Dreamweaver 2, take a close look at the feature set in 3 before upgrading. While 3 adds some useful features, you might not need them. Dreamweaver 3.0 does not make fundamental changes in the software.

One new feature I do use is the command that cleans up Word 2000 HTML. This saves substantial time when having to deal with the XML and CSS mess that is a Word 2000 HTML file. The Quick Tag Editor is also a nice middle step between the WYS interface and the full HTML Source Editor. I have also found 3.o to be somewhat more stable than 2.0.