Dreamweaver CS5 reviews

What new territory is there to explore with Web-design software? With so many of the essential foundations in place, there's not much justification for changing anything except the adding or improving of support for emerging technologies. The upside of this is that when you have a solid, thorough product, like Adobe's Dreamweaver, it's hard to go too far wrong with any developments—as the CS5 version ($399 list new, $199 list upgrade) proves. Most of its changes won't be visible to—or even detectable by—novices, but that's okay. What might be more of a problem with this version, the most complete and complex yet, is its suitability for novices at all.

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This newbie unfriendliness is all the more disappointing given the raft of sincere attempts from Adobe to court just that group. For instance, it seems unlikely that anyone with any significant Web design experience will get too excited about the new CSS starter layouts included in Dreamweaver CS5. The choices Adobe gives you have been rewritten to be less structurally complicated and more instantly clear—bye bye, "lorem ipsum"—and feature an abundance of comments in the code itself to help guide those who need the assistance. This may be a smart way to go, but the rest of Dreamweaver is enormous and intimidating enough that anyone daring to brave it hopefully doesn't need quite that much hand-holding.
Dreamweaver: Faster Development
More inherently sensible are changes that speed development, even if novice users might not benefit from them directly (at least at first). Most will probably like the revamped site setup process. It prompts you only for the site's name and its location on your local hard drive, and will ask you for the other details as needed. You can, of course, fill out information about other resources, such as FTP and staging servers, right from the start, but you don't have to—this is a good way to get into the nitty-gritty design portions even more quickly.
The new CSS tools deliver along the same general lines. The ability to enable or disable CSS properties (Dreamweaver will comment them out, but not actually delete them) can expedite the troubleshooting and experimenting processes. In addition, Dreamweaver CS5's Inspect Mode makes it easier to discern the various components of the box model (the border, margin, and padding that surround text and other HTML elements), which was a challenge in previous versions of the program. Turn it on and each of the various components is rendered in a different color, letting you see just where any problems may lie.
Used in conjunction with Live View, Inspect Mode becomes a fantastic way to make quick fixes to the layout and look of your pages, and presents fewer restrictions on what you can see along the way. For example, you now have the option to navigate pages within it, so you'll see the page as your users will (and see the changes in code that occur as you interact with dynamic data and server-side applications).
Dreamweaver: BrowserLab Integration
One of the best parts of Dreamweaver CS5—and something that hardened veterans and rank newbies alike have every reason to fawn over—isn't technically a part of Dreamweaver at all. BrowserLab is a new CS Live service that lets you preview what you're working on in multiple browsers and operating systems—all without having to exit Dreamweaver. Enough browsers are supported—the list currently includes Firefox 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 (Free, ), Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 (Free, ), Safari 3 and 4 (Free, ), and Chrome 3 (Free, )—that it'll be easier than ever to make sure that any person, using just about any browser, can properly view pages on your site.
Among the features that will be most appreciated by those in the know are enhanced support for the open-source version-control system Subversion (giving you more control over working with files locally, syncing with your remote SVN repository, reverting changes, and hiding files you don't need); integration (via a separate extension) with Adobe Business Catalyst, for designing sites with a minimum of backend coding; and expanded support for content-management systems based on PHP and other content-management systems. If you use frameworks like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla!, there are now code hints for those integrated within Dreamweaver CS5, which can greatly demystify the process of getting everything to work.
Beyond this is the Dynamically Related Files feature, which displays all the external files and scripts your pages use, lets you find exactly what you need based on file type or wildcard expression—even if it's stored remotely. It's very helpful tool if you have a lot of files to sift through. Dreamweaver also now parses your PHP code on the fly and offers hints even before you've saved your work.
It's with these kinds of higher-level tools that Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 really excels, and that make the best argument for upgrading or buying the software new. But though these, and many of the other changes, make using the app simpler for everyone, they can't necessarily mask a potentially more serious problem: Despite attempts at friendliness, Dreamweaver has become almost so deep-thinking that it's at risk of losing ground on the low end to Microsoft's own up-and-comer, Expression Web ($299 direct, ), which is more welcoming (and less overwhelming) to those who are just starting out. Unless Adobe divides the app into Standard and Extended editions, a la Photoshop, this rift may only widen with time. But nothing compares to the breadth of this program's offerings. If you need a Web design program that really does everything, Dreamweaver is still where it's at—if you're up for it.http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362429,00.asp
05/08/10