Dreamweaver is Pretty Darn Dreamy
by Dan Sarto
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| © Macromedia. |
I haven't
used every single new web authoring tool on the market, and chances are I
never will. I'm much too busy cheating at Duke Nukem. So, I honestly
can't say that Macromedia's Dreamweaver version 1.2 is better than every other
such program on the market. What I can say is that since I began using this
product, I am hard pressed to find a reason why I would ever need or want
to switch to another web page development program.
The program boasts a comprehensive array of features that let both novices
and experts alike design and create professional looking web pages. The
graphical user interface displays the right amount of information without
being cumbersome, unwieldy or confusing. The window and palette layout
is tight and functional without making me dizzy. No more tennis elbow moving
everything around before I can actually use the program to do something.
How novel.
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| A screen shot of the AWN home page being operated on with Dreamweaver. |
Quickly Getting to Work
Several things about the program immediately
impressed me. First, I was able to edit some pretty sophisticated pages in
minutes, without glancing at the manual, clicking the help button, or calling
our webmaster on the intercom. Creating several new pages, in this case some
commerce catalog prototypes, was equally as easy. New tables can be inserted
on the page quite easily, their placement, width, border size and other attributes
configured from the Property Inspector palette in a snap. I popped on some
graphic images and corresponding URL links just as quickly.
I'm the type of developer that would rather reformat old floppies than
spend hours poring through documentation. When I get stuck, I go straight
to the index, and work my way backwards through the manuals to find the
reference materials I need. Dreamweaver's documentation is clearly written,
and the on-line help is indeed helpful. The Macromedia web site is dedicated
to support the Dreamweaver user and the developer community has proven
extremely useful. For example, poring over several real-life code examples
helped me understand some of the more advanced program features involving
rollovers, where the user can program different "behaviors" to
occur when a mouse passes over a certain section of the page.
Technical Support
It never ceases to amaze me how many software companies leave their
users high and dry after purchase, providing web sites containing pitifully
outdated and incomplete FAQs and expensive "incident" packages
as the sole means of technical support. Is it any wonder that third-party
technical "how-to" manuals now outsell low-fat cookbooks? Product
purchase is only the beginning. If I'm going to invest hundreds of man
hours and thousands of dollars of developer time in such a tool, the software
developer should be as serious about the product as I am, especially web
page design tools.
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| Dreamweaver's interactive help pages. |
The browser battles with their Java tug-of-war,
standards changes within the HTML and DHTML specifications, compounded
by the varied and buggy versions of browsers that populate the bazillions
of PCs around the world, make web site development a complex and often
difficult task. Macromedia's Dreamweaver program is built and promoted
as a professional tool that anyone can use, and their support site is ample
evidence of their commitment to the developer base. I see no reason to
doubt Macromedia's intention and capability to develop and upgrade Dreamweaver
as the realities of development for the web shift in the near future.
Something for Everybody
The second thing that really impressed me about the program was that,
with one mouse click, I could open Dreamweaver's HTML Inspector, a raw
html editing window where I could edit the code side by side with the Dreamweaver
Document Window WYSIWG graphic editing screen. Despite the fact that by
playing with html code, I consistently destroy more perfectly good web
pages than I ever create, I am not deterred from my quest to edit the code
directly. Programming instincts die hard. I like to see what's under the
hood. Okay, I just like to futz with html code and see what all those letters
in brackets really do. While not a full-fledged html editing engine, Dreamweaver's
HTML Inspector allows me to futz all I want, and a single click back on
the main screen interprets my raw code edits in real time within the Document
Window display. For more sophisticated raw html code editing, the program
comes bundled with BBEdit for Macintosh users, and Allaire's HomeSite for
Windows users.
The program's sophisticated web design capabilities should not confuse
or intimidate the more novice user. One doesn't trip over the more advanced
features to get started creating simple pages. The Document Window displays
the page much as it would look in a browser - a simple menu choice goes
one step further and displays the page in any or all of the browsers installed
on the computer. The Property Inspector, a floating tool palette, lets
one very easily change font size, color, image source, alignment, link
a URL, etc.
Conversely, advanced users, or users wishing to make the jump to the latest,
state-of-the-art web design concepts and techniques, should find Dreamweaver
stuffed with capabilities many of us hacks may never use.
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| Dreamweaver's HTML Inspector. |
Web sites Big and Small
Chief among these capabilities are: support
for Dynamic HTML (DHTML), and timeline-based animation and object behavior
management, behavior support for such actions as image swapping, pop-up
boxes, mouse actions, and sounds, the ability to build pages in support
of different versions of both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet
Explorer, conversion of DHTML enabled pages back to 3.0 version browser
non-DHTML enabled page code, and importing and editing of existing pages
without mangling the code structure (referred to as Roundtrip HTML).
For those managing or planning larger sites, Dreamweaver provides a library
for commonly-used page components. From code snippets to entire page templates,
edits made within the Dreamweaver Library will update any page that includes
those library components. For anyone who has ever mis-spent the prime of their
youth replacing navigation bars and banner graphics on every page within a
web site, this library function is worth its weight in Cheetos and Diet Coke.
Dreamweaver stands out among the new generation of web authoring tools
for a number of reasons. It's support for timeline based animation and
the style sheets of DHTML give serious developers tremendous control over
the look and performance of their web pages. Powerful page editing features
gives one the best of both the WYSIWG and HTML code editing worlds. Plus,
it's intuitive and quite easy to use. Put these features all together,
and you get a program that's pretty hard to beat.
Dan Sarto is an accomplished "hack" technologist and co-publisher
of AWN.
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.
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