Those in the trenches take it as an article of faith that all HTML-editing tools stink. Is Macromedia’s new Dreamweaver the first one to do all it should?
Unlike Macromedia’s mainstays (Director, Authorware and perhaps Flash), Dreamweaver isn’t geared primarily to designers. Those who conceptualized Macromedia’s HTML editor recognized that many (most?) Web sites are constructed by teams that include designers and programmers, and the two groups tend to like different editors. Often, designers like precise WYSIWYG environments, while programmers prefer code-level editing. Both groups, then, will appreciate that (www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver)DreamWeaver’s “round-trip” HTML, which prevents the construction of verbose and nested code generated by automated tools like NetObjects Fusion. The DreamWeaver visual environment can work with any third-party HTML editor as well as its own visual environment (the Mac version includes a copy of BBEdit; the Windows version comes with Allaire’s HomeSite), but whichever source-code authoring program you prefer, one of the explicit goals of DreamWeaver is to let code travel between the visual environment and a source-code editor with no translation.
Another key DreamWeaver difference is its DHTML tools. It can generate generic DHTML that will work on either of the two leading 4.x-version browsers, without resorting to browser-specific tags like “LAYER”. Other programs like SoftQuad’s HoTMetaL Pro offer rudimentary DHTML support, but DreamWeaver automates DHTML coding much more efficiently.
Perhaps the most intriguing of DreamWeaver’s DHTML elements is its tightly integrated library of JavaScript behaviors which can be read by both major browsers with minimal or no tweaking. JavaScript behaviors are the combination of an event (such as onLoad) and an action (say, Swap Image). Dreamweaver’s Behavior Development Kit helps you create reusable behavior actions. The key here is that you can build many full DHTML-ready behaviors without having to rewrite for each browser.
DreamWeaver can’t do everything. Unlike Fusion, it has no built-in database features. Unlike FrontPage, it doesn’t build server-side objects. Unlike either of the other two leaders, it doesn’t let you visually preview sites. But we’ve worked with two preview versions and the released version of DreamWeaver since the early fall. The good news is that it works reasonably well and we can recommend it to programmers who don’t want to see a visual-programming tool eat up their elegant code.
However, Macromedia has not done an exemplary job of integrating DreamWeaver into its other tools. Even the company’s (apparently discontinued) Web-site management system BackStage fit better with Director than DreamWeaver does. Macromedia’s Flash is a superb potential standard for small Web-based animations; a product that better integrated DreamWeaver’s and Flash’s respective advanced authoring techniques would help the company hit a home run. Next week we’ll suggest how Macromedia can put it all together.
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Do you use Dreamweaver? (specialreport@vineyard.com)We want to know.
