New Features in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
A lot of software upgrades are not really worth buying, being over-priced and often full of bugs. Dreamweaver upgrades, however, always tend to be worth getting.
Dreamweaver is used in web-development and, because the web is constantly evolving, each new Dreamweaver release usually offers features which reflect the rapidly changing environment in which the program is used. Adobe recently acquired Macromedia, the company who created Dreamweaver. So what have Adobe come up with in this their first upgrade since inheriting everybody’s favourite web development tool?
Dreamweaver is now part of Adobe’s Creative Suites, so part of the upgrade will simply be cosmetic, but what else have Adobe come up with in their first upgrade of this industry-standard web development tool.
Manipulation of CSS code has also been made easier with the addition of features for reorganising styles and transferring them between style sheets. Users can now automatically transfer an inline CSS style to a style sheet or convert an embedded style sheet into an external one.
Dreamweaver CS3’s browser compatibility check allows developers to target specific versions of all the major browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Safari) and generate a report detailing CSS-related issues with elements on the current page.
Dreamweaver has long had great features for integrating content with Fireworks. This new version extends a similar level of integration with the more widely-used Adobe Photoshop. Documents, slices or selections can be copied from Photoshop and pasted straight into Dreamweaver. An Image Preview window then appears in which compression and optimisation settings may be specified before the image is saved.
The fact that Dreamweaver and Photoshop are now both Adobe products is reflected a new level of compatibility between the two programs. It is now possible to make a selection in Photoshop, or to select a slice, copy it, switch to Dreamweaver and paste. The selection will automatically be converted into a web image and a new window will appear offering you a series of options for optimising the image. Dreamweaver CS3 also embraces the new Ajax technology. Ajax is a programming model which allows developers to create extremely interactive pages which are constantly refreshed with content loaded from a server but without reloading the page. Dreamweaver’s version of Ajax is through the Spry framework. This is a collection of JavaScript routines which can be inserted on the page and automatically generate all the necessary code.
Dreamweaver CS2 has several different kinds of widgets. For example, there are menus and submenus which allow developers to design complex navigation systems which would otherwise take days to code. Then there are form validation widgets which check the content entered by a user into form fields. There is also a widget for creating a tabbed interface which displays different content in the same place depending on which tab the user clicks on.
Spry effects can be applied to wide range of HTML components and include the ability to fade, highlight, zoom and shrink page elements in response to user interaction.
Spry data sets will bring in data from an external XML data source and display it on the page. Data sets offer a drill-down facility whereby users can click on information already displayed to bring up more detailed information on that particular item somewhere else on the page.
Dreamweaver CS3 is also the first version of the program to offer compatibility with Intel-based and PowerPC Macintosh systems. It also runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista systems.
