Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 – The review

Viewed by many as the world’s best Web editor, Macromedia’s Dreamweaver just got an upgrade. Part of Macromedia Studio 8.0, Dreamweaver 8.0 brings in some improvements over the last version, but is it worth paying for the upgrade?

I use Dreamweaver as my editor of choice for the web and have been doing so for quite a few years now, going from version to version. Although using it for all this time allowed me to become more than familiar with its features I am not what you might call a “regular” user. I use it as a simple code editor as I am really comfortable with its tag completion and quick indenting tools. All this combined with the power to easily make changes site-wide have convinced me to use it in the first place.

Even before getting my hands on the upgrade, what I noticed was the name. Macromedia reverted to the original version numbering system, after experimenting a bit with its last version called MX. Just like Adobe did by adding CS instead of the usual version numbering system, Macromedia added MX to its previous version. For some reason that didn’t stick so we’re back to numbers. A bit confusing? I’d say so. Just choose a version numbering system and stick with it. Don’t make me think about what version MX meant so I’d know if I’m downloading a newer version or not.

Dreamweaver 8.0 splash screen

First contact with the application was its splash screen. To no surprise, the branding was changed. It follows a common theme with all the Studio 8.0 applications and I’m not much of a fan of what they did here.

Dreamweaver MX splash screen

The branding was much better with the MX version, much cleaner and sophisticated. The new design makes it look like a blend, run-of-the-mill software from 3 years ago. But hey, it’s just a matter of taste after all.

Moving on to the actual software, not much has changed at a first glance. I was eager to see if it finally made the step into the 21st century and support CSS layouts. MX tried to accomplish that but failed miserably and choked on anything that strayed from basic formatting. I quickly loaded up some complicated layouts and viewed them in Designer mode. Surprise, surprise. With the exception of one particular layout that really pushed the envelope, Dreamweaver displayed them correctly. Not only this, but I could also make some small edits without it messing up my carefully hand-written code.

I am a hard believer in writing quality code so I always hand-write it. No matter the improvements, I wouldn’t dream of letting the application actually do the code writing for me, but it has come a long way in this direction, so I guess others might be more easily persuaded in letting Dreamweaver do the dirty work for them. The new CSS panel is a major improvement for those like as well as for those that do it “the software way”. It displays the current’s object properties as well as the properties it inherits from its parents. This could really come in handy when you’re trying to find out what you’re doing wrong.

I prefer Dreamweaver to any other code editor out there for its fast and accurate tag auto-completion so this is really a big feature for users like me. Some small improvements are visible here too: it has learned a few new CSS properties and shortcuts that it missed before. Code-editing was also somewhat improved. You can now hide portions of your code to get a better view on the big picture. Apart from that and a little more advanced indenting and balancing techniques, I haven’t spotted any other major improvement in this area.

The little Javascript snippets they call Behaviors were left unchanged. That’s really an area were I expected much improvement as these bits of code have been obsolete for a while now. If it were my decision, I would have removed them completely than to offer inexperienced users the opportunity to mess up their code with just one click.

A nice touch is the added support for XML and XSLT. These technologies are taking over and Dreamweaver couldn’t afford to stay behind on this one. But they did remain behind on another area: Ajax. Yes, this new thing everyone is talking about. Dreamweaver doesn’t seem to have heard about it. A disappointment without a doubt.

One last thing where I expected improvement is the little gizmo that tells you the size of your webpage and how long it will take to load on a modem connection. It failed to take into account the images called from within the CSS and it still does. A page that actually weighed at around 100kb was reported as 11kb. Not exactly the most helpful pointer.

Dreamweaver offered some neat improvements over MX, but I’m not totally sold out. It could have been, and perhaps should have been much more than it is. With an upgrade price tag of $199, it will certainly make you think twice about this purchase.