Dreamweaver MX Upgrade

This is a visual editor, which means you can create and edit a Web page by selecting items such as tables, forms and images from a tabbed palette. The Properties panel lets you specify details such as borders, styles and hyperlinks, and you can also use the visual editor for frames and layers. Many designers also like to edit the underlying HTML, and this is where Dreamweaver MX comes into its own. It supports either a pure code view, or a split view that lets you click seamlessly between the code and visual editors. A lot of the features previously found in HomeSite, Macromedia's text-based Web editor, are now integrated into Dreamweaver, including pop-up code hints, a snippets panel that lets you keep handy pieces of code for reuse and a tag chooser that lets you grab the right tag from a list. An O'Reilly tag reference is built-in.

Dreamweaver's template support deserves special mention. Templates give you a quick start with a number of pre-designed pages. In Dreamweaver MX, they can also be used to lock-down areas of the page, so that contributors can create and edit a story without disturbing the design. Templates can be nested, and changes to an underlying template ripple through the pages that use it for powerful site-wide updates.

Macromedia used to market a product called Dreamweaver Ultradev, which allowed for rapid development of Web applications featuring online databases, member log-in and other server-side elements. In Dreamweaver MX, this capability is built-in. It has also been extended, adding support for ASP.net and PHP as well as ColdFusion, Javaserver pages and traditional ASP. Non-specialists will find themselves able to build rich dynamic pages, while the integrated code editor makes this a capable development product as well. In fact, Dreamweaver MX has also replaced ColdFusion Studio as the primary development tool for ColdFusion MX. It is a uniquely flexible package.

Overall it is hard to fault Dreamweaver MX. It's true that its complexity and professional features make it harder to pick up than some rival products. The abundance of panels and options can be confusing, and a high resolution screen is required. In addition, the Studio MX products, which include Dreamweaver, are a better value for those who need more than one of the MX series. That takes nothing away from the excellence of Dreamweaver as the first-choice tool for professionals. --Tim Anderson

Macromedia have added all of Ultradev's dynamic features, come up with an awesome new user interface and reduced the price that ultradev carried to create Dreamweaver MX

The company say that this is for professionals only. Whilst true it is also a good buy for perfectionist hobbiests.

With this one program you can design, from start to finish, a fully functioning website that can search through a database, perform formats on that data (from the DBase) and publish your site to your webhost, all through one interface.

The only other tool you will need (if you don't have one) is a graphics program. Fireworks is the perfect companion to Dreamweaver; it integrates seamlessly and is fast and efficient, sharing the same interface too.

The community of Dreamweaver is fantastic, Macromedia even went as far as creating forums, allowing users to exchange ideas and help each other on problems they might be having.

Simply put, this tool will allow you to create fantastic website's


The best of all worlds.   November 16, 2002
J. R. Wilde (Herfordshire, UK)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

I fell in love with Dreamweaver MX from the first moment I loaded it up. The manual (hard copy) was a pleasant first introduction, no snipes at competing editors (a la Front Page 2002 'pamphlet' notes) and no boasting about being the best. It doesn't need to boast - it is light years ahead of the competition and this becomes evident from the first use. From the included tutorials to building your first templates to the site you always wanted, this is pleasure. The ability to switch between hard coding and the graphical interface (coders never really 'let go'!) is ridiculously easy. The split screen view of what's happening with one click on update. The inclusion of Flash tools, intuitive tools menu and infinitely adjustable workspace and tools menus are excellent. The inclusion of Cold Fusion MX developer's edition and HomeSite+ are icing on the cake. I'm sold on it and cannot imagine using anything else to build and edit sites (just NoteTab Pro and TopStyle Pro as my additional hard code tools and Fireworks for graphical creation, edit and manipulation) as there is nothing missing.


the complete solution   September 23, 2002
simon gurney
18 out of 22 found this review helpful

In terms of pure dreamweaver functionality, this version doesnt have any ground breaking advances, but by the inclusion of ultra-devs data driven dynamic site development tools, dreamweaver and ultra-dev have finally merged into one product dreamweaver mx.

Having been a user of both Dreamweaver and Ultra-dev since their arrival on the pro web design scene, this represents a big change in one respect in that data driven web sites are now being delivered into the hands of every web site producer with the same product they use to design simple pages.

The most exiting thing for me is the new PHP feature, and in this i find Macromedia continuing in their trend of offering what their users are most hungry for, now i have no excuse for not learning PHP.

In terms of changes to the actual core design product, i have been happily switching between dreamweaver 4 and mx, and theres nothing in mx that i cant live without, obviously im not here refering to the dynamic data side of things here.

thankfully you can work with mx and make it look like the old dreamweaver interface, im currently working with the new integrated interface, and it all looks a bit frontpage to me, ill give it a chance though, admittedly it is slighly more efficient, but its just starting to look a lot less like a design tool, and a lot more like a developers tool.

Of the new features the ability to creare code snippets is pretty handy, but nothing too revolutionary, and the tag-inspector does speed up speed of changes to the code minded, but again nothing very new.

if your using dreamweaver for mainly design orientated web production, its possible the new features may not be enough to sway the upgrade, one big plus is the support for all the new and emergent technologies and standards, xml, xhtml, and as i mentioned earlier PHP on the dynamic side.

Dreamweaver is still the leading professional web design tool, it will reward all the learning by giving an easy to use cutting edge web development tool. The huge community of developers and users who provide countless extensions to dreamweaver allow easy adaption to whatever tasks it may be put.


analyse your need before you upgrade   September 23, 2002
simon gurney
16 out of 16 found this review helpful

In terms of pure dreamweaver functionality, this version doesnt have any ground breaking advances, but by the inclusion of ultra-devs data driven dynamic site development tools, dreamweaver and ultra-dev have finally merged into one product dreamweaver mx.

Having been a user of both Dreamweaver and Ultra-dev since their arrival on the pro web design scene, this represents a big change in one respect in that data driven web sites are now being delivered into the hands of every web site producer with the same product they use to design simple pages.

The most exiting thing for me is the new PHP feature, and in this i find Macromedia continuing in their trend of offering what their users are most hungry for, now i have no excuse for not learning PHP.

In terms of changes to the actual core design product, i have been happily switching between dreamweaver 4 and mx, and theres nothing in mx that i cant live without, obviously im not here refering to the dynamic data side of things here.

thankfully you can work with mx and make it look like the old dreamweaver interface, im currently working with the new integrated interface, and it all looks a bit frontpage to me, ill give it a chance though, admittedly it is slighly more efficient, but its just starting to look a lot less like a design tool, and a lot more like a developers tool.

Of the new features the ability to creare code snippets is pretty handy, but nothing too revolutionary, and the tag-inspector does speed up speed of changes to the code minded, but again nothing very new.

if your using dreamweaver for mainly design orientated web production, its possible the new features may not be enough to sway the upgrade, one big plus is the support for all the new and emergent technologies and standards, xml, xhtml, and as i mentioned earlier PHP on the dynamic side.

Dreamweaver is still the leading professional web design tool, it will reward all the learning by giving an easy to use cutting edge web development tool. The huge community of developers and users who provide countless extensions to dreamweaver allow easy adaption to whatever tasks it may be put.