TUAW Review: Dreamweaver CS4 beta

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Dreamweaver Drupal

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A great discussion and fascinating to see how the design people fear the developers and vice versa. Even if you don’t need each other now, you will soon. Designers: like it or not, code and left brain mega-complexity are the web and that’s the way it will always be. Websites are getting more interactive and complicated all the time, and clients’ expectations will continue to follow this trend.

In the late 90’s you could get away with exporting some Photoshop slices into Dreamweaver and hack up a quick website. Unfortunately, this is not going to work in a modern website. Modern websites are database driven and have the content separate from presentation. This is necessary to allow for easier maintenance, consistency of style, repurposing into different formats, etc. It won’t be long before even small businesses come to expect to have to enter in their data in one location and have it sync with their contacts, financial data, print materials, website, etc.
I'm a graphic designer who does everything from brochures, posters and catalogs to full e-commerce websites. I've been designing websites steadily since around 1997. I know HTML/CSS very well and work with PHP, ASP, SQL, etc. Dreamweaver was my tool of choice since it was version 2. Up until not long ago, I absolutely swore by it. That was before I discovered tools like Firebug for Firefox and open source cms's like Joomla. Dreamweaver is trying to keep afloat with the old ways, but if you take a look at these tools you’ll see that Dreamweaver is left in the dust.

At this point, Dreamweaver is good for no one, beginners and pros alike. For example, give a beginner Joomla and a decent template and they’ll have an entire website up in a fraction of the time it takes with DW. And one that Dreamweaver couldn’t even touch without a lot of hard programming.

Graphic designers need not fear (except for free trade agreements, which we all should be VERY scared about). Of course you are still needed, and you’re right... most developers can’t design their way out of a paper bag. But unless you start learning some good coding practices soon, you’ll soon be lucky to be asked to build a website by your 8 year old kid. But don’t get mad, network. Send that PSD off to someone who can put it to work. Or scratch your head to learn and try and juggle 3 different careers like me!

I agree with Van that at the end of the day it's whatever gets the job done the way the client wants it and on time. If you find coding tools etc your thing then stick to that. But don't dismiss the likes of dreamweaver because its ide is very well suited and adaptable.

regarding the review itself - robert was honest about where he came from and didn't outrightly dismiss it. Besides it's a mini review of a early beta and not a fully bloated review.

also there's no need to be so polarised. Good clean code is a good thing, but at times rough code with a great design is better than beautiful code with a rubbish design.

If you're so clearly biased, then YOU SHOULDN'T REVIEW THE PRODUCT. This review is worthless.

Is it just me, or did this review read more like a commercial for Coda than a review of Dreamweaver CS4?

If I worked for you, and you used "LOL" in a sentence, I think I would quit.

Yeah, i'm gonna agree with those users on the lines of - who is it for?

Web Pro's - I pray not.

Consumers. Maybe there is a need for something a little more robust than iWeb, but way simpler than Dreamweaver to fill that void.

Web designers. If you need to make lots of sites as a designer... well then you're doing the job of a developer and calling it something else. Why wouldn't you either a) team up with a developer. b) Learn HTML + CSS and use textmate (or whatever your choice or text editor is) like everyone else.

There are not many good designers that can code a good website (ala Jonathan Snook).

Unfortunately having been in the business for long enough the fact of the matter is there are lots of clients paying plenty of good money (i've seen hundreds (of thousands (UK Pounds)) for websites that are designed by a flashy photoshop user and coded by some clueless dreamweaver 'web developer' who doesn't know how to do anything outside of clicking the buttons in dreamweaver.

And I doubt it's going to change. If you're a client, you don't know HTML (or even good design most of the time) so how are you going to know a mediocre dreamweaver user from a talented web developer?

Okay, that's my bemoaning over. My recommendation is you use the money you could spend on buying or upgrading to dreamweaver on good HTML + CSS books!

For the past few years I've been developing new types of web authoring tools called StackSite to help advance website accessibility, graphics, and navigation. Basically, these tools with little effort, allows beginner Web Authors to advance web Developers the ability to freely create graphically rich accessible websites. Their not available yet, but I hope to have a set of them available for Dreamweaver by the end of the summer, and other programs later. Anyway, Dreamweaver's new beta seems to be on a fast past in the right direction. Something I was hoping they would do when Adobe took hold of it. They also seemed to preserve what really made Dreamweaver successful, which is a amazing group of people developing and supporting each new version. The speed question and concern above is interesting. I can't speak for them, but whenever I'm developing software, I first try to get it to work, then I change and try different things to get it right. Then I work on getting it fast and faster. The new Dreamweaver will require a G5 or intel Mac. I'm guessing more the latter. I personally don't know about either, because over the year I was unsuccessful with obtaining any G5s or Intel Macs being tossed to the Garbage to work with. Anyway, I know many web developers use Vmware or Parallel to test ie browsers when developing a website with a Mac. But would U guys run the Dreamweaver windows version using Vmware or Parallel to use my tools or at least until I can get some Intel macs to work with?
Robert Stack
Zoshe Foundation
http://www.zoshe.com

Have they gotten Dreamweaver to actually make valid webpages yet?