Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

Even though I'm only a casual Dreamweaver user these days, I get excited every time a new version of the legendary visual editor is released, hoping against hope that this is the one that gets me to abandon my now stubbornly-ingrained habit of hand-coding HTML and CSS and back into really (ab)using the product that I loved so dearly in the late 90s. It's now Dreamweaver CS3's turn at bat, so let's find out how it does in its first plate appearance as an Adobe product.

Unasked-for historical context

I started learning HTML in 1994, back in the days when the <blink> tag was the pinnacle of Web development prowess and Microsoft had yet to start caring about co-opting the Web. A couple years later, table-based layout was taking off, and the tools of the day were really not up to that particular task. At the time, most visual editors produced a spaghetti-like tangle of code that ran the gamut from annoyingly malformed to deliberately promoting browser lock-in. The initial appearance of Dreamweaver in late 1997 signaled something of a sea change in the way visual editors worked (at least the way I remember things), in that the underlying code played at least as large a role as the WYSIWYG engine itself. It was literally the best of both worlds, providing rapid page production that yielded clean(ish) code which was easy to get at and tweak for those comfortable doing so. For my money, Dreamweaver 2 was the gold standard: lightning-quick (at least on the Windows NT 4 workstation I was using back then), stable, and packed with tons of time-saving features. Dreamweaver kept progressing up to about version 4, and then it seemingly stopped. Was it done? Was there nothing more to add? Apparently not, as Macromedia kept releasing new versions, but the MX, MX 2004, and 8 incarnations of Dreamweaver all seemed to be running in place at best, and struggling with bloat and a dearth of new features at worst.

The ultimate problem was that Dreamweaver was its own worst enemy, because as I got more and more comfortable working directly with code, I found myself starting to look for simple text editors, since I didn't really need all the visual stuff anymore. I was after something that was light and fast, because Dreamweaver was really starting to feel heavy and bloated, especially on the Mac (which I had switched back to by then). My text editor of choice eventually became BBEdit, which I still use to this day. However, Dreamweaver stayed in my bag of tricks, because it was always useful for quickly banging out tables and forms and special characters and the like, and since Dreamweaver was respectful of the underlying code, it was easy to bring it back to BBEdit to fiddle with.

Which brings me to the reason why I get pumped up whenever a new version of Dreamweaver comes out. I would love to see Dreamweaver become again what version 2 was: light, fast, and loaded with the latest features that today's designers demand in a single, integrated package. Sadly, Dreamweaver CS3 is not that product, though the latest incarnation does provide some very useful new features that should have me using it a bit more than other recent versions, at least on the Windows platform.

What's new

Before we get to the latest and greatest, let's discuss what's not new but should have been. Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash—the new CS3 design interface that is used in several of Adobe's products is a common element, unifying the user experience and providing the very foundation for a new era of creative productivity. OK, so that's maybe a little dramatic, but I've come to like the CS3 design interface a lot. And I love that Dreamweaver has incorporated the CS3 interface into this new revision. Oh, wait—no, it didn't. In fact, Dreamweaver still has the same interface it has sported for many years over multiple revisions, and that kinda bites (fig. 1).

Figure 1

Now, I understand that this omission cuts both ways, as some long-time Dreamweavers didn't ask for (or even want) an interface refresh. They use and like the product, and are simply interested in new features on top of the product they are used to. I understand that. But I counter with the fact that Flash benefits greatly from the addition of the CS3 interface, adding much-needed flexibility to the workspace while, at the same time, not significantly altering how Flash looks and works when compared with earlier versions (though presenting a challenge for new users to wrap their brains around, which is another conversation entirely). In a nutshell, the CS3 interface works quite well for Flash, and I'm sure it would have been just fine had it been grafted onto Dreamweaver as well. There's also the not-insignificant fact that Dreamweaver has supplanted GoLive as Adobe's featured site building tool, and as such, there are bound to be GoLive faithful who may be presented with Dreamweaver for the first time. Therefore, the fact that Dreamweaver looks and behaves differently than the other CS3 offerings (save Fireworks) may not make the best first impression for some users. Windows users may not be as put off as Mac users by the different interface, as Windows' single-window paradigm in tandem with Dreamweaver's fully dockable workspace smooths things over a bit. But the Dreamweaver interface pre-dates even Mac OS X, and it just doesn't work well on the Mac side of things. Mac users will not only notice how differently Dreamweaver behaves when compared to other CS3 tools, but long-time Mac Dreamweaver users should still be upset at the myriad little things that haven't been fixed, like the fact that Dreamweaver still doesn't reflect when you've set the Mac system theme to Graphite (fig. 2). This is a microcosm of what's wrong with Dreamweaver in general, regardless of platform: the little things didn't get done, and taken all together the entire thing is less than satisfying.

Figure 2

Interface woes aside, let's get to the new stuff Dreamweaver CS3 offers. And as I usually do, I'll once again take a lazy route to get from A to B by directing you the First Look piece that ran in this space several weeks back. In that particular missive, you'll get the lowdown on the major new features of Dreamweaver CS3, so run along and I'll see you when you get back.

• First Look: Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

Now, as you probably figured out by now, there isn't much that's new and/or notable in Dreamweaver CS3. In fact, it can be pretty much boiled down to a bullet list:

• Several CSS-related improvements
• Integration of the Spry Framework for Ajax
• Photoshop "integration" (quotes will be explained later)
• Universal Binary build for Intel Mac users
• Windows Vista compatibility

That's a pretty short list, and at first glance the dearth of new features, coupled with the stale interface, would seem to add further credence to the "less than satisfying" statement I made earlier and ultimately put Dreamweaver CS3 onto anyone's "must miss" list. However, when you're dealing with a program that's been around for as long as Dreamweaver has, adding up the final tally isn't quite so clear-cut. In actuality, both the CSS additions and the inclusion of Spry Framework for Ajax are pretty strong reasons to upgrade, and if you're on an Intel Mac or Windows Vista you may not need any reason other than compatibility. Add in the fact that Dreamweaver is still Dreamweaver, and as such is a complete and mature package by now (what with traditional strengths such as site management, generating relatively clean code, remote server integration, and—oh, by the way—easy visual page building, among others), and Dreamweaver is still a solid and quite useful product. To that end, allow me to quickly break out two specific new features that, taken individually, each represent a pretty compelling reason to upgrade to Dreamweaver CS3.

Spry Framework for Ajax. This is the big one, as Fred Sanford used to say. The Spry framework was built with the designer in mind, so "old" Ajax hands probably have ample reason to hate on Adobe's implementation, but if you have no idea how to get started with Ajax, Dreamweaver CS3 is an ideal application. The overall framework is split into three categories (data, widgets, and effects), the latter two of which are incredibly easy to work with. The fact that you can implement things like a hierarchical menubar, a validating text field (fig. 3) or a sliding effect without knowing any JavaScript at all is pretty compelling. Getting Dreamweaver to parse and display XML data through the Spry Framework is a little more involved, requiring data bindings and such, but once you walk through the process initially it's not quite so daunting the second time around.

Figure 3

CSS Templates. Dreamweaver was a very early adopter and an excellent supporter of Cascading Style Sheets, so one would naturally expect further CSS improvements in Dreamweaver CS3. The most compelling such addition is that of meticulously commented CSS-based templates, which you can pick from in Dreamweaver's File:New menu. By my count, there are 32 included templates (not counting the blank layout) that cover various flavors (fixed-width, elastic, liquid and hybrid) of 1-, 2-, and 3-column layouts (fig. 4), many including headers and footers. This is an enormously useful resource for both novice and expert Web designers alike, as sometimes the hardest part of getting a site marked up is wrestling with the CSS just to get simple layouts behaving properly across browsers. Not only will the sheer number of templates get you started on just about every type of site imaginable, but the almost anal-retentive attention to commenting is an extremely helpful learning tool. Once you're up to speed, it's simple enough to dive into the source files and strip out the comments (or embellish them with your own notes if you prefer).

Figure 4

For my money, those two features go a long way towards providing ample reason to upgrade, but there are other things to like as well. So as not to completely re-hash the first look piece, which outlines some of these other new features in more detail, suffice it to say that things like the browser compatibility check (which ties into Adobe's CSS Advisor site) and the CSS moving and management tools are also nice and work very well, but I wouldn't base a decision to upgrade solely on either of those.

Problems

Lest you think I was done griping at the lack of an interface refresh, rest assured that I have yet more grievances to air. The first is the Photoshop integration (put in quotes earlier), which is highly touted in just about every piece of marketing material you'll see. However, as the kids say, it ain't all that. You're supposed to be able to copy a part of a Photoshop image into Dreamweaver, and it will compress the image for you and save it with the other files on your site. That part all works fine. It's when you go the other way that things start breaking down—getting Dreamweaver to open the source image to edit just doesn't work properly. Dreamweaver can never seem to find where the original resides, and when you do manage to get it to edit the right one, it always wants to bring the entire thing back in, even if you've only selected part of the image. It's half-baked, and definitely is not the "advanced" integration it's billed as.

The second issue is highly disappointing and very hard to ignore: bugs. They're everywhere. Dreamweaver launches and re-launches reasonably quickly, and the difference on Intel Macs is astounding versus version 8. Dreamweaver also runs very well on Windows Vista, so that's all good also. But basic things like window resizing and even adding elements in Design mode is still unacceptably slow and laggy, regardless of platform. Several longstanding bugs have also not been addressed. A colleague of mine who can only be described as a heavy Dreamweaver user sent me a laundry list of bugs that have been around for a while and are still not fixed. Even I, as a self-described "casual" Dreamweaver user, still noticed a few that were left over. Try these:

1) Create a new document and go to Code view. Write a sentence (a short one, like "first sentence." Hit return a couple of times to create two new lines, and then write another sentence (again, a short one, like "second sentence"). Select the second sentence, go to the Properties panel, pull down the Format menu, and select anything. The first sentence ends up with the tag. Dreamweaver should be smart enough to only wrap code around what's selected in Code view, and it's not.

2) In Design view, if you place the insertion point at the end of one paragraph and shift-click to select into the middle of the next paragraph and start typing, Dreamweaver deletes the in-between text but starts the typed text after the second paragraph. Ugh.

One would think that little things like that would get squashed when having to move the entire codebase over to XCode on the Mac, but it seems that all the bugs came along for the ride. Suffice it to say that if you're planning to set up shop in Dreamweaver for any length of time, be prepared to wrestle with lots of little frustrating workflow issues, especially when working in Design View. It's very strange, because what's really striking is that if you go the opposite way and work a lot in Code View, Dreamweaver is pretty darn solid as a source code editor. Code hinting, customizable tag completion, and markup shortcuts are all very nice and make for reasonably fast and easy HTML and CSS editing. Couple that with code folding and a toolbar with buttons for commenting and indenting and the like, and Dreamweaver is an excellent source code editor. Anyway, it all feeds into the split personality and mixed bag thing, which is a running theme if you haven't noticed by now.

Final Thoughts

Dreamweaver needs to be heading in the direction of less WYSIWYG and more where nascent products like Panic's Coda are going. Adobe would do well to have their GoLive product (which, despite rumors to the contrary, has not been killed off) handle the visual Web editing, and Dreamweaver be the go-to app for more seasoned designers and developers. Just as Web standards (which Dreamweaver has historically embraced) hold the promise of lightweight, fast, and readable XHTML and CSS, so too should Dreamweaver become (once again) a light, fast, and nimble Web editing program. However, the bottom line is that Dreamweaver is still Dreamweaver. Despite all its problems, it's still quite useful and packs a lot of power under the hood. The danger is that it may eventually collapse under its own weight, missing out on where the Web is headed while neglecting to "cut the fat" when it comes to features that may no longer be relevant to modern Web design.

In a nutshell, Dreamweaver seems to be at a crossroads. What would be nice is if Adobe took a good, hard look at where Dreamweaver needs to go to continue to meet the needs of the constantly changing Web landscape. For my money, that direction is lean and mean: cut down on the bloat, speed the whole thing up, rely less on the Design mode (in other words, go with the good things that Dreamweaver's code editor does and offer control panels and real-time previews to make up for the few areas where Design mode is actually useful, allowing GoLive and/or Contribute to carry the WYSIWYG mantle), and generally make hard decisions based on what Web designers need to do these days. The alternative isn't pretty, as I'd hate for Dreamweaver to be mentioned in the same breath as FrontPage. I'll leave it at that.

As for whether I'll use Dreamweaver CS3 more than the last couple releases, which is always the question when a new version ships, the answer is yes and no. I find myself working cross-platform a decent amount these days, and on the Windows side, I'll definitely use Dreamweaver over other tools (heck, I wrote most of this piece in Dreamweaver on Windows). There are a couple of reasons for that: one, I haven't yet found any "wow"-worthy Web tools on the Windows side, and two, as I mentioned earlier, there is a lot to like if you use Dreamweaver in Code View. On the Mac, though, other than spitting out a template or adding form elements or something, I'm not going to turn to Dreamweaver when there are some really elegant tools for Web editing available on the Mac platform. BBEdit, TextMate, CSSEdit, Coda, heck, even iWeb go places Dreamweaver doesn't. They're nimble and elegant (for the most part), and make code wrangling an unmitigated joy, to the extent you can actually attach the phrase "unmitigated joy" to working with code. So no, I don't see myself using Dreamweaver very much on the Mac side. Now, the equation changes a bit when it comes to Ajax, because that's one area where Dreamweaver has a unique toolset (at the moment, anyway). But other than using Dreamweaver as a jumping off point for certain tasks when I'm on the Mac, I'll head right back to my BBEdit/CSSEdit combo without much thought (though Coda shows amazing promise and may end up supplanting that dynamic duo; time will tell).

The Verdict

There are several ways you have to look at Dreamweaver CS3, because not only are there hefty doses of both good and not-so-much, there are also many ways in which it may end up in your toolset. Let's go through that latter part first. You can get your hands on Dreamweaver CS3 via any of the the following methods:

Standalone version:
$399 new, $199 upgrade from Dreamweaver MX or later

Design Premium bundle:
$1799 new, $599 upgrade from Macromedia Studio MX or later, $1599 upgrade from Dreamweaver MX or later

Web Premium bundle:
$1599 new, $499 upgrade from Macromedia Studio MX or later, $1399 upgrade from Dreamweaver MX or later

Web Standard bundle:
$999 new, $399 upgrade from Macromedia Studio MX or later, $799 upgrade from Dreamweaver MX or later

Master Collection bundle (available later this year):
$2499 new, $1999 upgrade from Macromedia Studio MX or later

Got all that? Of course, it's available directly from Adobe or from any number of third-party resellers. As for a recommendation, like Dreamweaver itself, it's hard to pin down. Dreamweaver CS3 is a mixed bag in every sense of the phrase, blending a few genuinely nice new features with a sometimes frustrating dose of instability and bloat. Throw in the disappointment over how little has changed, balance that with the fact that Dreamweaver is, on the whole, still a powerful and useful tool, and you begin to see my ambivalence. So I'll rate it thusly: as a new product, Dreamweaver CS3 squeaks out a Buy rating, owing mostly to it coasting a bit on reputation and the limited-but-useful new features pushing it out of Neutral territory. I'll also give a Buy rating to Dreamweaver CS3 as an upgrade for the same reasons, though I'll also cite Intel Mac compatibility as another plus column addition. But make no mistake, these are grudging Buy ratings—Dreamweaver CS3 largely continues the not-so-proud tradition introduced in Dreamweaver MX and extending to versions MX 2004 and 8 of offering very little, and if it weren't for the entire product still being useful and the new Ajax features (with a side of Universal Binary thrown in), the situation would be much more bleak. As part of a bundle, the message is mixed as well, though there's no rating associated with that. If you've never used Dreamweaver before (perhaps coming into your life as part of the Design Premium suite), you may be disappointed that Dreamweaver CS3 doesn't look or act like the other Adobe products in the bundle. You may be an old-school Macromedia Studio user, and if you upgrade to Web Standard, Flash CS3 is an excellent upgrade while Dreamweaver and Fireworks remain largely unchanged. What value Dreamweaver CS3 brings to a bundle depends largely on who you are and what you do, but if I had to assign a blanket statement to the situation, I'd say that in a bundle setting, the bang for your buck is likely going to come from the other products in the suite and not from Dreamweaver CS3.

As the really really final last word, Dreamweaver CS3 is a missed opportunity more than anything else. Adobe had a real chance to "reboot" Dreamweaver, to fully bring it into the fold as a true Adobe product and to serve notice that this time, things would be different. Unfortunately, that's not how things worked out. Dreamweaver remains a good product, but this was the natural time to make it into a great one, and the fact that it didn't happen is disappointing. We'll see what transpires with Dreamweaver CS4, but the world of the Web waits for no one, and only time will tell if Dreamweaver's window has closed or not.

Filed under: Review on May 14th, 2007
Tags: Adobe, CS3, Dreamweaver

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