WYSIWYG. Say it again: what you see is what you get. When we looked at Dreamweaver 1.0 (see May/98, p38), we affirmed its reputation as the first respectable WYSIWYG Web-authoring package because it got the “what you get” part — the HTML source code. Dreamweaver 2.0’s HTML tools are even more powerful, offering precise control over HTML formatting and grep find-and-repiace functions that make the bundled BBEdit nearly redundant. In visual mode, Dreamweaver 2.0 makes it easier than ever to arrange “what you see” while building interactive Web sites with all the latest Dynamic HTML tricks, like the proverbial bells and whistles of JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets.
The problem with DHTML is that those darn browser wars are still raging. Fortunately, Dreamweaver is a master of browser compatibility. You can compromise by pointing and clicking your way to a page that plays well on both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, or go to the extreme with individual, browser-specific pages (also via point-and-ciick). There’s even a precoded browser detector to route your site’s visitors invisibly to the right page for their chosen browser. Dreamweaver can also translate your layer-based design into HTML tables for older browsers. It does a good job, but don’t expect the moon — some earlier browsers (3.x) can’t handle the content, so you’ll get display errors.
DHTML is cool, but dynamic content is where the big bucks are, and here Dreamweaver 2.0 has another trump card: an extensible architecture. Need a spiffy interface on your database-driven or e-commerce Web site? Dreamweaver’s got you covered with Dream Templates and advanced tagging options that let you incorporate Cold Fusion, ASP, XML, and nearly any proprietary code you can teach it. This is the turf where complex, data-driven sites become Web apps and extranets, and Dreamweaver 2.0 is poised to integrate them seamlessly.
Despite the buzzword factor, extensibility is a good thing. On the low end, it means you can easily configure menu buttons to invoke your frequendy used snippets of code — from a simple Mailto link to just about any item you can enclose in a pair of HTML tags. If you’re handy with JavaScript, you can add your own precoded actions, behaviors, and commands to the menu palettes (see “Extensibility 101”). Ironically, the more Web programming you know, the more you get out of this WYSIWYG editor.
Dreamweaver 2.0 addresses all the complaints we had with version 1.0, although it handles some more adequately than others. Version 2.0’s interface is much more efficient: It streamlines the JavaScript Behaviors window and most of the Properties Inspectors, rolling two or three separate steps into one. The price you pay is screen space. With a big monitor (preferably two) and a fast Mac (preferably a G3), the program’s only real weakness is its new Site View window; it makes even a small site, if poorly organized, a nightmare. However, the site map is configurable, and the directory view identifies files when you select their counterparts in the graphical map. Because you can create files and directories in the map, it’s useful when you create new sites from scratch.
The bottom line: Dreamweaver 2.0 purred when we dumped 120MB of our Web site on it, but the site map is pretty useless.
Coucouvanis, Niko. (June 1999). Dreamweaver 2.0. MacAddict. (pg. 56).
Macromedia, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
73 / 
2015-09-03 / 
484b85e92e133f87ea9601b91f6736507bff6982 / 
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Dreamweaver_2.0.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
