Macromedia’s Dreamweaver is the first WYSIWYG Web-authoring application that can satisfy professional Web developers’ seemingly incompatible needs for both page-layout capabilities and straight HTML text coding. The application also offers Webmasters cutting-edge page technologies including Cascading Sryle Sheets, Dynamic HTML, and absolute positioning. Dreamweaver’s features are impressive. If the developers had spent a little more energy on creating a smoother interface and adding a few other refinements, this would be a Freakin’ Awesome product.
At first glance, Dreamweaver looks much like the other modem Web-layout applications. It displays a WYSIWYG preview of a Web page surrounded by any of 12 palettes, holding components such as commonly used HTML elements, site-control tools, and a library of reusable items.
The page displays tables, frames, forms, and images in a fair approximation of how they’ll look in a browser. But because there’s no separate preview mode — in order to preview, you have to switch to a real browser — there’s no way to test links within Dreamweaver. A library palette stores commonly used items; altering a library item updates all pages in the site. Dreamweaver has a full complement of tools for creating and manipulating text, tables, forms, frames, and other page elements, but the application breaks no new ground here.
Dreamweaver, however, is one of the first applications to make extensive use of Dynamic HTML — the Web technology du jour — helping Web authors produce all the latest cutting-edge page features with ease. DHTML generates moving, reacting Web pages with the assistance of JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets, and other client-side aids — no plug-ins required. Using palettes and dialog boxes, the Web author can create elaborate animation, absolute text positioning, rollover buttons, image swapping, and Shockwave-like interactivity — all without typing or even understanding a line of JavaScript, The Cascading Style Sheets standard, which permits exact, page-layout formatting and positioning, is hell to work with in straight HTML code, but Dreamweaver makes the process almost as simple as creating styles in a word processor. You do all the setup through dialog boxes, and the application lets you apply styles from a list on the Styles palette.
Where Dreamweaver really shines, though, is in its HTML tools, apparently drawn right from a wish list of professional Web authors. First, the application respects rule breaking — it preserves the author’s HTML even when the code is a bit quirky. And the HTML that Dreamweaver creates is clean and formatted to be easily readable.
Second, it doesn’t force a Web author to switch back and forth between HTML mode and visual page-layout mode. Instead, in a remarkable, if obvious, innovation, WYSIWYG and HTML views update simultaneously. The same is true even if you prefer working in BBEdit (a copy of which is bundled with Dreamweaver): The work — including the selection — is updated live between the two applications. And since Dreamweaver works natively in HTML, there’s no need to save a page before previewing it in the browser.
Finally, a site window lets you work with files on a remote Web server and make changes across all pages. Dreamweaver’s site-management tools are designed for collaborative work. Pages and documents are checked in and out — controlling who may modify a document — and the application tracks the names of the people who modified each document.
There are many other little touches as well. Dreamweaver tests your page against the features of the latest three versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer and reports incompatibilities. Some of the dialog boxes offer an Apply button so you can preview changes immediately in the document window. Dreamweaver’s color pickers display browser-safe 216-color palettes. And the application allows multiple undos and lists recently opened files for easy access.
Dreamweaver doesn’t skimp on the power features, but it does fall short on a few basics. For one thing, it’s slow; we found the text display couldn’t keep up with fast typing on a Power Mac 8500/150. And the application tosses up far too many dialog boxes. To insert an image, for example, Dreamweaver requires navigating two dialogs; only the Windows version lets you drag a file from the desktop. Similarly, setting up frames involves navigating a series of dialogs, where drag and drop would greatly ease the task. Pasting tab-delimited text into Claris Home Page automatically creates a table, but Dreamweaver offers no such shortcut.
And Dreamweaver doesn’t offer any image-manipulation tools at all. If you want to convert your image to a GIF or JPEG, or set transparency and interlacing, you’ll have to use a different application. In addition, while the application helps manage a full site of pages, it won’t check the integrity of links inside the site, a surprising omission.
Still, despite its shortcomings, Dreamweaver’s combination of respect for HTML and powerful control over Dynamic HTML are likely to make it the tool of choice for many professional Webmasters.
Holmes, Joseph O. (May 1998). Dreamweaver 1.0. MacAddict. (pgs. 38-39).
Macromedia, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
10 / 
2015-09-03 / 
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Dreamweaver_1.040b_k.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
