by David Nagel
Executive Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com

I reviewed Macromedia Fireworks 4 last week. It actually arrived on my desk as a bundle with Dreamweaver 4, but I thought I'd separate out the two for more thorough examinations. So this week we arrive at Dreamweaver 4, which, like Fireworks, I've been using in one incarnation or another daily for more than a year. It's the kind of tool that defines a product category and forces every other developer to try to match it feature for feature. But with the release of version 4, this is a challenge that's becoming harder and harder to answer.

I don't want to imply that Dreamweaver is the only good Web design and/or layout application on the market. It certainly is not, especially if your particular Web needs tend toward the online brochure types, where there are many applications tailored for these purposes. But I come from the perspective of writing for, editing for, managing content for and handling graphics for two pretty complex daily Web sites—Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer. I couldn't imagine doing it with anything other than Dreamweaver.

I also don't want to slight Adobe GoLive, an extremely viable contender in the same category as Dreamweaver. GoLive is a strong product with some features not found in Dreamweaver, such as its built-in video editing capabilities. But I'm not going to sit here and compare the two feature by feature. Rather, I'm going to cover what I think are the strengths (and weaknesses) of Dreamweaver in and of itself. I'll do the same for GoLive in the coming weeks.

So let's get into Dreamweaver.

Out with the old ...
On the whole, I find Dreamweaver 4 to be a much more comfortable application than Dreamweaver 3. It plays better with our Linux server, both in terms of speed and reliability; its management of local files, particularly in terms of the reliability of link updates, has been improved; and, in general, it works faster and more efficiently. Dreamweaver 3 was sometimes a bit laggy when dealing with remote files. It didn't always update links properly when rearranging local files.

I had troubles at first getting Dreamweaver to connect to the remote server. But, after a quick chat with a support tech at Macromedia, I discovered the problem was with our local NT server. Switching the default firewall port in Dreamweaver fixed this.

I also had a problem with my site cache for Digital Media Designer. This was mostly a limitation of the Mac OS, however. Dreamweaver stores a site's cache in a text file named after the name of a particular site, as defined in the program's site definitions. If the site name is too long, Dreamweaver can't write the cache file. So fixing this problem was simply a matter of truncating my site name in my site definitions.

After resolving these two problems, I've been working with very few gripes and have been able to focus on some of the new features that make Dreamweaver 4 even more powerful than its predecessor.

Flash graphics
Of course, at the top of every Web designer's hit parade these days is Flash, and Macromedia has not overlooked its appeal in the latest Dreamweaver release. Version 4 adds the ability to create Flash buttons and text-based graphics on the fly, maintaining their editability directly within Dreamweaver. No switching to the Flash application. No complicated design. You just enter your data in a dialogue box (shown below), and you're on your way.

The Flash button creator in Dreamweaver 4 allows you to create
Flash buttons without leaving Dreamweaver.

If you decide you want to change the content or style of a button, you just double click it, and the same dialog box appears again.

For those who find buttons too constraining, there's also Flash text. Flash text is similar in many ways to Flash buttons, including in terms of editability, but it's not so constrained by size as buttons are.

The Flash info panel.

The interface
Like all of Macromedia's products, Dreamweaver 4 has received interface tweaks that make is cleaner and a little nicer to look at. But it also has functional interface enhancements as well, such as the ability to toggle between layout view, code view or a combination of layout and code views.

Dreamweaver 4's new combination code/layout view.

Also on the functional interface side, the new version sports several enhancements that make working in HTML a little more invisible. This includes more complete contextual menus (right clicking or Control clicking to call up functions related to a selection).

Table creation in the Layout view. The new (optional) view
lets you create tables and draw cells directly in the
document, rather than entering numerical data.

It also gives you the ability to do much more intuitive editing of page elements, including the ability to drag cells in a table rather than enter number values for heights and widths. And in the new Layout view, you can draw tables and cells directly on the page, as in the example above.

I should mention in this section that one of the things I don't like about Dreamweaver 4 is its snap-to interface. This becomes particularly annoying when you open a series of documents, which get hidden behind one another because they've all snapped to the same spot, so linking files becomes difficult.

All in all, though, the interface does get some nice enhancements.

The rest of the new stuff
The primary thrust of Dreamweaver 4 was the introduction of Flash graphics and interface enhancements. But there are several other new features that might come in handy as well.

One of the major ones is JavaScript debugging. This gives you the ability to debug client-side JavaScript directly in the browser. It lets you watch JavaScript execute in Navigator or Explorer, helping you understand how each browser implements JavaScript. You can then debug your code by setting breakpoints and then watching your variables update as you step through the code.

Other new features include:

• Site reporting, which allows you to check several problems in a file, folder, selected files or the entire site. These include nested font tags, missing alt text and a number of other parameters.
• An asset panel, which allows you to track all site media in a central location. You can use it to preview and manage images, colors, external URLs, scripts, Flash content, Shockwave content, QuickTime content, templates and library items.
• Better graphics editing, including tighter integration with Fireworks. This feature, called "Roundtrip Graphic Editing," lets you edit and optimize graphics. You can also use extensions to add graphical bullets, buttons or a Web photo album.

As with Dreamweaver 3, you also have access to the Macromedia Exchange, which provides a couple hundred extensions for Dreamweaver, some of which probably should have come preinstalled, such as the Favorites extension. If you've been using Dreamweaver and you haven't visited the Exchange, you're missing out. This is a great resource and will absolutely make your life easier.

For the new kids
For those of you previously unfamiliar with Dreamweaver, there's really no goo place to begin, and I can't reasonably cover all of the program's features here—not adequately, anyway.

Let me explain it from a user's point of view. Dreamweaver looks and behaves like a mature design tool. If you've used any desktop publishing applications, it will be a snap for you to get used to this. That's the background I came from, and I was up and running in a day. Less than a day, really. A couple quick questions to some of my colleagues, and everything fell into place.

If you want to place a graphic, you click the graphic button. If you want to place a table, you click the table button. Typography is handled through a control palette like QuarkXPress or any other page layout application. You create links by highlighting text and typing or pasting a link in the same palette. (Or you can use the little target tool to select open documents or documents listed in your site files.) Colors, margins, alignment: It all works just like page layout.

The Site View in Dreamweaver 4 (shrunk down to fit this page).

If you've done some Web work and dealt with traditional FTP clients, you'll be pleasantly surprised by Dreamweaver's site management capabilities. You create a mirror of your site on your local drive and just upload files by typing a command or clicking the "Put" button. Dreamweaver automatically creates all the parent directories and uploads the files to the right places. If you move a file in your local site, Dreamweaver can automatically update all the links within that document and all the pages that link to that document. You can then synchronize your site to make sure all the newest files are up on the remote server, and vice versa.

Again, I can't cover everything here for those of you new to Web layout tools. If you do decide to purchase Dreamweaver, we do have our own support forum here at Digital Media Net. (We have one for GoLive as well.) Stop by and see what users are asking and saying. You will find all you need to know at http://www.wwug.com/forums/macromedia_dreamweaver/index.htm.

The gripes
No application is perfect, of course, so I'll lay down a few of the problems I've had with Dreamweaver. These are common to version 4.0 and 3.x.

First and foremost, when dealing with multiple sites, I do with Dreamweaver could remember which site I'm actually working in at the time. By this I mean that if I'm working on a story in Digital Media Designer and want to place a graphic, its Open dialog should default to the last directory I visited in Digital Media Designer. As it stands, it simply defaults to the last directory I visited, which may or may not be within the local site root. (Related to this, it would be a tremendous workflow enhancement to be able to assign and directories to particular operations so that when, for example, I try to place a graphic, the Open dialog would go to an images directory rather than an HTML directory.)

Second—and this is a Mac-only problem—there are very serious issues of file naming limitations. Let's face it, no matter how much you love working on a Mac, sooner or later you're going to have to deal with files uploaded from a user on a Windows system. A Windows user is not inhibited by a 32-character file name, as is the case with the Mac. So you might have directory upon directory of files named on a Windows system that you can't bring down to your local site because the file names are too long. It seems an uncomplicated matter to create a system whereby Dreamweaver would truncate file names upon download to a Mac system and then expand them (by way of cached file information) when reuploading to the server. Either this, or it should offer the ability to batch truncate on the remote server and update relevant links automatically.

Third, Dreamweaver still seems to have problems when cleaning up the HTML code in large documents. It tends to run out of memory and car's when removing nested font tags, redundant tags and empty tags all in one process. If you handle them one at a time, however, there seems to be no problem.

Fourth, moving files on the remote server can have devastating results. It's very easy to click and drag accidentally on a remote file, only to have all of your links to and from that file ruined. On the local site, Dreamweaver gives you a chance to cancel your action or update your links so that, at the very least, you're aware of the change you've accidentally made. On the remote, files can be moved without a peep from the program.

Finally, I'd also like to be able to have more FTP control from within Dreamweaver rather than having to open up a shareware application to set permissions for a directory.

The bottom line
Dreamweaver 4 is a remarkable achievement for a Web design tool. It's intuitive. It's quick. And it adds features that make it well worth the relatively modest upgrade price. Although I've cited several downsides to the program, its strengths more than make up for these. It's an absolute lifesaver for daily Web production, and I couldn't live without it. I give Dreamweaver 4 a strong buy recommendation.

Dreamweaver 4 is available for $299 by itself or $149 as an upgrade. A full version with Fireworks 4 runs $349. (Macromedia's also offering a $100 on the Dreamweaver 4 Fireworks 4 Studio through March 31.) For more information, visit http://www.macromedia.com.