Customer Reviews

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I have recently been taken by the Internet as a means of communication and self expression. I have tried numerous software products to get my message across, and have liked every one. Macromedia DreamWeaver MX is my new favorite, replacing Microsoft FrontPage 2002.

Like many others, I had heard the horror stories of Macromedia DreamWeaver. I had been told, and even gave as advice, not to use DreamWeaver unless you were a serious web professional. But, FrontPage wasn't quite cutting it for me.

I felt confined using FrontPage, because so much had to be there for my sites to work. I couldn't even properly optimize my site, for fear of FrontPage messing up my design. With DreamWeaver MX, my worries are over.

I was able to jump right into DreamWeaver MX, and create sites that were not only visually attractive, but also containing clean HTML. The best part, I was able to do it faster and easier than I had in FrontPage.

I don't know what prior versions of DreamWeaver were like, but DreamWeaver MX is very easy to use. After using DreamWeaver MX, I will never go back to Adobe GoLive or Microsoft FrontPage again.

Dreamweaver MX is significantly easier to use than previous versions, and is probably the best general-purpose site manager out there. However, for professional, commercial web application development, Microsoft's Visual Studio 7 (featuring .Net) beats Dreamweaver hands down. There are considerations however- VS7 costs 2-5 times as much as Dreamweaver (depending on the version), and requires much more user knowledge and training.

I found the learning curve for Dreamweaver MX to be insignicant. The first time I used it, I was comfortable with it in a couple of hours, and proficient by the end of a week. If you are an entry-level to mid-level web site developer with limited programming knowledge, the HTML editor and site management tools should suit your needs. If you wish to do larger scale web application development, you may also do so using Dreamweaver's built in support for different technologies. If you want to go high-end, definitely consider Visual Studio 7 instead.

Overall, a solid application, and pretty comprehensive package.

I couldn't stand the previous versions of Dreamweaver, and was a firm believer in Frontpage 2000. Dreamweaver just looked a lot more complicated than Frontpage and didn't seam to have any useful features. That's all changed with DreamweaverMX.

I had to try Dreamweaver after the frustration I had with Frontpage 2000 and its inability to handle .NET aspx files (unless you specified as a text file, but then you might as well use Notepad).

Take the following *essential* features Dreamweaver has over Frontpage:

.Net pages
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Not only does DreamweaverMX handle .aspx pages, it has syntax highlighting for VB.Net and C#, with the ability to customize other languages. In the design view, you can even see .Net components such as a DataGrid, similar to WebMatrix. It's a shame Microsoft's own Frontpage can't even do that...

*Powerful* site management
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Are you constantly going through the hassle of creating your pages, then opening your choice FTP program, search through the directories, and upload? All that is done for you with DreamweaverMX's powerful site management tools. After you have defined your site, anytime you edit your page, click the 'Put' icon, and it's uploaded to your server in the corresponding folder. Better yet, switch to 'Remote View', edit your page, save, and wham! Page is instantly updated online! The amount of time saved by skipping your FTP program starts to add up substantially. Want to prevent two people from editing the same page at the same time? The 'Check in/out' feature will solve that problem for you.

Efficient Layout
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The first time I opened Dreamweaver, it looked too cluttered. But start using it after creating a few sites and you'll wonder how you did without the 'Properties' window.
Hint: Press CTRL+` to quickly switch between code and design view

Flash
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Since Macromedia also created Flash, there is nice integration with Dreamweaver. You can even edit the site in design mode with your flash movie playing. Frontpage probably does that, but not nearly as good as DreamweaverMX.

Clean Code
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No more ugly code and redundant tags left by Frontpage. Dreamweaver even takes out unnecessary tags (ie. having </P> without < P>), leaving clean code. If you looked at the source you'd swear it was HTML coded by hand.

There's a lot more to be said, but these were the features that immediately made me consider the migration from Frontpage to Dreamweaver. If you're a .Net developer, there is no other solution as powerful as this for design and code maintenance. Again, I loved Frontpage, but the fact it does not support its own .Net technology is a shame. I'm not sure if Frontpage 2002 handles .Net aspx files any better, but there is no point paying for the upgrade for a feature it should have had in the first place.

If you're serious about web development, DreamweaverMX should be a serious consideration.

First, you should know that my perspective is not that of a coder - it's primarily of a designer (although sometimes I do dig into the code a bit).

I've worked with a number of web development packages, including Frontpage, and have found the Dreamweaver series (Ultradev and now Dreamweaver MX) the absolute best choice for anyone serious about developing interactive web sites. It doesn't require any coding experience for many basic design/development goals (although of course the more complex your site is, the better it will be to work in the code).

The software is extremely stable on Windows 2000, and easy enough to use within minutes of installation. I'm amazed at the power of the package - the advanced features take a while longer to learn, but leave you plenty of room to grow.

Beyond the software itself, Macromedia has a very helpful exchange on its site which allows you to add to the functionality of MX by installing "extensions". These extensions extend the functionality of MX and make it even easier to add interactivity.

Bottom line: Strongly recommended.

As a professional web designer and the web lead for my company, I chose DreamWeaver MX for our primary Web-IDE. It is a decision I have come to regret.

DreamWeaver makes many fine promises, but like a presidential candidate, once it's in the office, it fails to keep those promises. Let me give you some idea what I'm talking about:

Version control:
DreamWeaver's version control is very simplistic, and to be fair, DreamWeaver integrates with MS VSS and Macromedia's own versioning system, but using the built in version control with DreamWeaver can easily lead to overwritten code and lost files (as in lost forever). DreamWeaver does not play well with CVS or Subversion.

Stability:
DreamWeaver crashes at least once daily, sometimes with a warning, but usually without. Javascript errors abound. I upgraded my operating system from Windows 2000 to XP Professional in the hopes that I was seeing integration problems, but alas, the crashes continue unabated.

Templates:
The real reason I chose DreamWeaver was its sophisticated templating system, which would allow me to write parts of the code and farm out the content management to my colleagues, who use either DreamWeaver or Contribute (a WYSIWYG content-management partner for DreamWeaver). Unfortunately, DreamWeaver doesn't have a clear grasp of what is editable and what is not. We have noticed that DreamWeaver and Contribute both sometimes will prevent legitimate edits. What's worse, however, is that DreamWeaver will lose changes to regions that it incorrectly deems uneditable. Depending on the particular situation, DreamWeaver may or may not tell you that it has refused your change.

WYSIWYG/Contribute:
It's difficult enough to write code that works in more than one web browser, but if you want your standards-compliant, tableless code to look good in DreamWeaver and Contribute, you had better be prepared to spend a few more hours on each page.

Consumer: You can do better. You probably would save yourself an ulcer writing code in a text-editor.

Macromedia: You can do better. Fix the bugs. Make DreamWeaver standards compliant and integrate CVS and Subversion support into it.

At first glance, the Dreamweaver [DW] interface seems very complicated but after using it for a while, the interface is very intuitative. I was using FrontPage [FP] for web design, but I couldn't control the layout of the tables on the page. I am not a pro. With DW I could! The properties of each element can be shown in a little box on the screen [a improvement over R mouse clicking on then clicking on the properties tag in FP]. The eye dropper icon works anywhere on the the open program - I could grab colors off the menu bar!

Not all was rosy at first.........I installed a demo on two different computers and both computers locked up when using ...it seemed to be very instable. So I looked to tech support and could not find anyone to call.....so I entered the support forum and posted what happened. My answer came within 24 hours in a dialogue with another user. After that the program ran flawless. A note.....this program can consume a lot of resources on a Win 9.x/Me system and anti-virus software will cause it to crash - SOLUTION: turn your anti-virus software off and make sure you don't have a lot of unnecessary background programs running........give it lots of breathing room!

FP is used a lot because it has a relatively easy look and feel but once you get used to FP, the quirks and limitations begin to show. In DW if you are interesting in seeing how code is formed, just switch to the Code/view and 2 windows open - your WYSIWYG window and the HTML code above! Great!

Conclusion: Download the Demo from Macromedia - don't be put off by the seemingly complicated interface, play around and see for yourself. Then buy it.

I'll be short. I am a coder. I have had trouble using Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG development environments since forever. This is finally the Web page editor we have all been waiting for. I have written JSP pages, CFM pages and plain HTML pages and love this thing. This tool is an amalgamation of ColdFusion Studio and Dreamweaver and has a ton of features for designers and programmers alike. I could go on and on and on, but seriously just buy it and find out for yourself...

I laugh when I hear people trying to compare Adobe GoLive 6 to Dreamweaver MX- you just can't do it. Dreamweaver is something bigger than a normal wbe authoring application, but even its power in that field is stronger than that of any other program you'll find on any other platform. The interface is very clean and its extremly easy to find your way around. The new support for PHP and MySQL is great, and the integrationg DWMX has with other Macromedia apps is superb.

I know that people say, "If you're a novice user, choose something easier, like Frontpage". Well, not only is that wrong because Frontpage is a boring app, but I was a novice user to Dreamweaver(v.4), and I found it extremly easy to use after you fool around with it for a while and take some simple tutorials. Now the DWMX interface is even simpler, so basically anyone can use it. But I'm planning on using it for creating a dynamic site that hooks up to a MySQL database, so it will serve you much better if you plan to use it like this. DWMX is the Photoshop of web apps, it has so many features that you'll have to read thousands of books just to get them all. But, fortunatly, unlike Photoshop, the only thing you really need to use it is a through knowledge of HTML. Ease of use and tremendous power, what more can a person ask?

I used to work solely in Front Page but a friend, in the advertising industry, kept nagging me about I really needed to learn Dreamweaver. So I've been taking a community college course in it this term. My assignment, due in a few days, is a 5 page website and I must say that I've done an excellent job building it in Dreamweaver. I don't use templates. I build from the white screen. I haven't begun to explore the depths of what Dreamweaver can do but already I can feel its power. Everything you need, and I do mean everything, covers the screen real estate while you work. If you need to get a better look at what you are building, you can easily collapse those other features so you can swell your web screen and html screen space. Perhaps my favorite feature is the html code itself being viewable the whole time I'm building and that I can go from my web building screen to my html screen just by moving my cursor. Dreamweaver also does not stick things I don't want into my html code which Front Page did. (However, to be fair, when I began using Front Page, I couldn't do anything with html code anyway so that was hardly a problem)! I also love that Dreamweaver prompts me, when I'm in the html view, about what I might want to add at that point. Could I have used this product this effectively if it were my very first time working with building a web? I doubt it. There are people in my class, though, who do have entry level ability and they've decided to learn Dreamweaver as their first and only web builder. In the long run, they probably will save themselves a lot of money and aggravation by doing so. I would call myself an intermediate level user so I cannot evaluate this program for advanced users or programmers. As an artist who uses Photoshop, Dreamweaver integrates beautifully with Photoshop. The two programs work very well together and I need that as I use far more images than text in my websites. For a user like myself, Dreamweaver is fabulous. For a beginner, it is going to be a challenge but doable with the right learning aids such as a community college class.

I began editing HTML in 1997 with Dreamweaver 2. Shortly after that I swithced to Front Page, which was far more appropriate for the kind of web design I was interested in--the text content is far more important than the graphics and doohickeys. On the recommendation of various web developer friends of mine, I decided to buy and try Dreamweaver MX last June 2003.

I am first and foremost a teacher. Web development is a useful tool for me, but not my main interest. I keep three very large Front Page based web sites (all three are in the 100-300 page size range, and very much text based). FP really made this easy for me. Dreamweaver MX is targeted at those who develop sophisticated sites with active content--databases, forms, cgi scripts, media (Flash/Shockwave). It you are that type of developer, then it is clear that Dreamweaver is an excellent choice. FP is just not up to handling that sort of complexity and flexibility. But, if you maintain large html based sites that require rapid expansion and reorganization features with a minimum of training, FP is lightyears ahead--easy to learn, extremely intuitive, transparent and very fast. I can see that if I had started with DW-MX and built it from there that things would have been easier. A big part of the problem is that Macromedia has not created effective support for making the switch, and their product is definitely not as self-explanatory as FP.

Still, after a few hours I did figure out on my own most everything else that I needed to make use of the initially overwhelming displayed features. If you have some experience with HTML, it isn't that difficult to figure out. But it's definitely not a good choice for a beginner without some classroom training. It is an impressive package.

But, here are the real downsides: If you depend on FP's shared borders and navigation bars and themes, and your site is bigger than ten or twenty pages, then migrating your web site will be an unbelievable nightmare. Expect to have your shared borders altered and no longer controllable. Your site will be locked the way it was when you converted it, and new pages will not integrate into the FP navigation structure. You'll have to rebuild your whole site structure from scratch.
Further, as near as I can tell after spending about 12 actual hours probing the manual, help and just plain pushing buttons, I cannot find any feature that is equivalent to the combination of FP's theme, shared border and navigation bar feature. I find this to be highly undesirable. Therefore, Front Page is the superior choice for the beginner, and for the more advanced developer who wants a really streamlined and quick way to create and maintain a large but basic site without having to learn what cgi, asp, php, cold fusion, ODBC, test servers, etc. are all about.

Oh, and if you have Windows XP Home Edition, don't even bother, because Dreamweaver MX can't work properly without the server features included in the Professional Edition.