Dreamweaver 4/Fireworks 4 Studio

Other products by Macromedia

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000050XBJ
• Item model number: WBW40D01
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 13, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,814 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #1 in	Software > Web Development > Web Effects > Objects
  #12 in	Software > Web Development > Web Page Editors > WYSIWYG
  #17 in	Software > Web Development > Web Effects > Animation

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review
Here's a little no-nonsense advice for those of you who are considering Dreamweaver 4 as your future Web editor: don't skimp; buy this bundle. The seamless integration of Dreamweaver 4 with the nicely upgraded graphics application Fireworks 4 justifies the investment in this complete suite.

Macromedia's Dreamweaver 4 packs layer upon layer of powerful features, for just about any Web developer's needs and preferences. Perfect for individuals and professional Web-development teams alike, this latest version offers a fresh set of upgrades and improvements. Programmers who build sites by using only a basic text editor are rewarded with features for source-code inspection. Code View's text-editing environment offers such customizable features as live syntax coloring, tag balancing, and auto indenting. Noncoding types can click and drag sites together by using one of the finer visual editors available. Within those layers of features, there are resources for creating forms, Flash files, frames, cascading style sheets, Java and ActiveX files, and more. In Split View, the Code and Design views display simultaneously--providing the best of both worlds for ambidextrous types.

The quickest and easiest way to design graphics in the Dreamweaver world is via Fireworks 4. Fireworks' strengths lie in its focus on the creation and optimization of bitmapped and vector Web graphics. The files are integrated into Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver easily, and importing/exporting Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files is a breeze; especially with the program's improved layer mask handling, and a new Color Fill Live effect. Version 4 rolls out a new interface that Flash, Dreamweaver, and FreeHand users will recognize. This standardized format also offers tabbed menus for easy customization, and helps keep the screen tidy. New tools for adding interactive elements--rollovers, navigation bars, and pop-up menus--are a welcome sight. And a Live Animation feature creates frame-based GIF animations, using symbols, instances, and tweening features that are familiar to Flash users. With built-in HTML and JavaScript capabilities, version 4 delivers the goods to the Web graphics design community.

Convinced? If not, you can always buy Dreamweaver 4 at full retail, and then follow-up with a Fireworks 4 purchase, weeks or months later. Just don't blame us for the lingering red mark from your forehead slap. --Eric Twelker

Amazon.com Product Description
Get integrated Web graphics design and professional Web site development by using these two bundled products. A shared Macromedia user interface and integrated product features make the Dreamweaver 4/Fireworks 4 Studio the most efficient way to create professional Web sites. Create, edit, and animate bitmap and vector Web graphics, and add advanced interactivity and pop-up menus in Fireworks' robust, professional environment. Easily import Fireworks rollovers, pop-up menus, and buttons into Dreamweaver to create engaging Web experiences. Launch and edit both graphics and tables between Dreamweaver and Fireworks for efficient workflow. In Dreamweaver, complete the design by using visual page-layout techniques or code entirely by hand in the professional text-editing environment. Create Macromedia Flash graphics, easily manage site assets, and integrate content from Microsoft Office to create professional Web sites. Look up code descriptions and examples by using integrated reference material from O'Reilly Publications. Maximize team efficiency and integrate seamlessly with leading content-management systems.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to Use!, January 24, 2001

By	Clifford Reeves "cliff_reeves" (Methuen, MA United States) - See all my reviews

I am not a Web developer by any means. I work in a hospital lab and needed to develop a departmental Intranet. I thought this would be easy until I talked to our IS people, the ones who really know what they are doing. Then I purchased Dreamweaver/ Fireworks Studio 3. WOW, did this help. I find version 4 even better. Do you like the cool multielevel pop-menus in the navigation bar? I do and for the life of me could not figure out the java codes to create one. Not a problem here, Fireworks did all of the work for me. I also tried Microsofts Frontpage 2000. I am a big fan of Office, but like all things Microsoft they required certain items to be installed on the server that our IS dept didn't allow.

I highly recommend this product for "newbie" web developers.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The absolute be-all and end-all of HTML web design software., August 15, 2001

By	M. Pincus "Mac-P" (East Meadow, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is it. People who have been using it for years know it, and people who are just discovering it are realizing: Dreamweaver is in a class by itself. Version 4 is the best yet, much better than it needed to be considering there wasn't any competition as it was. From beginning web-designer to experienced coder, this is one POWERFUL program. Combine it with Fireworks 4 (Macromedia's much better version of Adobe's Image Ready) and you haved it all.

Dreamweaver allows you to: -meticulously organize your sites, make master templates for page uniformity, use Cascading Style Sheets to easily customize and format various page elements, the ability to convert the CSS atributes to HTML tags for use in older browsers, update entire sites with one click, view your page in html code view OR wysiwyg OR at the SAME TIME (you can drag open a table let's say and watch the code get written like x-ray vision, OR, conversely, edit the underlying code while watching the effect on your page in front of your eyes), covert tables to layers and back again, edit graphics in Fireworks without having to enter Fireworks and re-export your work (a VERY VERY VERY timesaving feature), insert frames, tables, Flash buttons, rollovers, swap images, and other JavaScript behaviors with a simple "drag and drop".

Dreamweaver will automatically clean up messy HTML (deleting extra font tags for instance) as well as debug JavaScript behaviors. The code that version 4 writes is MUCH cleaner than version 3, and any ...programmsers have TOTAL access to the code to customize it how they see fit. You can preview your work in as many browsers as you have on your computer, and then FTP to your server right from Dreamweaver in the best FTP interface on the market. Dreamweaver automatically keeps track of all updates to any page or graphic and asks you if you would like to update other pages. For sites that will be worked on by a team there are many features to organize the work flow such as "Check In/Check Out" that keeps track of who did what to what part of the site as well as leave comments for other parts of the team. There really are too many features to list here.

Fireworks 4 has a new "button editor" that makes it ridiculously easy to generate rollover buttons or the currently trendy "dropdown menus". I personally don't like them, but they are there to use. Included are a bunch of really useful effects such as bevel and glow. The best part about this program is that vector graphics REMAIN as editable vector graphics EVEN AFTER YOU APPLY EFFECTS. You don't have to permanently convert your graphic to a bitmap first. This alone is worth the whole program. You can also set the program to use all your Photoshop plug-ins (although using SOME of them DO require you to do the evil conversion from editable vector to bitmap). Fireworks also feature "selective" JPEG compression for optimizing certain parts of the SAME image with a different JPEG compression setting (let's say 30% for a background and 70% for a detailed foreground). What other program does that? Fireworks is also THE animated GIF software. You can make them as many frames as you want as well as set the duration of each frame. Overall I think that Fireworks 4 is not as totally developed as Dreamweaver 4 is, but it does what it is supposed to do, and works flawlessly with Dreamweaver.

I can't even tell you how easy they have made it to produce 100% professional sites. The bottom line is: this package is the ABSOLUTE best web development software in existence. There is no equal. And for all you hand-coders who swear by BB-Edit or "anti-WYSIWYG" programs, you CAN entirely hand-code in Dreamweaver too. Just use code view. There is no reason to not use this program. Once you do, you will NEVER use anything else. You'll see.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Almost perfect integration between the 2 Apps, April 22, 2001

By	Ruben André de Franco Badaró (Lisbon, Portugal) - See all my reviews

First of all I must say that i am a user of both this tools for quite some time and they do help me. I'm what you can call a coder, I like to know exactly what is written in the source code so that I can change it to my behalf. The problem with frontpage is that the code generated is very confusing and doesn't work very well on all browsers (although frontpage2000 improved a lot).

With Dreamweaver 4 you can insert your code directly and see the effect on your webpage happen simultaneous or do the inverse, insert the things you want in your design view with macromedia's simple menu and subwindow system. The code dreamweaver generates is probably the best you can get using WYSIWYG web page builders.

Fireworks is a graphics application almost totally directed to constructing and manipulating imagens for use in web pages. The interface is very simple and intuitive and the tools that are offered give you the power you need.

The integration between the two applications is very simply and well done. This is suite to be used by both the beginner and the intermediate user.

If you wish to construct dynamic webpages using Active Server Pages you should look for Macromedia Ultradev 4 or use Visual Interdev (included in the Visual Studio package).