Dreamweaver MX 2004 Upgrade from Dreamweaver 4, MX, UltraDev 4, ColdFusion Studio 5.0, JRun Studio 3.x

Other products by Macromedia

Product Features

• The professional choice for building web sites and applications
• A powerful combination of visual layout tools, application development features, and code editing support
• Developers and designers at every skill level can create appealing, standards-based sites and applications quickly
• Developers can use it with the server technology of their choice to build powerful Internet applications
• Includes leading support for CSS-based design to hand-coding features

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000CAVAD
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 25, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #9,731 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer
Dreamweaver MX 2004 is the professional choice for building web sites and applications. It provides a powerful combination of visual layout tools, application development features, and code editing support, enabling developers and designers at every skill level to create visually appealing, standards-based sites and applications quickly. From leading support for CSS-based design to hand-coding features, Dreamweaver provides the tools professionals need in an integrated, streamlined environment. Developers can use Dreamweaver with the server technology of their choice to build powerful Internet applications that connect users to databases, web services, and legacy systems.

Product Description
DREAMWEAVER MX 2004 UPG CD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars UNDERWHELMING UPDATE. WAIT FOR NEXT VERSION.., October 15, 2003

By	Shashank Tripathi (Gadabout) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I've been designing with DW for a while now. The 2004 upgrade remains essentially the same, except for a few changes:

[1] The default is now CSS. If you want a tables based layout, you can still work with it but a change needs to be made in the preferences.

[2] The previous Dreamweaver MX supported CSS-P to a degree but editing it wasn't always easy. MM were obviously aware of Dreamweaver's rendering problems and for the new version, have borrowed upon Opera's rendering engine to do some of the hard work and it's now several magnitudes better.

[3] Secure FTP built in

[4] Microsoft Word and Excel copy and paste. Earlier version would lose the formatting when text was pasted inside DW. In this sense, DW now equals Frontpage

[5] On-the-fly cross-browser compatibility checking

[6] Some simple image editing like cropping and tonal adjustments without leaving the program

All this is fine and dandy, some of these features are also a god-send, but the CSS handling is a bit quirky yet. Surely, there must be a simpler and more intuitive way to do all this? There's far too much jumping around the interface required. Instead of providing one really inspired WYSIWYG way to do things, it seems to offer a multiplicity of mediocre alternatives, almost as if the programmers couldn't make their minds up and say, 'Hell, we'll put it all in'. That is a recipe for camels, not thoroughbred racehorses.

If you know your way around Dreamweaver already, you might welcome the new CSS editing facilities but 50% of the full price for an upgrade seems grossly excessive. I'm a bit disappointed that after all this time, Macromedia have produced something that is okay, but not great.

Besides, in the rush for an upgrade (now that GoLive is getting its own feet too) MM seems to have settled for some degree of bloat. My DW updated to 2004 MX is even more of a RAM hog than before.

Net net: I'd wait for the next version upgrade, by when hopefully MM would have tied in all these loose ends.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Upgrade? What upgrade?, June 27, 2004

By A Customer

Upgrade? What upgrade? The older versions were much better than this one. This new version runs very slowly, adds redundant and unneeded tags and crashes more often than Windows 98!
Please just don't buy this product, don't waste your money.

8 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still using DW4? It's time to up to a really Big Rig., December 23, 2003

By	Chris Kane (West Des Moines, IA United States) - See all my reviews

Clearly Dreamweaver is the best application available for developing a professional website. If you're in the business this is your platform and that's all there is to it. Oh okay. The REAL professionals code by hand. (Yawn.)

As for me, I've been coding with Dreamweaver MX. What a great program. It comes to work everyday, fires right up and launches the client's pages smoothly along the 'ole information superhighway. No breakdowns (well, almost no breakdowns), no arresting offenses and no intramural collisions. Dreamweaver has all the efficiency and power of an 18-wheeler blowing past a gaggle of overloaded rental trucks dragging along unstable trailers and add-ons that threaten to careen out-of-control at any moment.

DW MX 2004 takes slightly longer to fire up, but its customizable insert bar, CSS support and code editing options keep this new version upgrade zooming right along. I wish the right-click slide out menu for files didn't require another slide out for editing such as page renaming, duplicating or deleting files. The simple workaround is leaning the keystrokes.

If you're using Dreamweaver 4, the 2004 upgrade is a must. For MX users, the new version 7.0 is a powerful improvement.