First, let's take a quick look at the new feature list:
- Spry framework for Ajax
- Spry widgets
- Spry effects
- Browser Compatibility Check
- Adobe CSS Advisor
- CSS Layouts
- Manage CSS
- Advanced Photoshop CS3 integration
- Adobe Device Central
- Adobe Bridge CS3
The first three things on the list have to do with support for Adobe's Spry framework for Ajax. Most of the tools there are pretty well done, but obviously assume that you're going to use Spry and haven't choosen a different framework or toolset for your Ajax development.
The Browser Compatibility Check and Adobe CSS Advisor work hand in hand to find issues in your HTML and CSS code. It found one color that was missing a #-prefix and one CSS left attribute that a missing a px (e.g. left:20 and not left:20px). That was kind of slick.
CSS Layouts is just that, some prebuilt single and multicolumn layout templates you can use to jump start a project. Personally, I suspect that most of the people who're willing to shell out the bucks for Dreamweaver already have working solutions here.
Manage CSS allows you to drag and drop CSS rules between documents and style sheets. Yawn.
Advanced Photoshop CS3 integration let's you select part of a PS image and drop it into your page. Device Central let's you see what you page would look like, say, on a mobile phone or PDA. Bridge is there for image management.
So out of ten main features, six are devoted towards tighter integration with other Adobe tools and technologies and three are yawns, leaving just one that's kind of slick (the compatibility check) but probably not one you'd use day-to-day.
It is quite a bit faster on my Intel-based MacBook Pro, but that's mainly because Adobe recompiled the entire suite as a Universal Binary.
Otherwise, things are pretty much the same as in the last version. Plenty of file and context menu links to compare files, but not even a basic built-in file comparision utility. For some reason when you setup a remote site you can see your FTP settings, but using RDS brings up a popup dialog whose contents can't be saved/exported/imported with the rest of your settings.
Still support for SourceSafe but not Subversion. Still have snippets, but they still require command keys and you can't map them to text like TextExpander. No Python or Ruby support. Command Recording (automated script actions) still only work in design mode. And on. And on. And on.
Fortunately, Dreamweaver came as part of my Creative Suite upgrade, which is good because if I'd simply upgraded and paid good money just for this I'd be pi...., ah, a little upset.
There are a lot of things that could have been done to enhance Dreamweaver and to fix the niggling little bugs and annoyances, but instead Adobe spent their time "integrating" it with their other tools and technologies and releasing it as part of their Creative Suite bundle.
Which is in itself also a worrying development, because to me that indicates that future versions will be tied to the same monolithic timeline and release schedule as the rest of their products. Are we not going to see any upgrades or improvements until 2009-2010, when Photoshop CS4 is ready to be released?
I've been a big fan of Dreamweaver ever since it was first introduced, and I have—quite literally—used it day-in and day-out for years, but I've got to tell you that this is the least impressive upgrade to date. Oh well, maybe at least it won't crash like DW MX7 if I close too many documents one-right-after-the-other.
I've already paid my money, but if you haven't yet done so I'd suggest heading over and trying out the latest copy of CFEclipse. Seriously.
Dreamweaver annoyed me ever since MX. I gave it away for homesite which i found quite nice to use. About 6 months or so ago i started used cfeclipse and Aptana for all my work. I'm quite certain it's increased my efficiency by at least 20% or so.
I also have Dreamweaver CS3 as part of my upgrade and i agree, overall it is a bit of a yawn with a few cool features
Posted by: Mark | June 06, 2007 at 07:13 AM