Well, the final version of Macromedia Dreamweaver has been released. The final version because Macromedia was recently bought by Adobe, what will this mean for Dreamweaver in the future I don’t know. Deep down I suspect it won’t be a good thing. Rumors are that Adobe wanted Macromedia to make it harder for Microsoft to buy them. If this is truly the case I don’t think this purchase bodes well for the Macromedia products. Personally I feel that that is very poor reason to buy another company. Now that my rant is done, lets get to the subject at had Dreamweaver 8.0.

 

Dreamweaver 8.0 in my opinion is not that great of an upgrade. New feature and enhanced feature wise there isn’t a lot. However, what there is, is nice. Also, like with all of the recent updates Dreamweaver 8.0 has some bugs. In fact it is these bugs that have caused us to wait until the patch is available and the patch is now out.

 

We have been reviewing Dreamweaver for several versions now. If you have read any of our reviews of Dreamweaver in the past you know that we feel Dreamweaver is the best web site design and construction programs on the market. We still feel that way. Not only does is have great features is has the best third party support around. Besides tons of books being available for Dreamweaver, there are hundreds if not thousands of extensions both free and commercial and there are hundreds of thousands of web sites loaded with free tutorials and the like. No other web site design has this kind of third party support. What does this mean for the users? It means that learning Dreamweaver is easy. Expanding Dreamweaver is easy. Getting your money back out of Dreamweaver is easy.

 

Well I could go on for paragraphs on how much I love Dreamweaver. But, I am not going to. Instead I am going to go right in to what’s new and what’s enhanced. The fun stuff!

 

Of the new and enhanced features in Dreamweaver 8.0 my top picks are…

New, unified CSS panel

 

All the CSS functionality is consolidated into one panel set and enhanced to make working with CSS easier and more productive. The new interface makes it easier to see the cascade of styles applied to a specific element and easily identify where attributes are defined. A property grid allows for quick edits.

 

CSS layout visualization

 

Apply visual aides at design time to outline CSS layout borders or color CSS layouts to reveal complex nesting schemes and improve selection. Click on the CSS layout for valuable Tooltips, such as ID and padding and margin and border settings.

 

Style rendering toolbar

 

View content the same way end-users will see it, no matter what the delivery mechanism, with new support for CSS media types in Dreamweaver 8. Use the style rendering toolbar to toggle to design view and see how it will look in print, on a handheld, or on a screen.

 

CSS rendering improvements

 

Match how complex CSS layouts will render in most browsers, with substantial improvements in design view accuracy. Dreamweaver now fully supports advanced CSS techniques, such as overflow, pseudo-elements, and form elements.

 

Zoom

 

Get great control over design with zoom. Pan in and inspect an image or work with a complex nested table layout. Zoom out to review how a page will look overall.

 

Guides

 

Compare the page layout to comps with pixel perfect accuracy using guides to measure page layouts. Great visual feedback helps measure distances accurately and supports intelligent snapping.

 

Code collapse

 

Focus only on the code in use. Hide and expand blocks of code by selection or by tag to stay organized.

 

Paste special

 

Spend less time wrestling content from email and Microsoft Word into formats. With new pasting options in Dreamweaver, retain all the source formatting created in Microsoft Word, or just take the text and apply the CSS already attached to the page.

 

Flash Video

 

Adding Flash Video to sites is drop dead simple. Add and customize the presentation of video on sites using an easy, five-click, dialog driven process.

These new and enhanced features just make Dreamweaver 8 a… dream to use. None are really big features, but often times it is the small things that really matter, these features just making getting your work done faster, easier and we fewer headaches.

• Integrate XML-based data, such as RSS feeds into web pages using a simple drag and drop workflow. Jump to code view to customize the transformation, using improved code hinting for XML and XSLT.
• All the CSS functionality is consolidated into one panel set and enhanced to make working with CSS easier and more productive. The new interface makes it easier to see the cascade of styles applied to a specific element and easily identify where attributes are defined. A property grid allows for quick edits.
• Apply visual aides at design time to outline CSS layout borders or color CSS layouts to reveal complex nesting schemes and improve selection. Click on the CSS layout for valuable Tooltips, such as ID and padding and margin and border settings.
• View content the same way end-users will see it, no matter what the delivery mechanism, with new support for CSS media types in Dreamweaver 8. Use the style rendering toolbar to toggle to design view and see how it will look in print, on a handheld, or on a screen.
• Match how complex CSS layouts will render in most browsers, with substantial improvements in design view accuracy. Dreamweaver now fully supports advanced CSS techniques, such as overflow, pseudo-elements, and form elements.
• In addition to the integrated accessibility evaluation tool for Section 508 and WCAG Priority 1 checkpoints, Dreamweaver now supports both CSS and accessibility with an updated evaluation tool that includes WCAG Priority 2 checkpoints.
• WebDAV in Dreamweaver 8 now supports digest authentication and SSL for secure file transfer and offers improved connectivity with a wider array of servers.
• Stop waiting and keep working while Dreamweaver 8 uploads files to the server. New functionality enables users to work with files in their local machine while Dreamweaver communicates with the server.
• Get great control over design with zoom. Pan in and inspect an image or work with a complex nested table layout. Zoom out to review how a page will look overall.
• Compare the page layout to comps with pixel perfect accuracy using guides to measure page layouts. Great visual feedback helps measure distances accurately and supports intelligent snapping.
• The new code toolbar surfaces common coding operations in a gutter bar along the side of the coding surface. No more hunting through menus and panels to find code snippets. New coding features include comment/uncomment.
• Focus only on the code in use. Hide and expand blocks of code by selection or by tag to stay organized.
• Customize and save workspace configurations. Dreamweaver 8 ships with four different configurations that are tailored to the needs of designers and coders. Pick and choose, or easily build a custom workspace.
• New document tabs on Mac help simplify the user interface and make it easier to select documents.
• Get started with web design in a snap. Beautiful new layouts and designs allow users to go from installation to full site in no time flat.
• Manage sites with increased reliability and confidence. Improved site synchronization features help ensure that the file in use is the latest version. Prevent accidental overwriting of others’ work with improved check-in/ check-out functionality to track who is working on which files.
• Quickly compare files to identify what has changed, whether it is two local files, a file on the local and remote, or two files on the remote server. Dreamweaver 8 now integrates with diff utilities on both the Mac and Windows platforms.
• Spend less time wrestling content from email and Microsoft Word into formats. With new pasting options in Dreamweaver, retain all the source formatting created in Microsoft Word, or just take the text and apply the CSS already attached to the page.
• Work seamlessly with server-side includes at design time and run time by ensuring that references are relative to sites instead of local files.
• Gain greater control over how the tool hints and completes tags to fit with your coding style.
• Updated support for ColdFusion MX 7 includes new server behaviors and code hinting. To match the code hinting and debugging with the correct version of ColdFusion, Dreamweaver automatically detects the server version the first time the tool connects to the site. The tight integration between Dreamweaver and ColdFusion allows users to add and remove databases directly from the database and components panel in Dreamweaver to show only CFCs defined in the current site—making navigating CFCs a snap.
• Take advantage of updated support for PHP 5, including server behaviors and code hinting.
• Adding Flash Video to sites is drop dead simple. Add and customize the presentation of video on sites using an easy, five-click, dialog driven process.
• Keep track of everything that is going on within your site. Events in Dreamweaver will notify the Macromedia Web Publishing System server so that all changes to a website in the WPS ecosystem are recorded.
• New reference content for XML, XSLT, and XPath and updated content for ASP and JSP complements the already robust reference set in Dreamweaver. Work with the languages required for sites and applications.