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Dreamweaver 2: The Return
(part 4)

By David Fiedler

Macromedia may have a good reputation with graphic artists, but this will even impress the pocket protector crowd...

Claim: Global Search and Replace: can change the word "burger", for instance, only if it's within a table, or only change a color if it's in a BODY BGCOLOR tag.

What we found: Whoa...it's even better than that. One picture is worth a thousand words, so two should be priceless:

You are not dreaming: you can indeed specify that your "find" text only be inside a tag -- or even a specific tag -- or even between two specific tags! And there really is a checkbox to ignore intervening whitespace...it's almost the Unix sed command for the 90s! But wait, there's more:

Here you can just go ahead and specify the exact attributes a tag must have, and then you can change a different attribute altogether! OK, maybe I should get out more often, but this is pretty powerful stuff.

Claim: Roundtrip XML: they're ready for the next century! You can define your own XML tags and objects and property inspectors (Dreamweaver will store them) and nothing will be changed, whether going in or out of Dreamweaver.

What We Found: It's true as far as it goes, but this is mostly a marketing view of Roundtrip HTML (which Dreamweaver introduced in the first version), added to the fact that it won't change tags that it doesn't recognize as valid HTML. On the other hand, Dreamweaver can now import XML into templates (great for defining "macro" pages), and export editable regions of templates as XML.

The Bottom Line

Macromedia's Dreamweaver 2 is a much-improved version of an already fine product. With the possible exception of free-form table box drawing, it optimizes code to a fare-thee-well, to the point where it's probably not worth your time trying to make the HTML "better"...it's already been done. And this is WYSIWYG mode editing I'm talking about!

If Dreamweaver 2 didn't include the bundle of Allaire HomeSite or BBEdit, or the new site management features, or extensibility, it would still be worth buying for its behaviors, rollovers, and general neat features. But it does, it does...so don't just stand there!

This article first appeared in December, 1998.

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