Software Review:
Macromedia Dreamweaver
(Part 2)
By David
Fiedler
No Fear and Loathing on This HTML Trail
But if I hate frames, I loathe tables. Don't get me wrong; I
use them all the time. But I hate having to code them and make
sure all the tags are right and figure out where all the text
goes and all that detail stuff.
Dreamweaver helps a lot for terminal table tortures, because
you can interactively play with virtually every aspect of a table:
span, width, height, properties, width in pixels or percent. If
that's not good enough, just grab the side of a table and stretch
it; check what changes Dreamweaver made in the HTML window. You
can also remove rows or columns any time, even if there's something
in them, which helps those late design decisions.
"...the
most frustrating thing about Dreamweaver is that it will make
you wish everybody had DHTML-capable browsers."
You won't have to worry whether your table code is correct, because
Dreamweaver writes it correctly. If you've added an extra closing
tag here or there, or forgotten a few, Dreamweaver will fix it.
You can turn this rewriting off, though, and even control the
way it formats the HTML it creates.
Dreamweaver is pretty smart, though, and can even identify potential
problems with your code in certain browsers. Just for fun, I tried
Dreamweaver's check on a demonstration
page that shows up some unsupported
table commands in Netscape. Click
here to see Dreamweaver's report.
As long as we're talking about HTML, one of Dreamweaver's best
features is what Macromedia calls (and trademarks) Roundtrip HTML.
That means you can send Dreamweaver code to the included "plain
vanilla" HTML editor (BBEdit or Homesite), edit it there,
and send it back, with no surprises. I found this very useful
because I could switch to Homesite, make some quick changes, and
preview the page instantly in Homesite (which has the ability
to effectively run MSIE directly inside the document window without
launching yet another browser window).
Make the Earth Move
I must admit, however, that nobody gets Dreamweaver just for
its table and frame handling. The cool things you can do with
it include:
- Behaviors, which are JavaScript programs that Dreamweaver
writes for you, allowing actions to take place when events occur.
Behaviors can affect links, images, layers, or the entire document.
- Layers let you position page objects at exact locations, overlap
them, and expose or hide them quickly, without reloading.
- Timelines let you create animations by changing layer properties
directly, so that the browser is effectively running the animation,
rather than a Java applet or plugin of any kind.
Most of these things can only be viewed with a 4th generation
browser, but Dreamweaver tells you exactly what can be done with
which browser.
The help facility is terrific; completely context- and HTML-based,
with little Director movies in just the places where you'd want
to see exactly what has to be done. It's like having one of the
developers walk you through things. They even load a 3D sound
program so you can hear the sound effects to full advantage.
Jump
to Part 3 of this article.
Go back
to Part 1 of this article.
This article first appeared in March 1998.
Web
Developer® Site Feedback
Web Developer®
Copyright © 2000 internet.com Corporation. All rights reserved.
