Software Review:
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Part 3
By David
Fiedler
A Couple of Rants
For a product that was developed by Macintosh-loving designers,
a few user interface details could have been improved. The toolbars
operate as "floating windows" which you can move anywhere
around the screen in a Mac-like way, though they don't "dock"
like many Windows programs do.
While competitor NetObjects figured out how to make Fusion's
similar pop-up windows "rollershade" up and down like
the Mac, Dreamweaver uses the menu bar to enable or disable the
three prime floating windows (objects, properties, and launcher)
individually, while others (such as styles, behaviors, and timeline)
can be toggled on or off with individual function keys.
More confusing is the fact that if you use any of these function
keys, the three prime windows are turned off, and have to each
be re-enabled by hand. The good news is that you can turn all
enabled floating windows on or off instantly with the F4 key.
There were a few other minor things I found annoying. The icons
on the Launcher and the little bar on the bottom right of the
screen, which refer to the same objects, are inconsistent (not
to mention that some of them are unintuitive). And opening a browse
window for images should really show you thumbnails of the images,
considering the target market for this product is designers and
that so many files are given idiotic names like "image04.gif".
The inspector window does get around to showing you a thumbnail
(after the image has been selected, when it's too late
anyway), but it's only about the size of a large housefly.
But really, the most frustrating thing about Dreamweaver is that
it will make you wish everybody had DHTML-capable browsers.
That's Not All, Folks
There are a number of online resources for Dreamweaver users,
some provided by Macromedia and some not. These include:
There's also a very active newsgroup
for Dreamweaver users. What I find fascinating is the amount of
user interest and participation for a product that's only been
out for 90 days as this article is being written.
The Bottom Line
Macromedia's Dreamweaver is an elegant product that gives you
the ability to take full advantage of everything today's browsers
can handle. While it might be a bit much for beginners, it's relatively
easy to use, intuitive, powerful, and -- most important for people
working every day -- it doesn't screw up your code. If you can
afford it, give
it a try.
-- David Fiedler
Go back
to Part 1 of this article.
This article first appeared in March 1998.
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