DREAMWEAVER OVERVIEW
Dreamweaver is a popular web development program because of its stability and incredible capacity for advanced users. Dreamweaver allows changing between layers and tables. Dreamweaver allows you to design your pages with layers and then it will automatically transform those layers into tables, without losing any of your document's structure.
Dreamweaver can create an image map (an image with many different links) from a normal image inside the program itself; it has an HTML reference if you have any doubt about a tag, it lets you create interactive images without any external JavaScript, as it writes the scripts itself, and a bunch of other awesome options!
Dreamweaver's compatibility with other Macromedia products, such as Flash or Fireworks, is as perfect as FrontPage is with other Office programs, even if you don't have Flash, Dreamweaver can create Flash Buttons or text, as it keeps your Web site's files in order for future uploading.
You can always keep Dreamweaver up-to-date with its Extensions (useful add-ons made by advanced users): from ASP or PHP server side scripting to new HTML tags. Also, it is compatible with the newest Web development technologies, such as Cascading Style Sheets, which can be created inside the program.
What you can do with Dreamweaver 8
The visual editing features in Dreamweaver let you quickly create web pages without writing a line of code. You can view all your site elements or assets and drag them from an easy-to-use panel directly into a document. You can streamline your development workflow by creating and editing images in Macromedia Fireworks or another graphics application, and then import them directly into Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver also provides tools that make it easy to add Flash assets to web pages.
In addition to drag-and-drop features that help you build web pages, Dreamweaver provides a full-featured coding environment that includes code-editing tools (such as code coloring, tag completion, a coding toolbar, and code collapse) and language reference material on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), and other languages. Macromedia Roundtrip HTML technology imports your hand-coded HTML documents without reformatting the code; you can then reformat code with your preferred formatting style.
Dreamweaver also lets you build dynamic, database-driven web applications using server technologies such as CFML, ASP.NET, ASP, JSP, and PHP. If your preference is for working with XML data, Dreamweaver provides tools that let you easily create XSLT pages, attach XML files, and display XML data on your web pages.
Dreamweaver is fully customizable. You can create your own objects and commands, modify keyboard shortcuts, and even write JavaScript code to extend Dreamweaver capabilities with new behaviors, Property inspectors, and site reports.
What's new in Dreamweaver 8
Dreamweaver 8 includes many new features that help you build websites and applications with a minimal amount of time and effort. Dreamweaver makes complex technologies simple and accessible, helping you accomplish more in less time.
Following are a few of the key new features in Dreamweaver 8:
- Zoom tool and guides
- Visual XML data binding
- New CSS Styles panel
- CSS layout visualization
- Code collapse
- Coding toolbar
- Background file transfer
- Insert Flash Video command
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