Macromedia’s release of Dreamweaver 1.0 in the year 1997 brought in a significant change in the Web World of Designing. It soon became a household name for rapid web content development. Being a Web designer, I enjoyed Macromedia’s release for about 10 versions of Dreamweaver from Dreamweaver 1.0 to Dreamweaver 8 within a period of just 8 years. This was followed by Adobe’s acquisition of Dreamweaver in the year 2005. Though Adobe claimed it’s inception to be remarkable yet, I was in two minds. Adobe’s first release was DreamwaeverCS3 in the year 2007 and it also became my first reason to be at a fix. I did not know if I should upgrade my version to Dreamweaver CS3 or not.
But guess what friends I surprised myself by upgrading it to Dreamweaver CS3. I got an integrated version of Dreamweaver and adobe graphics tool like Photoshop. In addition it has an outstanding CSS support with excellently commented codes which helped me to understand how the CSS layout works with ease. It also comes with 32 in built layouts to choose from in fixed and liquid designs. And to top it all it also gives you an option to define a place for CSS according to your choice. So be it an external file or in the head CSS is there where you wanted it to be.
CS3 gives me the spry support and with it I can easily add Ajax widgets and create effects on my Web pages. With Spry support all that one needs to know is how to DRAG, DROP and Incorporate dataset.
Now for a Web designer like the one I am, it has always been a problem for me with the data sources but my stance to upgrade it did a lot in this respect as well. Dreamweaver CS3 provides a wide-ranging support to XSLT by making use of XML files as data sources. Connecting my HTML document with XSLT after viewing the XML in a tree form is of no issue for me now and my nightmares with bulks of XML files in the same format are also gone as I can make template for them in Dreamweaver with XSLT.
This piece of information is for the Intel-based Macintosh users. You people are going to be the happiest lot with the performance enhancements of Dreamweaver CS3. One of the main reasons behind its performance enhancements is that it running on its own platform now and not on Rosetta anymore. This in turn helps in loading at a quicker pace and plain actions like typing responds faster.
Apart from the above mentioned features Adobe’s Device Central and Dreamweaver is also acting as a support to mobile phones by making it simple to foretaste the web pages in a range of mobile phone emulations.
If my friends out there are not completely satisfied with all that I have written about Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 then here’s something for you people to look forward to. Adobe in just 2 and half years has come up with its next Dreamweaver version and it is Dreamweaver CS4 (beta) and I am certainly waiting for an opportunity to come my way so that I can set my hands on its applications.
