New Features in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
Posted by: Andrew Whiteman in Web Design, tags: Web DesignSome upgrades are rip-offs, some are bug-ridden, some are too minor to worry about, but some are usually must-haves. Dreamweaver upgrades tend to fall into this last category.
Dreamweaver is used in web-development and, because the web is constantly evolving, each new Dreamweaver release usually offers features which reflect the rapidly changing environment in which the program is used. Adobe recently acquired Macromedia, the company who created Dreamweaver. So what have Adobe come up with in this their first upgrade since inheriting everybody’s favourite web development tool?
Since the release of Dreamweaver 8, way back in 2005, the use of cascading style sheets (CSS) in web page layout has become widely recognised as the way forward. However, CSS page layout coding can be a little daunting for new web designers. Dreamweaver CS3 includes a wide range of customisable CSS layouts which include useful comments for inexperienced developers explaining how the designs function. The layouts may be used not only to create individual pages but also Dreamweaver templates.
This new version of Dreamweaver embraces the change that has taken place in the way web pages are supposed to be built. When the last version of Dreamweaver, version 8, was released, web designers were mainly using tables to lay out the content of their pages. Now, the recommend method is to use cascading style sheets (CSS). The new Dreamweaver contains a variety of CSS layouts which can be used for creating both pages and templates and which contain useful comments for designers on how the layouts work.
One of Dreamweaver CS3’s nicest new CSS features is the ability to move CSS code form one place to another. This is particularly useful for updating pages created before CSS was used for page layout. CSS code can now be easily transferred from inside a page, both embedded style sheets and inline styles, to an external style sheet.
The last time Dreamweaver was upgraded, Photoshop was a rival to Macromedia’s own Fireworks. Now that Dreamweaver and Photoshop are part of the same stable, Adobe has enhanced their compatibility. You can now copy a slice, selection or entire document from Photoshop, move over to Dreamweaver and paste it. This brings up a special window which enables to optimise and save the copied pixels as a new image.
Dreamweaver now has support for Ajax, a programming model which uses various technologies, including JavaScript, to create fast, interactive web applications that respond to user actions by sending and receiving data to and from a server and refreshing elements of a web page without first having to reload that page. The Spry Framework, included in Dreamweaver CS3 is a collection of JavaScript code which offers developers a painless way of adding simple Ajax content to their pages.
There are three types of Spry content: widgets, special effects and data sets. Spry Widgets are clickable page elements which respond to user interaction in funky ways. For example, there is a tabbed panel widget which displays different content in the same part of the page depending on which tab the user clicks on. There are also widgets for creating navigational menus and submenus and for validating text fields, text areas and select elements on a form.
Spry effects can be applied to wide range of HTML components and include the ability to fade, highlight, zoom and shrink page elements in response to user interaction.
Spry data sets are JavaScript components which allow Dreamweaver users to design pages that display data pulled in from XML files. The data can be set up in a summary/detail fashion such that anyone viewing the page can click on a something already displayed to bring up detailed information on that item.
Dreamweaver CS3 is also the first version of the program to offer compatibility with Intel-based and PowerPC Macintosh systems. It also runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista systems.
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