| CityLinkPCs » Information-technology » The unstoppable rise of Adobe Dreamweaver |
The unstoppable rise of Adobe Dreamweaver
|
View PDF | Print View |
Our company runs training courses on Adobe Dreamweaver, the industry-standard web development software. And we are increasingly finding that the profile of the person wanting to learn Dreamweaver is becoming distinctly, well, frankly, unpredictable! It seems that just about anyone nowadays can find themselves needing to build a website or to create web content in some shape or form.
Our conclusion is that the vast majority of people learning Dreamweaver nowadays are not specialists in web development or web design. They are simply people who need to develop web content in some shape or form and who have chosen or been recommended Dreamweaver as the best tool for the job. Dreamweaver is perceived as the obvious choice for both casual and professional web developers.
Dreamweaver has obtained its position as undisputed number due to the fact that first Macromedia and now Adobe have paid careful attention to the needs of web developers of all types and to the technologies used to build web sites. They have managed to create a product which satisfies the needs of both amateur and professional web developers and which embraces emerging standards in the web sites are constructed. As web developers and web development has evolved, Dreamweaver has evolved with it. That's why Dreamweaver is still around while all of its original competitors have disappeared.
Back in the nineties when web editors (such as PageMill, Hot Metal Pro, FrontPage and Dreamweaver) started to appear, they were greeted with some scepticism by serious web developers (coders) who felt that they produced sloppy code and were really only of interest to people who didn't understand code and, basically didn't know what they were doing. Even back then, Macromedia, who owned Dreamweaver, bundled HomeSite (a Windows HTML code editor) or BBEdit (with the Macintosh version) to keep serious web developers happy.
With each release of Dreamweaver, Macromedia continued to add features which showed that they understood the need to create clean code even when using visual tools. They added features to the program for maintaining the integrity of code and removing redundant elements. They enhanced their coding environment with features like line numbering, code hints and the tag selector, a feature which displays the tag underlying the currently selected element and the hierarchy of tags in which the element is contained. They also added the ability to verify whether a web page contained code incompatible with certain browsers.
Another important feature that has helped to mark out Dreamweaver as a serious web development tool is its inclusion of tools for generating dynamic server side content using industry standard scripting languages such as ASP and ColdFusion and, later, ASP.Net and PHP. This functionality was originally introduced in mid 2000 in a slightly more expensive edition of Dreamweaver called Dreamweaver UltraDev. The idea back then was that heavyweight web developers would buy UltraDev and lightweights would buy the standard edition of Dreamweaver. However, in 2002, Macromedia simply stopped making UltraDev and put all of its functionality into the much cheaper standard edition of Dreamweaver, making Dreamweaver the obvious choice for web developers of all types.
Macromedia also recognised that professional web developers often work in teams and added collaboration features to Dreamweaver which allow a group of people to work on the same web site without treading on each other's toes. They called the feature "File check in and check out". There also created a "design notes" facilities which allows members of development teams to attach notes to individual web pages for the information of the other team members.
Recognising that the web is not a static environment but is still constantly evolving, Macromedia (and now Adobe) have kept an eye on emerging web technologies and incorporated content relating to those technologies. Dreamweaver behaviors can be used to create useful JavaScript functions for such things as form validation. XML code can be edited and validated. Another illustration of the way in which Dreamweaver embraces emerging standards can be seen in the way in which Dreamweaver CS3 now encourages developers to use CSS to layout their pages rather than using tables, making their pages compliant with current standards.
Dreamweaver CS3, the latest version of the program, also incorporates some great new features for adding Ajax functionality to web pages. Ajax offers web developers a way of creating web applications that execute rapidly and are seamlessly incorporated into the standard content of the web page. Coding Ajax web applications requires a good knowledge of JavaScript programming. Using Dreamweaver's Spry Framework for Ajax, developers can create sophisticated Ajax applications without having to write the code themselves.
Each new release of Dreamweaver brings exciting as well as practical new features which always seem to slot nicely into the familiar easy-to-use interface. This coupled with the fact that Dreamweaver always allows experienced professionals full access and control over every aspect of the web pages and web applications they are developing should ensure that the program continues to be the automatic choice for any individual or organisation needing a decent software tool for web development of any kind.
About the Author
Author is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver training courses in London and throughout the UK.
Rating: Pending (36)
