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'Tis to Dream

Toronto Star Fast Forward column for March 15, 2001

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2001

There's a better than average chance are that if you're managing your own Web site, particularly if it's a substantial site, you're using Microsoft's FrontPage to do it. Even Microsoft's competitors acknowledge that. Despite the competition in the Web authoring market from Adobe, Macromedia, and a slew of others, FrontPage is acknowledged as the industry leader. However, despite its rich suite of tools, FrontPage also has disadvantages, not the least of which is that many Internet Service Providers, particularly those offering domain hosting services, have a dislike for it that verges on outright hatred. And that brings us to Marcromedia and version 4 of its omnibus authoring suite for Dreamweaver and Fireworks.

Dream on... 

The Dreamweaver / Fireworks 4 Studio comes with two main applications. 

Dreamweaver is the central authoring and design tool, while Fireworks is a specialized graphical editor precisely tuned for creating fancy Web objects and effects. 

Both rely heavily on Javascript to implement their tricks, but Dreamweaver lets you create sites that are compliant with various generations of Web browsers. You can set it to create sites optimized for Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, or both. And you can be version specific. You can keep the bar low, for versions 3.0 and up or raise it to 4.0 and up, or 5.0 and up. It also supports XML (Extensible Markup Language).

 All of Dreamweaver's older features, such as layer creation (much more precise page element positioning) and its independent property inspectors are still present, but Macromedia has done a lot of work to make the potential screen clutter less of a problem. Each independent item (design window, toolbar, behaviour palette and more) now have "sticky" edges and default sizes that let you create a mosaic on your desktop with no overlaps (of course a nice, big screen run at high resolution also helps). 

The main working window now has three options: code view, design view, or a combined view that shows both. Dreamweaver 4 has a new integrated text editor so that you can hand-code either HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or Javascript and see the results immediately. You also get to see your mistakes quickly too, because the program will instantly highlight broken code (if, for example, you leave off an end tag or misspell a tag element). 

Here Come Debugger

There's also a new Javascript debugger that lets you view the code as a script executes in either Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. In design view, there are two more options: Standard, where you insert tables and cells in the traditional way, through a dialogue box and menu, or a new Layout view that lets you "draw" table elements, then drag them around with great abandon until you have your page just the way you want it. 

Not sure how a particular HTML or XML tag is supposed to behave or what your options are? Another new feature is the Code Reference window. Based on O'Reilly HTML and Javascript books, the reference window is a handy guide to have open while you work. 

One other new feature set I particularly like is that Dreamweaver will now track site-wide changes – something it wouldn't do in version 3. For example, if you change a page name that is referenced in other pages, Dreamweaver will trickle that change throughout the entire site. It was one of the main advantages (at least for me) that FrontPage 2000 had over the previous version. 

Dreamweaver has also revised its templates so that you can create borders that will reflect throughout your site (another advantage FP had). But Macromedia has gone one step farther for collaborative efforts – you can designate parts of the template as editable or locked so that overeager colleagues can't arbitrarily change (i.e., break) essential template items such as navigation bars. Cascading style sheets are a mystery to a lot of amateur Web page authors (and to some pros, too). 

However, Dreamweaver 4 makes creating custom stylesheets and attaching them to your whole site, a single page, or a specific element, dead simple. If you're heavily into Web page design, you probably already know about Macromedia's other products, Shockwave and Flash. Now that browser plugins for these alternate Web tools are so widely available (and come pre-attached to newer versions of Internet Explorer, for instance), you may even want to play with them. Dreamweaver 4 doesn't include either application, but it does include hooks for them and it provides two Flash features for creating buttons and text that do interesting things. 

PC? Mac? You choose...

This is possibly the point where I should mention that the Dreamweaver / Fireworks suite isn't just for PC/Windows users. There are both PC and Mac versions, although they don't ship in the same box. 

Earlier versions of Dreamweaver were geared toward team collaboration with a Check In / Check Out feature, but there are enhancements here, too. A new configurable site window lets you add comments and notes for other design team members that are file-specific. Integrated e-mail works when a team member has checked into the site. Their name appears in the site management window with a direct e-mail link. 

If the goodies in the package aren't enough for you, Macromedia has an extensive list of addons at its Web site (www.macromedia.com) and a "Package Manager" that lets you download from or submit cute little code snippets to the wider Dreamweaver community. These extensions are available for both Dreamweaver and Fireworks. 

If I had a complaint (and I have very few about this release), it would be in the way the two programs are integrated – and Macromedia loudly proclaims the "round-trip graphics editing" as a major feature of the suite. Once you've built a fancy Fireworks button or other element (with up to four states – up, over while up, down, over while down), you can create a file that can be imported into Dreamweaver. Once it's in Dreamweaver, you can click on it and call up Fireworks. But unless you call Fireworks first independently, there's no hook within Dreamweaver to call it up to create a new object. And, if you start with Fireworks, you can't call Dreamweaver from within its interface. It's a small lapse, but it's annoying. What does Fireworks do? Well, aside from creating fancy buttons and other rollover images that change when you approach them with your mouse, it's also dynamite for creating image maps and slicing images so that different parts to different things (click on the monkey to see the zoo; click on the monkey's banana to see the restaurant menu).

Overkill? 

If all you want to do on your Web site is to have some basic text and a picture or two, you'll probably stay with FrontPage Express, the HTML editor in Navigator or any one of a number of shareware editors downloaded from the Internet. However, if you want to add some pizzaz, you need to go up-market. 

The Dreamweaver / Fireworks 4 Studio is relatively new, so it's a little hard to find. Some Canadian online sources are carrying it for between $622 to $681, with $300 being an average for the upgrade version. The products are also available separately for about $380 to $415 each (so the Studio makes sense). By the way, my experience indicates that Canadian online sources tend to charge more than storefront retailers (you're paying for the convenience and that "free" shipping). It pays to shop around.

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