What’s new in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
A lot of software upgrades are not really worth buying, being over-priced and often full of bugs. Dreamweaver upgrades, however, always tend to be worth getting.
Since Dreamweaver Is a web development tool, new features tend to reflect changes in the web technology, such as the growing importance of CSS. It’s not usually just a case of introducing a few snazzy new tools for the sake of it.
The previous version of Dreamweaver, version 8, assumed that most users were using tables for the layout of their pages. Since then, there has been a shift towards creating more accessible page layouts using cascading style sheets (CSS). This change is reflected in Dreamweaver CS3 which now includes a series of useful CSS layouts which can be used as the basis for new pages or, more typically, new templates. Each layout contains HTML comments which explain how they are put together and how they can be modified.
Manipulation of CSS code has also been made easier with the addition of features for reorganising styles and transferring them between style sheets. Users can now automatically transfer an inline CSS style to a style sheet or convert an embedded style sheet into an external one.
Dreamweaver CS3’s browser compatibility check allows developers to target specific versions of all the major browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Safari) and generate a report detailing CSS-related issues with elements on the current page.
The new version of Dreamweaver now contains a great utility called the browser compatibility check. This lets you choose a particular browser, such as Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, Safari or Netscape, and comes up with a detailed report of any issues with the display of your CSS in the specified browser.
As well as enhanced support for CSS, Dreamweaver now allows the inclusion of elements of the new Ajax technology which uses JavaScript to add a new level of interactivity to web pages by updating the page with elements from a server without having to reload the page. Dreamweaver’s implementation of Ajax is via the Spry framework. This is a collection of JavaScript-based code which provides a simple way for web designers to add Ajax content to their pages without having to type a line of code.
Dreamweaver CS2 has several different kinds of widgets. For example, there are menus and submenus which allow developers to design complex navigation systems which would otherwise take days to code. Then there are form validation widgets which check the content entered by a user into form fields. There is also a widget for creating a tabbed interface which displays different content in the same place depending on which tab the user clicks on.
Spry effects can be applied to a wide range of HTML elements. They allow designers to have images and other page content fade, shrink, zoom etc. in response to actions carried out by the user such as moving the mouse pointer over a particular element.
Spry Data sets are JavaScript objects that display data from an XML source in an HTML table. There is also a useful drill-down capability whereby users can click on summary information displayed in rows of a table to display detailed information in another region of the page.
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.
