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Happy birthday! Dreamweaver is five years old. In software years that makes it middle aged, but Dreamweaver is far from going through a mid-life crisis; it has been reborn fitter, faster and much, much stronger.
Users of Dreamweaver 4, the web design tool that has captured 87 per cent of the US market for professional web development, will hardly believe it possible, but we speak the truth.
You'll probably be as surprised as we were to discover that the most common Dreamweaver-related technical support query relates to the site definition dialogue box.
This is the screen used to define how and where your files are saved and uploaded. It seems only logical, then, that Dreamweaver MX now features a site wizard, particularly as this release includes the full functionality of the previously separate Ultradev.
This is no longer simply a page layout tool; it is an online application builder with support for PHP, ASP, ASP.Net and web services, JSP and, of course, Coldfusion.
Now for the technical bits. Although there is no assumption that you already know what any of these technologies are, the standalone developer should be prepared to perform some server-type tweaking on their PC.
There is no bundled web server so, if you are running Windows ME or XP Home, you'll have to go out and download one, while Windows 98, 2000 and XP Professional users can opt for Microsoft's Internet Information Server or PWS.
Likewise, depending on your technology of choice, you may find yourself hunting down PHP, MySQL or Jrun. It is a shame Macromedia didn't include these as part of the default install but you could argue, that with PHP and MySQL being open source, it would have ended up shipping outdated code sooner rather than later.
We were also disappointed that there is still no easier way to define which files should be transferred to the remote server in Ascii mode than to manually edit a configuration file.
However, as you'll probably only ever need to add one or two extensions to the already impressive default list, it's not too great a chore.
The 'new file' dialogue box has been expanded to include a templates page which draws together the templates from every defined site, making it easier to base a new site or page on existing work.
Nested templates
Of even greater benefit is a brand new feature in the shape of nested templates. Macromedia has recognised that, while many sites have a unified skin, some subsections would benefit from slight differentiation, for example a unique menu.
Nested templates allow you to lay out an overall design that permeates the whole site, while containing further sub-templates. Redesigning one of these sub-templates will only change those pages that specifically make use of it, while amending the site-wide template will affect every page on the site.
'Optional' regions take this flexibility to a third level. Anything set as an optional region within a template will be displayed by default on all dependent pages. It can, however, be simply switched off on an individual page.
The most common use for this would be in a templated menu bar, where you might want to make the link to the current page 'disappear' to maximise screen space and avoid confusion.
Optional regions and nesting reduce the number of templates you'll need to produce when developing large sites, and is likely to prove a godsend for developers of small sites with hosting packages that don't offer Server Side Includes.
It's not an efficient replacement as it will mean uploading every affected page, but it is the only viable alternative if you want to avoid considerable manual recoding.
Sadly, Macromedia has rewritten the template engine to make these functions possible and, as a result, editable regions within Dreamweaver MX templates are not recognised by Dreamweaver 4.
Nor is there any way to export version 4-compliant versions of an MX template, which could be a problem for an organisation considering a staggered switch from 4 to MX.
It is in designing templates that you come to appreciate the speed and flexibility afforded through the integration of the MX interface. MX is more than just Dreamweaver: it is a Macromedia strategy, one part of which is a flexible, customisable interface.
This includes Dreamweaver's Insert toolstrip, which is organised into context-sensitive tabbed pages; developing with PHP, for example, adds a PHP tab featuring the relevant tools.
The template tab of this toolstrip gives you one-click operations for defining editable regions, optional regions and nested-template placement. Previously you had to trawl through a series of menus, and even then you could achieve only half as much as you can here.
By reducing the amount of code used to define a table, Dreamweaver MX considerably reduces the size and complexity of a page. It now specifies cell widths only on top-row cells, and heights only in the first column rather than on every 'tr' and 'td' tag.
Not only will this make your pages download slightly quicker, it makes rewriting the page in code rather than design-view far easier.
Help for first-timers
Code hinting may finally tempt first-time coders to join the majority of Dreamweaver developers who at some point dump the mouse and hit the keyboard. The Dreamweaver MX code-editing view has fully context sensitive Word-like auto-complete functions.
Type 'a h', for example, and it will suggest that you mean 'a href'. Expand this to 'a href="index.htm" class=' and it will display a list of styles drawn from the style sheet attached to or defined within the current page.
Right-clicking on a link gives access to the tag editor, a dialogue of entry boxes for defining attributes relevant to the tag.
Each is accompanied by an icon to indicate the browsers with which it is compatible, and is linked to Dreamweaver's integrated reference works to save you switching between the dialogue and reference panel.
In whatever way they were developed, your pages will benefit from a reworking with Dreamweaver MX, but its real power is in developing dynamic sites.
We used PHP and MySQL, running IIS under Windows 2000 Professional, to produce a web-based contacts database. Connecting to the database, which need be no more than an empty table at this stage, is a simple matter of binding it to the page.
Once bound, a range of application-specific tools practically negate any requirement to understand SQL commands. Single-click operations add navigation elements for moving forwards and backwards through records, or jumping to the beginning or end of the results list.
Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of visual page design should be able to pass attributes from one page to another.
Once you have defined a standard form, the form action can be pointed at your results page which, in turn, will pick up the content of the input field for use as a search term, pulling all matching results out of the database.
Our step-by-step guide (below) shows how quickly a database-driven site can be established.
With equivalent functionality for the most common web development platforms, professional developers should be worried. When the general public discovers how easy it is to build database-driven sites with an application that costs about the same as four hours of a developer's time, they could be out of a job.
Seven steps to a database-driven website using MySQL and PHP
- Connect to the database by opening a new page, clicking the bindings tab and completing the dialogue box.
- Select the database in the connection box, and the relevant table, then click OK.
- Click the dynamic table button to define the area that will display the database contents.
- The dynamic table dialogue appears. All you need do is tell it how many records you would like to display at a time.
- Now that the table is on your page, click the Live Data View button to populate it using your database.
- Click Recordset Navigation Status to add a line indicating the record numbers on view.
- Add control buttons by clicking Recordset Navigation Bar, and the necessary links will appear.
Price: £299 (£254.47 ex VAT); upgrade £149 (£126.81 ex VAT)
System requirements: 300MHz or faster processor; Windows 98, 2000, NT, ME, XP; Netscape Navigator 4 and above or Internet Explorer 4 and above; 96Mb of Ram (128Mb recommended); 275Mb of free hard drive space; 256-colour monitor capable of 800 x 600 (1,024 x 768 recommended).
Contact: Macromedia
www.macromedia.com/uk
See also:
An impressive web development tool with powerful back-end and server-based technologies. 20 Aug 2002
A good choice for those who want a simple way to start designing web pages. 19 Jul 2002
The pretender to Dreamweaver's throne offers some appealing web design features. 27 Mar 2002All Internet Tools
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