Entered CNET Catalog: 07/28/2005
SKU: MACROMEDIADREAMWEAVER8MIC
Manufacturer: Adobe Systems
Manufacturer description
Dreamweaver is the industry-leading web development tool, enabling users to efficiently design, develop and maintain standards-based websites and applications. With Dreamweaver, web developers go from start to finish, creating and maintaining basic websites to advanced applications that support best practices and the latest technologies.User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
User Rating: 
1/10
Cant transfer from Windows to MAC
Pros: I will never buy another Adobe product. What is this stupidity and not being able to transfer my license from Windows to MAC. To make things worse is that I originally had this installed on a MAC and went to Windows.
Cons: ONce I installed onWindows I can not go back to MAC.
User Rating: 
6/10
This is an expensive and difficult program where FrontPage is the opposite
Pros: Cross-server/platform/browser
Cons: Difficult to use and costs two times more than FrontPage; huge system requirements
User Rating: 
4/10
Unfinished, half baked. Stay with 2004 MX
Pros: Better FTP, polished UI
Cons: Buggy and slow
User Rating: 
7/10
Powerful product... unfortunately owned by Adobe
Pros: A powerful web-design software.
Cons: Adobe Customer support
For the record, the product is great. With a little bit of training or some equivalent experience with previous DW software this program lets part-time designers and hobbyists create very professional looking sites. I can only imagine what a designer more experienced than myself could do with this software...
User Rating: 
9/10
The best HTML editor...
Pros: Well intregated with Studio MX 2004. Simple layout. Extensive web language support.
Cons: Little graphical support (simple adjustments)
User Rating: 
8/10
Best on the market and the choice for pros
Pros: Since it is the daddy of html editors it features much better tools, has nice templates, has much better browser compatibility, easy publishing and the choice for professionals but not for novices.
Cons: Too expensive , difficult for novice users, not very easy to work around with, cluttered interface, a bit unstable but not as many cons that I can find.
8 out of 10 I give it.
User Rating: 1/10
Can't transfer license from Windows to Mac
Pros: What's not to like? This is a very good program to edit websites with.
Cons: Very bad licensing terms, tech support
I'm not going to waste $400 just to install this on a different computer.
User Rating: 8/10
Dreamweaver is the daddy of HTML editors.
Pros: Ease of use,regular updates,WYSIWYG enviroment
Cons: expensive,slow loading
This would have be my software choice because it does what I want it to do, and it does it well.
Integration.
Adobe brought Macromedia in 2005 and this offered a exciting prospect for me, that my other packages, such as Photoshop and Image ready could integrate into Dreamweaver, providing a seamless experience. This has succeeded.
Other industry-leading tools such as Flash, Fireworks, and Contribute, as well as Microsoft Word and Excel also work with Dreamweaver 8.
Cross-browser development
To reduce browser errors, Dreamweaver 8 provides a target browser check, and a page -- or site-wide -- report that flags cross-browser compatibility issues. Cross-browser validation gives live inline feedback to the current document, so you are able to specify which browsers to target.
In code view, issues are flagged with red underlining and Dreamweaver provides tooltips for easy fixes.
Flash Video
You are able to drag and drop Flash Video into Dreamweaver 8 to quickly incorporate video to websites and applications.
Support and Working Environments.
Dreamweaver supports PHP, J2EE and Microsoft .NET. It also runs on both Windows and Mac Environments.
XML
You are able to simply point a web page to an XML file or a URL of an XML feed and Dreamweaver will introspect it to enable dragging and dropping the appropriate fields onto the page.
CSS
The CSS interface changes are not radical but they do help locate CSS styles. Finding the CSS code for a particular tag was a nightmare. Now with this software I can located it with a couple of clicks, to be fair Dreamweaver does this particularly well.
Dreamweaver online community
More than 800 free downloadable extensions are available through the Macromedia Dreamweaver Exchange. Also are help and advice guides that I have found helpful.
Dreamweaver also do the following things:
Creating Tables on a Web Page
Place Images & Graphics into Tables
Create Online Forms
Check Spelling & Editing with the Dictionary
Create Websites with Frames
Add PDFs to Web Pages
Create & Insert Rollover Images
Cropp Images on a Page
Create template's
Work with layers
Combine Image Maps & Behaviors
Use the intergrated FTP
View Remote Files
File Check In & Check Out Feature
Create Database Websites
Create a Dynamic Website
Assets and Library Panel
History Panel
Undo facility
Draw Image Maps
Behaviors
and much much more!
Summary
The real beauty with Dreamweaver is that novices and experts alike can have a satisfactory experience with this product, really regardless of experience.
The software is well designed, with the usual navigation, tool bar and menu that you would expect with a market leader.
However Version 8 is so close to MX2004 most users will not particularly notice any change, I didn?t, even the appearance was the same, so I?m not quite sure why they upgraded it to a full new version. For a completely new product, this is to close to its previous version, both of which I have used.
This is a great product, it is slightly over priced.
I would recommend taking a look at Dreamweaver MX2004, this version is virtually the same, it offers the same accessibility, environment and is still available for online upgrades, also it is more than likely a lot cheaper.
User Rating: 9/10
The best webeditor published so far, with so much functionality is hard they could do it better.
Pros: Just, the best, indispensable. Great CSS integration.
Cons: Not recomended for some functions (FTP Client).
The CSS integration it's so easy to use that It's like a dream, a simple CSS tutorial is enought to do professionals CSS websites, without even knowing all or even most of the CSS code.
On the downside, the FTP isn't very reliable, and hard to manage. I wouldn't recommed it. Most other FTP Client software would do the work better. Anyway, it's somewhat more adecuate to have a program dedicated sole to upload files.
In summary, It's a essential to do fast professional looking sites, and could be used for many years without any further upgrade.
User Rating: 8/10
Marketing Hype - MX2004 is More Stable/Professional
Pros: code editor is improved, good idea with the FTP background capabilities, love the new zoom feature
Cons: Macromedia put this out hastily, bugs in the FTP, the file times aren't correct, can't use it in a professional enviornment, no word of when updater will be available
If you have Dreamweaver MX 2004, you have a better version of Dreamweaver than version 8. I can't use 8 in a professional environment due to the way that it stamps file times incorrectly. Collegues are left wondering what the real time was that a page was last worked on. Sometimes the FTP doesn't upload the files that are selected. In a professional environment, this is a major quirk - imagine trying to move 100 files and 10 of them don't make it. You've got to go through all of them to figure out which ones didn't. I've never seen this from another version of Dreamweaver. .
I was hooked by the marketing presentations from Macromedia. I'm glad that Adobe bought them out because the way that the company looked in the end wasn't the same as the first few years I was using their products. But I am afraid of what Adobe will do to the Macromedia suite. KEEP YOUR MX2004 STUDIO. It may contain the last stable version of Dreamweaver. I can imagine working on web sites for the next 5 years with MX2004. If DW8 gets a good update, then I would recommend getting it at that point because the new features are really cool and worth the upgrade if you are in a professional environment. If not, then you may not even notice them.
User Rating: 
10/10
Exactly what the web needed.
Pros: Create and combine rich media, also easy access to your website with built-in FTP client.
Cons: Really, none.
Create and combine rich media, easy access to your website with built-in FTP client. There. Done. Get it.
User Rating: 
2/10
Another abomination from Macromedia
Pros: Makes it easy to pretend to be a professional
Cons: Creates bloated monstrosities
