If you trade in web sites that throb with scripted animation, event-triggered audio and Shockwave movies, Dreamweaver 1.0 will prove a crucial and rewarding tool. Its powerful code-generating abilites reduce tedious scripting operations to a few intuitive mouse clicks. Moreover, since these effects work best in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, chances are you're playing to that audience and can take full advantage of Dreamweaver's feature set.

For my more conservative needs I found Macromedia's emphasis on event-driven scripting and cascading styles a bit pushy, especially given the sorry state of browser object model standardization. Dreamweaver tries hard not to choose sides, but the pages it produces work best in the robust Dynamic HTML envrionment of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. As expected, some effects failed to work at all in Netscape Communicator 4.x.

Of greater concern is the fact that some of the JavaScript Dreamweaver outputs is capable of crashing Netscape Navigator 3.x. I had to reboot a Windows 95 machine after one crash -- generally not the way to attract repeat traffic. Unless you know your audience is using MSIE 4.0, I recommend exercising Dreamweaver's canned behaviors and timelines, neat but premature features, very cautiously.

In this review I'll cover the salient features of Macromedia's groundbreaking product so you can better decide whether it belongs in your arsenal.

The eyes have it

Dreamweaver succeeds stunningly as a visual HTML authoring tool. I wrote this review in it, and was repeatedly impressed by the fidelity of the page as viewed in a browser to that in Dreamweaver's main panel. Moreover, I like the way the tool respects any HTML adjustments I decide to make in an external editor. Dreamweaver does its WYSIWYG thing without overwriting an author's code.

This I regard as a major achievement, not because I have any experience coding visual design tools but because so many ambitious precursors have failed. From first-generation attempts such as InContext Spider and Netscape Navigator Gold to near-misses like Symantec Visual Page 1.1, the goal of building a WYSIWYG HTML editor that respects source code evaded solution. Until now.

Macromedia calls this feature Roundtrip HTML, and it's great, because it embraces the diverse pedigree of corporate web pages. Older pages authored elsewhere being maintained in Dreamweaver can retain their original look and feel. Webmasters with time-worn coding habits can auto-generate in Dreamweaver and hand tune to their heart's content. I, for instance, occasionally choose to use the formatting tag <BIG>, which Dreamweaver does not support; but if I put it in a web page with a text editor, Dreamweaver doesn't choke or replace it with <FONT SIZE="+1">. Thank you, Macromedia.

Dreamweaver supports HTML editing in two ways. First, it can display HTML in a floating text window, the HTML Inspector, where simple tag adjustments can be performed. This is a primitive place, with no editing amenities besides the ability to cut and paste text. For more sophisticated tinkering Dreamweaver bundles Allaire HomeSite 3.0, my favorite Windows 95/NT HTML editor.

A minor carp: This wise pairing is capable of and deserves much better integration. While the two programs worked well together on my Windows 95 machine, they failed to recognize each other under Windows NT 4.0. In fact the installation routine for Dreamweaver never mentions HomeSite; neither does the slim manual Using Dreamweaver. Roundtrip HTML will really rock when these tools communicate as seamlessly as Dreamweaver and its native HTML Inspector.

Object-oriented HTML

Dreamweaver's authoring interface is part word processor, part RAD [Rapid Application Development] environment. Like pages in a word processor, Dreamweaver files start out blank; you type on them and drop objects such as images, Java applets or Macromedia Flash movies. You can even spell check your work and keep a personal dictionary.

But this is no ordinary word processor. The metaphor is object-oriented: everything you see, everything you control in your Dreamweaver pages has properties and (potentially) behaviors. In this regard the interface more closely resembles one of the Java RAD tools reviewed by Intranet Journal in January.

The basic Dreamweaver environment is shown below.

Dreamweaver interface (enlarge).

As you can see, Dreamweaver makes extensive use of floating windows, intelligently placing them around your screen. In addition to the visual editing window, there are a number of Proprerty Inspectors, which show the current value of object properties (such as font size and face for a section of text). These properties in turn control the underlying HTML.

For example, to create an <H3> heading using Dreamweaver's visual interface, you would highlight the heading text, then use the Text Property Inspector to set the Format property to Heading 3. It sounds awkward, but it's actually quite intuitive, and more in keeping with tomorrow's component software design than traditional document editing.

Of course, thanks to Roundtrip HTML, you can do the same thing in HomeSite (or your own favorite editor) using HTML tags instead of properties. Dreamweaver will still respect your code in the morning.

Tables, frames and styles

Every object of significance gets its own Property Inspector in Dreamweaver. For instance, tables are initially defined with a dialogue, then adjusted via the Table Property Inspector. (See figure below.) Dreamweaver could take a page from HomeSite's book here by providing a Table Wizard for the initial definition. (The whole product is curiously devoid of wizards.)

Table Property Inspector (enlarge).

The properties of table rows and columns, as well as individual cells, can also be accessed by right-clicking the mouse. Colors can be entered in RGB hexadecimal ('#FFFFFF') or text ('white'), though no list of color names is provided. HomeSite could help here, since it offers a number of web-tailored palettes.

But Dreamweaver leapfrogs HomeSite and other HTML authoring tools when it comes to frames. The screen shot below shows a sample web page consisting of a left and right frame. The small floating window is called the Frame Palette, and shows the page's frame architecture -- here, a left and right column. The Frame Palette works in conjunction with the Property Inspector to give you total control over frames, visually, without resorting to framesets and other arcana.

Frame support in Dreamweaver (enlarge).

Once you name each frame (e.g., Navigation, above left; Content, above right), hyperlinks on the page can be targeted to them using a dynamically built drop down list in the Link Property Inspector. In the figure above, for instance, the left-hand links 'Home Page' and 'Order Form' are targeted to the right-hand Content pane. Very productive.

Styles are collections of formatting properties that can be created, saved and reused with ease in Dreamweaver. A sample style sheet is shown below. I found Dreamweaver's support for this emerging standard intuitive and complete; the only downside is that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and their associated <STYLE> tags are ignored by commercial browsers antedating MSIE 4.0 and Communicator 4.04.

Style definition dialogue (enlarge).

If your browser does support CSS, the section headings in this review should be colored dark green on a light yellow background; otherwise they'll be black on white.

Missed Behavior

Now we get to Dreamweaver's weakest strength: the ability to control object behavior -- or dynamically set properties -- in your web pages. This requires client-side scripting, which Dreamweaver automates through a likable point-and-click interface consistent with the rest of its design.

Nevertheless, I give Dreamweaver low marks on its ambitious Dynamic HTML features, for two reasons. First, some of the code it generates is bad enough to crash browsers and whole PCs. Such code isn't rare, unfortunately; the Tutorial example that comes with Dreamweaver 1.0 put my Windows 95 test bed in a JavaScript coma. That this is probably the fault of Netscape Navigator's buggy script engine is no excuse. Macromedia should expend a fraction of the effort it lavishes on generating precisely timed animations to add browser-detection code that avoids ugly crashes.

Dreamweaver does take browser variances into account with a unique "Check Target Browsers..." feature. HTML is checked against a user-specified list of browsers that can include any or all of versions 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. It's a useful feature that yields a clean browser-based report, although HomeSite's integrated HTML Validator is much stronger.

The second reason I don't like the behavioral bells and whistles is cost. At $495 Dreamweaver is one of the most expensive HTML authoring tools around. Dynamic HTML is fun, but it doesn't justify added cost in a tool whose core value comes from a visual object-oriented interface and Roundtrip HTML. Melding these Dreamweaver features seamlessly with the tag-oriented amenities of Allaire HomeSite could, I think, be accomplished at a price point under $200 -- and that's the authoring tool I want.

On the other hand, if you do extensive scripting, Dreamweaver's Behavior Palette could repay your investment in a matter of hours. For example, I added MouseOver and MouseOut event handlers to the link below in about thirty seconds -- much faster than I could have done it with HomeSite.

Consider, too, that Dreamweaver is just one of Macromedia's family of web design tools. Professional designers should factor in the advantges of an authoring environment that includes Flash for anti-aliased layouts and compact vector animations, Dreamweaver for HTML, and the soon-to-be-released Fireworks for creating and optimizing web images.

Macromedia, Inc.
600 Townsend
San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone: 415-252-2000
Fax: 415-626-0554