Macromedia Dreamweaver MX review

This ability to preview before you create a page is very useful, and you can edit the predefined CSSs once you've selected the one closest to your needs. New to Dreamweaver MX is the ability to apply styles so that certain files won't be visible in the Design view, or only visible in the Design view. This means that you can hide configuration files from other designers of the Web site, for example. Users can now alter the font type and sizes of several areas of Dreamweaver, which helps readability, particularly when used on very high-resolution monitors - my own setup is 1,800 x 1,600, so I particularly appreciate this new feature. In fact, in an earlier version of the code, one of the fonts was set so small that the tag browser looked like a series of lines rather than text.

The main design area is a blank page that can be switched between Design, Code or split Design/Code views. The first thing existing Dreamweaver users will notice is the row of tabs on the 'insert' bar across the top. These tabs are similar to the ones found in HomeSite and enable the user to quickly insert the relevant tags for various Web objects. Not rocket science, but it's still a surprisingly useful feature, particularly as it automatically puts the closing tag in the correct place.

The new dockable and collapsible windows are a key feature of the latest design of workspace in Dreamweaver MX. These behave in a similar fashion to the windows in Visual Studio by Microsoft - as you expand one, the others shrink to make room for it. You therefore end up with a strip of information panes down one side of your workspace. These windows can be moved and docked either side of the main design area, which is a great improvement over the previous floating panes, where your Dreamweaver windows would often disappear as you changed focus onto another application on your Desktop. This behaviour is still there if you want it though - just drag the window off the design area and onto the Desktop space, then as Dreamweaver loses focus these 'orphaned' windows will disappear and reappear as Dreamweaver loses and regains focus.

It's amazing how many Dreamweaver users don't bother to use templates when designing Web sites. I find them so useful that I consider getting the template right to be the most important stage when coding a Web site - after that, the site will build quickly and reliably. In this respect, Macromedia has done some considerable work. Templates can now inherit properties from another template, so you can have a main template with subtemplates. When you change the main one, these changes are reflected in the subtemplates as well as further pages that are built on these. You can also define repeating regions and editable tags within a template - a user could be allowed to change, say, the height of a table row but not its colour. The possibilities are endless and will no doubt appeal to sites that are supported by a variety of people.

There's been a lot of talk about legislation to force Web sites to be designed with disabled people in mind. One particular example requires extra description attributes to be added to some tags so that devices for visually impaired people, such as screen readers, can make sense of the pages. These screen readers rely on hints like alt tags on images to understand the Web page. They work surprisingly well and Macromedia has done a lot of work making Flash readable by such devices. With Dreamweaver MX, you can switch on various options that will test and prompt you to enter the necessary accessibility tags as you design the page. Dreamweaver MX can also report on a page or site about what needs to be changed to comply, but it's much better to have this prompt as you go. This move towards better accessibility has been extended to the program itself, and now the user interface is fully keyboard accessible as well as supporting screen readers.