The Unstoppable Rise Of Adobe Dreamweaver


by Andrew Whiteman - Date: 2008-09-20 - Word Count: 865 Share This!

Our company runs training courses on Adobe Dreamweaver, the industry-standard web development software. And we are increasingly finding that the profile of the person wanting to learn Dreamweaver is becoming distinctly, well, frankly, unpredictable! It seems that just about anyone nowadays can find themselves needing to build a website or to create web content in some shape or form.

Of the people now wanting to learn Dreamweaver the vast majority attending our courses will not necessarily become specialists in web development. Rather they have a need to develop content for a web site or to build a web site for a particular purpose. They have looked into the choices of software available and come to the conclusion that Dreamweaver is the best package to use and now they need to learn how it works.

So how has Dreamweaver attained its enviable position as the industry standard web development software? And is this position deserved? The second question is easier to answer than the first, so let's deal with that one first. The answer is "Yes": Dreamweaver deserves its position because it is such an excellent piece of software and because it demystifies the whole business of web development and puts it within reach of so many people. As to how Dreamweaver got where it is, well it did so by evolving, responding to changes in the web arena and embracing new web technologies as they have come along.

In the early days of web development, there were two types of web development tool: those used by coders (the specialists who understood the technologies underlying web pages) and the visual software tools which functioned in a manner similar to word processing and page layout programs and were used by non-specialists and inexperienced web developers. The visual programs (which included Dreamweaver) had a very poor reputation among web professionals who found that the code produced by these programs was clumsy, verbose and inefficient.

While other programs such as FrontPage were content to generate code which contained a vast array of confusing proprietary elements which were not essential to the page, Macromedia were adding features to Dreamweaver which demonstrated their commitment to making it a serious web development tool. With each release of the program, they made the coding environment more complete, adding features such as line numbers, code-hints and colour-coding. They also added powerful utilities for checking and cleaning up the code generated visually and in other environments such as Microsoft Word.

In June 2000, Macromedia added another string to their bow by releasing a special edition of Dreamweaver called Dreamweaver UltraDev. This version of Dreamweaver contained all the features of the basic programs but added special utilities for creating dynamic content. Users could create server-side content using ASP, ColdFusion or JavaServer pages. The program automatically generated code for connecting to a database, retrieving and displaying data and linking elements on a web page to a data source. Two years later, they dropped UltraDev and added all of its functionality into the standard version of Dreamweaver, further enhancing its appeal to serious web developers.

Macromedia further enhanced Dreamweaver's reputation as a tool for serious web developers by added collaborative functionality to the program; features which acknowledged the fact that a lot of web developers are part of a team. Dreamweaver's two main collaboration features are "File check in Check out" and "Design Notes". The former allows developer A to open a file and check it out; so that developer B knows that the file is being worked on by A and doesn't start making conflicting changes to the file. The design notes feature allows developer A to attach a note to a particular file which can then be picked up by developer B.

The web is constantly evolving and new technologies are being developed to make web sites more appealing to visitors. The owners of Dreamweaver have always been very good at embracing these new technologies sooner rather than later. An illustration of this can be seen in the latest version of Dreamweaver which includes a series of CSS layouts which can be used by newbie web developers to create pages which separate web content from information relating to the styling of that content. Dreamweaver also has useful features for making it easy to make your content accessible to web surfers with disabilities.

Dreamweaver CS3, the latest version of the program, also incorporates some great new features for adding Ajax functionality to web pages. Ajax offers web developers a way of creating web applications that execute rapidly and are seamlessly incorporated into the standard content of the web page. Coding Ajax web applications requires a good knowledge of JavaScript programming. Using Dreamweaver's Spry Framework for Ajax, developers can create sophisticated Ajax applications without having to write the code themselves.

So, in short, Dreamweaver has all bases covered. Design-oriented web developers can use the program as a visual tool that generates reliable code. Experienced developers and programmers can work in code view and preview their work as required. Thus, the program makes web development approachable for just about any experienced computer user without dumbing down. This makes it deservedly the automatic choice for anyone who intends to become a web developer and needs a reliable software tool.

Related Tags: css, web development, computer software, information technology, dreamweaver, cascading style sheets, adobe dreamweaver cs3, computers and the internet

The The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver Classes at their central London training centre.

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