Dreamweaver CS4 review
The Properties panel has been revamped to make it much easier to change the most basic of text styles, such as bold, italics, font name and size. Its reduced height wastes less space, and HTML and CSS buttons onits left-hand side switch between corresponding properties. You can still apply text formatting directly to HTML, but the CSS tab lets you modify them in CSS now.
Selecting text and making a change in thepanel opens a dialog to define a new rule, and existing rules can be modified by clicking inside a block. Then the Targeted Rule list comes into play, showing the most specific CSS selector applied to that block. Clicking it lets you step back up the cascade, but it’s not so useful in complex documents where long compounds are indistinguishable.
Elsewhere, Adobe continues to tighten links between its applications. Instead of placing a web-ready image on a page, Dreamweaver now uses Smart Objects to link to original Photoshop documents and regenerate web graphics when the source is changed, trimming quite a few steps to get an updated image onto the page. When you import a PSD, you’re asked to choose the format and size to publish to the web. Handily, you can also constrain the region exported if the PSD’s canvas is larger than you need.
When the source is updated, a symbol at the top-left of the image lets you know that it’s out of date, which is easily remedied, reusing your original optimisation settings and avoiding the more laborious route. While it’s the kind of integration you might expect of two products from the same stable, it’s a welcome addition.
Integrating databases into a web page isn’t the most friendly subject for designers, but Adobe has come up with a neat solution to allow you to use dynamic data in your page. The method uses HTML tables to store information, and Adobe’s JavaScript-based Spry framework to integrate the content into a web page. Running through the simple wizard links your page to the data source, specify the format of its columns and how it’s sorted, and finally which information is presented and how.
You could use this to define, say, news stories at the top of a website with only knowledge of tables but not PHP, MySQL orsuch frightening technologies. It also benefits small sites that are infrequently updated. Even a client with rudimentary knowledge of HTML can update the table toadd a new intranet posting, for example.
Dreamweaver addresses similar issues ona more basic level with InContext Editing, which uses a new online service from Adobe. Similar to Contribute, you define repeating and editable regions on a page so that a non-technical site editor can maintain their own site without assistance. You can apply astyle to a region and, to prevent the editor breaking the site layout but to allow them toapply formatting, the Properties panel lets you determine the changes they can make.
Like tying Spry to HTML data sets, this will appeal to both designers and developers whose clients lack the resources and the technical knowledge to run their own website. InContext Editing also allows them to do so without having to employ a full-blown content management system.
Dreamweaver CS4 is a painkiller for web designers and developers. Features for image handling and CSS smooth the process of building a site, and the two-tier organisation offiles works beautifully. Live View and Live Code will save you a lot of time jumping back and forth, but we hope it doesn’t take until thenext release for Adobe to address the shortcomings of the CSS Properties panel, which falls short of the mark.