Adobe Dreamweaver CS3: My Review
Adobe is now the number 1 source for just about any type of visual software. Whether you’re a web designer, filmmaker, photographer, recording artist, animator, cartoonist…Adobe has software that could be essential to you. Sadly, the prices are so darn expensive!! But because I’m a web designer, I just had to try the new Dreamweaver CS3, so here are my thoughts:
I downloaded and installed the trial of Dreamweaver on my Vista machine nearly two weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised that I had no issues during installation. I read some people who had problems during installations, but I believe this problem was simply because they didn’t run any updates for Vista. I began to use it and I have to say, workflow was alot easier than previous versions such as Macromedia’s Dreamweaver MX.
It has a neat function which I thought had potential, but really botched up the design. This function is a command to “Clean Up HTML.” It’s supposed to “clean up” your HTML so that it will be valid. Unfortunately, it really messed up the design. If you want to clean up your HTML, have your HTML and CSS validated at the W3 website. It will show you what all is wrong with your document, then you can go back and fix it by hand and not mess up the design of your web page.
Having said that, Dreamweaver CS3 is better as far as posting Valid HTML/XHTML on your web pages, though, it’s still not perfect. If you hand type the code and make a mistake, it underlines the improper code in green - much like a grammar error in MS Word or any other common word processor. I liked this function, and it seemed to work really well.
On the other hand, if you use the design area, and you make a mistake - it won’t always let you know. Regaurdless of this, you should still always overview your code, no matter what editor you are using, making sure that your code is properly written and that there are no errors.
Another GOOD thing about Dreamweaver is now, it automatically sets your pages color properties in CSS, not in HTML <body> tags. I noticed when using it, the CSS it generates was always 100% valid.
The other thing I noticed that I didn’t exactly like, is it displays the web pages in the design view as they would appear in IExplorer - Not Good. For example - say you accidentally set a table’s position to “fixed” in CSS - in IExploer 7, your table will be normal, and act as a normal table…in Firefox, your table will be fixed in one position on your screen, causing it to overlap content when scrolling up and down a web page.
I would much rather have Dreamweaver display pages as FireFox would than IExplorer would, just so that you can be sure that your web page is compatible and looks proper with all the major web browsers like FireFox, Safari, AND IExplorer combined.
The Dreamweaver Developer toolbox is neat. I really didn’t get to use it all that much, but I liked that it allowed me to access my MySQL database from my local machine. This could come in handy quite a bit.
So, overall, I honestly have to give Dreamweaver CS3 for Windows a good 8/10 for…
- Great work flow
- Comfortable work environment
- Replacing <body> tags with CSS for design
- Developer Toolbox was neat
- It was good in finding my HTML/XHTML errors in code view, but not in design view
- HTML Clean up was botchy
- Design View displays more of what IExplorer sees, not what other browsers would see
So now I’m saving up for the Adobe Web Premium CS3 package. It’s roughly $1600, but I do accept donations 
I have to say, I’ve been a fan of Dreamweaver for awhile. I’ve used 3rd party alternatives and they just don’t come up to par for me.
What Do You Think?
Have you used any of Adobe’s CS3 software? Do you know of any good 3rd party alternatives that match/surpass the quality and functionality of Adobe’s CS3 software? Have any questions about web design? What ever is on your mind, what ever information you may have, tell me about it. My e-mail is david@funkytower.com and I want to hear everything you have to say. 
Take it easy,
David Crandall
Tags: Adobe, Design, Dreamweaver, Review, Software, Web
