Mar 27, 2002 12:29 AM
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(Updated Mar 27, 2002 12:31 AM)
I have had to give up my project of writing a series of articles on Building a website as I discovered just now that MS will let me edit my previous post but will not let me add more in the same category. Sigh!!! Life's like that. Anyone wants tips can email me.
Anyway I shall review Dreamweaver 4, one of the WYSISYG (What you see is what you get) HTML editors around.
Dreamweaver has a little different interface as compared to most Windows programs that you might use and hence it takes a little while before you get used to it. Once you get used to it you get addicted to it and no other HTML editor will do for you. Though it has a host of features, lets see the more salient ones that make working in it so easy.
Split Window. You can split the main window so you get to see not only what your page will look like but also the raw HTML code behind it. You can manually edit the HTML here and see the changes reflected below. The HTML window like many text editors is colour coded and working in it is easy.
Integration with Fireworks 4. You can design an entire graphical layout in Fireworks including the rollover buttons and other graphics, even animated gif files and have the entire page ready for editing in Dreamweaver with no great effort.
Support for Flash.There is full support for including Flash animations in your page and most of the basic HTML for this is inserted by Dreamweaver itself.
Extensible.There are a large number of extensions available which add to the functionality and let you do tasks easily which normally would have taken a lot of time. Like including a table with alternate rows of different colours. Even basic asp scripts can be added through these extensions.
Site maintenance.Dreamweaver maintains the site for you. You keep a replica of your site on your PC and Dreamweaver has FTP support to upload files to the server. It also checks for broken and orphan links.
Many other features like css styles and templates are a piece of cake and you can make changes to the entire site by editing just a few pages.
In short it is the créme de la créme of WYSISYG HTML editors and the code it generates is the cleanest ever I have seen. It is also compliant with most browsers I have tested it on...IE, Netscape and Opera being the chief among these.
