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New Features in Dreamweaver CS3

22nd July 2007

Some upgrades are rip-offs, some are bug-ridden, some are too minor to worrry about, but some are usually must-haves. Dreamweaver upgrades tend to fall into this last category. Dreamweaver is used in web-development and, because the web is constantly evolving, each new Dreamweaver release usually offers features which reflect the rapidly changing environment in which the program is used.
So what have Adobe come up with in this their first upgrade since inheriting everybody’s favourite web development tool?

Since the release of Dreamweaver 8, way back in 2005, the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in web page layout has become widely recognised as the way forward. However, CSS page layout coding can be a little daunting for new web designers. Dreamweaver CS3 includes a wide range of customisable CSS layouts which include useful comments for inexperienced developers explaining how the designs function. The layouts may be used not only to create individual pages but also Dreamweaver templates.

NEW CSS FEATURES

Manipulation of CSS code has also been made easier with the addition of features for reorganising styles and transferring them between style sheets. Users can now automatically transfer an inline CSS style to a style sheet or convert an embedded style sheet into an external one.

BROWSER COMPATIBILITY CHECK

Dreamweaver CS3’s browser compatibility check allows developers to target specific versions of all the major browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Safari) and generate a report detailing CSS-related issues with elements on the current page.

INTEGRATION WITH PHOTOSHOP

Dreamweaver has long had great features for integrating content with Fireworks. This new version extends a similar level of integration with the more widely-used Adobe Photoshop. Documents, slices or selections can be copied from Photoshop and pasted straight into Dreamweaver. An Image Preview window then appears in which compression and optimisation settings may be specified before the image is saved.

SPRY FRAMEWORK FOR AJAX

Ajax is a programming model which uses various technologies, including JavaScript, to create fast, interactive web applications that respond to user actions by sending and receiving data to and from a server and refreshing elements of a web page without first having to reload that page.

The Spry Framework, included in Dreamweaver CS3 is a collection of JavaScript code which offers developers a painless way of adding simple Ajax content to their pages. There are three types of Spry content: widgets, special effects and data sets.
Spry Widgets are clickable page elements which respond to user interaction in funky ways. For example, there is a tabbed panel widget which displays different content in the same part of the page depending on which tab the user clicks on. There are also widgets for creating navigational menus and submenus and for validating text fields, text areas and select elements on a form.
Spry Effects can be applied to wide range of HTML components and include the ability to fade, highlight, zoom and shrink page elements in response to user interaction.

Spry Data sets are JavaScript objects that display data from an XML source in an HTML table. There is also a useful drill-down capability whereby users can click on summary information displayed in rows of a table to display detailed information in another region of the page.

INTEL-BASED MAC COMPATIBILITY

And, last but not least, CS3 is also the first version of Dreamweaver to run natively on Intel-based Macs (as well as PowerPCs).

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