Time to spread good cheer to Dreamweaver users:

Adobe has released Dreamweaver CS4 Beta. So far, it’s pretty wowsome.

Features and Improvements:

It now has native support for PHP with its live view. Not only that, but the live view has some definite improvements. On top of that, it sports the fancy adobe ui now, has the ability to edit linked files directly in the code view without opening new documents, has a nifty new code navigator which makes it easy to get right to the CSS rule or JS related to any element on the page, and several other cool things.

The Down Side:

Rendering hasn’t seemed to improve significantly, so various elements may look different when viewed in a browser. This is especially the case when using various design techniques from Dan Cedarholm’s “Bulletproof Web Design.”

As well, the CSS panel, which I often use, is deathly lacking in functionality such as history support for unopened css files, get/put buttons for currently highlighted stylesheet (or stylesheet for highlighted style), copying/pasting of styles, ability to turn stylesheets and styles on/off, and better !important support.

I’d also like to see support for multiple class names and title attributes in the properties panel, snapshots in the history panel, encrypted option for email address insertion, create script elements when dragging .js files into the source (rather than creating anchor link elements).

And on the Mac, I want to be able to navigate stinkin’ dialogs with the Tab and letter keys!!

I have a wishlist that continues to grow. Only a few seem to have been touched-on or fixed in this beta. But now’s the time to get involved with Adobe to get your feedback on the application.

</rant>

So, go check it out:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/dreamweavercs4/

For you active Dreamweaver users, what features has Adobe missed that you might like to see?

purefusion - 29 May 2008 11:19 AM

Adobe has released Dreamweaver CS4 Beta.

Yawn… (*fires up Textmate and continues work*)

Sincerally, i wanna to see nice features to edit css in realtime like the excellent toll with i buyed some days ago, called
Skybound Stylizer  the most cool css editor with i worked, unfortunally just to windows, but its like a Coda for Windows

I think with i will still using CS3 versions… :(

Baz
Brazil

Only if it is free update LOL.
They really need to update how they handle CSS….to be honest the happiest I was with DW was when it was UD.
I still run topstyle for css.

I still run Homesite for XHTML.

Forget Dreamweaver! I’m going up on a highway billboard and I’m not coming down until EE 2.0 (& ecommerce module) is released!!

Ingmar Greil - 29 May 2008 02:28 PM

I still run Homesite for XHTML.

have not heard this name in a looong time hehehe
I miss MM_old_stuff ...adobe is getting carried away by creating a ‘mega pack’ of everything they ever made.
Reader is now 20+MB…stinkin reader that does…

Acrobat Reader? Never looked back after trying Foxit.

e-man - 29 May 2008 11:41 AM

Yawn… (*fires up Textmate and continues work*)

he he - I had a similar thought but mine begins with a “w”.

I suppose the update is good news for people who like DW and Adobe stuff, I must say though it’s about time they improved the live preview - so many editors have had “real” browser integration as standard for ages now. I can’t count the number of forum threads I’ve answered to “my site looks good in the DW preview but when I open up xxx browser it looks a mess”.

Ingmar Greil - 29 May 2008 03:34 PM

Acrobat Reader? Never looked back after trying Foxit.

Oh definately! Foxit is superb, 10x quicker than Acrobat reader and nowhere near as much bloat

nice find I.G.

“my site looks good in the DW preview but when I open up xxx browser it looks a mess”.

Usually by people that have never discovered or bothered to look into code view

Bharrabhaz - 29 May 2008 12:26 PM

Sincerally, i wanna to see nice features to edit css in realtime like the excellent toll with i buyed some days ago, called
Skybound Stylizer  the most cool css editor with i worked, unfortunally just to windows, but its like a Coda for Windows

I think with i will still using CS3 versions… :(

Baz
Brazil

Thought I’d take a look at this program, but you can’t even download it from that site. The button isn’t even real. lol

Adobe products are absolute Dog Dung.  The feature sets are not too bad, it’s the bloat that makes them terrible.  I have a new dual core box, and I recently evaluated dreamweaver, fireworks, and adobe acrobat professional.  I kid you not - it took 20 mintues to download- 20 minutes to “unpack” and another 20 mintues to install.  Once my trial ran out, it literally took 20-30 minutes to uninstall dreamweaver - my hard disk thrashed the entire time and I was thinking it was going to blow up.  Give me a break 30 minutes to uninstall a piece of software?

Oh yeah, don’t get me started on Adobe updater.  All my trials expired but Adobe updater thinks it should still download multi-gig updates on the side and then keep asking me to apply said updates to my expired trial programs?  Yee-ha!

I also recently installed Illustrator - it was near a 1Gig download took 30+ minutes to install - it was ok, but in comparision to my beloved Inkscape I can’t justify slowing down my machine or throwing out the big cash for some pretty lame products.

To each his own…  But I rank Adobe just a few hair below MS in terms of bloat developers…

Not sure what’s wrong with your dual core box. It took me less than 5 minutes to install.

Are you on a mac or PC?

The thing that really irks me the most about Adobe products is how we Europeans are being ripped off, there really is no other word for it, sorry.
Buying a DW download from Adobe’s US store costs $399 (about 258 euro) ; downloading the exact same software from Adobe’s Belgian store website will set you back 579.59 euro (a cool $898).
Not even considering the low $ (and the fact that I’m buying a download, not a physical product), can someone from Adobe explain to me why, as a European customer, I am forced to pay more than double the price?
Please do, as I’d love to hear the justification for that

HI e-man,

I’m totally with you on this one. Here in the UK we are being fleeced left, right and centre for everything these days and it right royally peeves me off something crazy. Plus the fact that most of the time we are actually stopped from purchasing the software from another country as we will not get the European based software and so can have problems with it depending upon the software. Sometimes we are just plainly banned from purchasing because of the country we come from.

I find this totally annoying and countryist (just made a word up there ). This kind of thing really does have to be stopped or explained in simple terms that us dumb Europeans (well that’s what they must think we are) can understand.

I do remember reading a quite lengthy so called ‘explanation’ by Adobe for all of this once some time back but can’t find the link right now. Maybe someone else knows where that might be?

Yes, this is totally annoying!

Best wishes,

Mark

How about a classic corporate response…  maybe something to the effect of:

“Dear Customer, each of our international marketing divisions independently evaluates their respective markets to better serve our customers…  Thank you for your inquiry and we look forward to taking your money…”

JT Thompson - 29 May 2008 05:40 PM

Thought I’d take a look at this program, but you can’t even download it from that site. The button isn’t even real. lol

The link its working perfectly. They changed the site layout
https://www.skybound.ca/stylizer/default.aspx

But buddy, download it & buy it, because it compensates any penny invested. I´m impressed with this nice & smart app. I really improved my time to developing css layouts / templates…

Baz
Brazil