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Macromedia clearly has its finger on the pulse of web development with its suite of web creation software and multimedia tools. Together the MM family of applications provides a seamless environment for developers with DreamWeaver, Flash, Generator, FreeHand, FireWorks and Director offering the best integration of graphic power and code integrity
available.
DreamWeaver has been a key application for V7. In mid 1998 we reluctantly switched from NetObjects Fusion, which had been our HTML authoring tool of choice. We made the decision for stability reasons. For all the promise of true page layout freedom and some terrific features, NOF had a number of widely documented weaknesses in its central
database that made site design a risky business. Inspite of religious backup procedures and careful handling of the NOF .nod files, problems could render the files unreadable. Drastic recovery options were hardly satisfactory alternatives to basic stability.
After "designing scared" for over a year with no solution forthcoming, we moved to DreamWeaver. It was clear almost immediately that our work was much safer with this tool. First, sites were simply a collection of HTML pages, if something went terribly wrong the worst that could happen would be a corrupt HTML file. Changes and edits to individual
pages were much simpler with this lightweight modular approach.
Macromedia promised complete fidelity between WYSIWYG and code views, and for the most part delivered. Round trip HTML is not perfect, and DreamWeaver often changes code syntax when you would prefer it didn't, but in comparison to NOF, it has been much easier to tweak code and find problems in our pages before publishing.
There's a lot going on in the DreamWeaver interface, a point that has garnered some legitimate criticism, yet given enough screen real estate it's a very productive application (see V7 tech item: Multiple monitors). We run DreamWeaver on two and three-monitor workstations (Win98 and NT).
Templates and Library items are great aids in the construction of large sites. Image editing links with PhotoShop streamline the process of adjusting images and the bundling of Allaire's excellent HomeSite application provides heavy-duty coding when needed.
Most importantly DreamWeaver now incorporates Flash content as powerfully as we expected, with seamless workability of images with Fireworks.
That aside, Roundtrip HTML and the ability to lock code sections from any changes would be nice.
The FTP client could be more robust, and the site view should afford us the ability to check off completed pages a la NOF.
Given the slim chance that IE and Netscape will ever interpret pages the same way, DHTML is becoming an orphaned technology. Flash 5 may just be the final nail in the coffin, at least for animation and multimedia development.
- Michael Robertson
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