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Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 - first impressions

Written by Marco Conti Thursday, 13 November 2008 11:39

Adobe just released the stable version of their popular IDE, Dreamweaver. Now in version CS4 (or version 10 if you like to keep track of it that way), Dreamweaver continues to be the editor of choice for many web developers and whenever a new version is released it is an important milestone in the business.

In this "First Impressions" review I am going to look at Dreamweaver CS4 as applied to the editing of Joomla templates and websites and not so much as related to the more traditional uses of the program. For more information in regard to my Joomla (and dynamic website) workflow, please refer to my blog post here.

New Interface

The new CS4 version brings a new interface and some brand new features, as one would expect from a major release. The most evident change is the way palettes work. Adobe decided to make Dreamweaver more in tune with their other programs and indeed the Dreamweaver palettes work very similarly to the ones in the other Adobe flagship products. For instance, now it's possible to collapse the entire palette group to a space about half its regular width.

However, now I can no longer find a way to collapse the column completely as it was possible in CS3 and something I found very useful. It seems the best we can do is to collapse it partway.

Since I have a wide screen (highly recommend) and I like to keep my file and css palettes in their own individual columns, this new "feature" actually takes up more space than I am used to. Maybe the full collapse is still available but I have not found it.

Live View

The other major innovation that will immediately jump up at the experienced user is the new "live View" feature. Essentially, with this view you are able to see the page rendered the same as it would be on a browser, including any JavaScript you may have.

It took me a bit to figure it out, but I was able to make my Joomla source files work locally as they would on the browser. In the case of a Joomla integration, linking all the files properly is a bit tricky, but one you figure it out it's a really nice addition that may prove very useful.

The first real use I did of it was to style a "Superfish" drop down menu I am working on. Previously for something like that the only way I could work on it would have been to use Firefox with the developer's toolbar. Essentially giving away the benefit of line number in the code and the help Dreamweaver afford when working on CSS rules. Instead, working in Live View I was able to drill down to the CSS rules and style the submenus from Dreamweaver, lessening my trips to Firefox to check on the results.

However, even on my machine (Vista 64, Intel quad core with 8GB of memory) the rendering was a tad slow and often the CSS lookup lagged behind quite a bit. I found myself going back to Firefox when I needed to quickly check if my rules were taking or not.

All in all though, it's a really nice feature that no doubt will become a big part of my workflow, especially as far as Joomla and other dynamic scripts are concerned.

Version Control

The next big addition is SVN (an open source version control system) compatibility, something that many were waiting for. Problem is that I am still waiting for it.

I have tried installing SVN but the complexity of the setup process and the fact that Apache refuses to work on my Vista 64 machine (and a variety of other problems I am having with it) prevented me from installing SVN and testing it. However, for those fortunate ones still using XP, the process should be pretty straightforward and the benefits very great. I can't wait.

I have just downloaded an all-in-one SVN installer and I will try again time permitting.

Related Files View

The new related files bar, which appears between the document toolbar and the document itself, lists all CSS and JavaScript files linked to the page. Click one of the related files in this bar, and you immediately jump to its code in that file. This makes editing related files a real pleasure and avoids a lot of looking around the file system.

Vertical Split view

Purists always complaint about Dreamweaver's "WYSIWYG" view for being simplistic and error prone. Real coders use text editors.

I agree and I don't agree. While I would never dream of using the "WYSIWYG" (Design) view for anything more that the most simple web page (such as when I create a quick and dirty "Out of Service" page for my sites), the Design view in Dreamweaver is an invaluable tool that can shave hours off your development time if used properly.

Forget about creating any actual design with it, but when working on a Joomla template, for instance, the Design View allows me to select any area of the page and brings me right away to its corresponding HTML code. From there, I can click on a tag or class and immediately Dreamweaver sends me to its CSS equivalent, shows me its parents and allows me to edit the rule in a matter of seconds. I don't know of any other IDE that does that with the same ease of use and precision.

Until now though, you could only view the page in Horizontal split view. In some cases that was a problem. The new CS4 allows for a vertical split view, something we should have had years ago, but better late than never.

My only complaint here is that to switch to vertical split view is somewhat cumbersome. It would have been nice to have had a button alongside the existing three (Code, Split, Design), but instead Adobe requires you to hit the menu (View > Split View) and the switch is not as immediate as it should be. Lot's of new rendering going on which tells me this was a patch job.

In any case, another welcome addition to the program and one that was a long time overdue.

More new features

According to the specs, there are a plethora of new features in this version for those folks that like to code their sites from the ground up. New Spry behaviors, new connectivity tools and a smattering of little improvements here and there.

As a Joomla developer/integrator I doubt I will have a chance to use those a lot. Spry is a nice idea, but Jquery or MooTools integration would be a lot better. My few experiments with Spry left me with a bad taste in my mouth but I can see the benefits to some more traditional developer.

It would be interesting if some JavaScript guru found a way to integrate Spry with Joomla and allow us to insert it in its workflow. I doubt it will happen because of the way Joomla and Spry work and the benefits may be doubtful, but interesting nonetheless.

Conclusion

Dreamweaver CS4 is not ground shattering as far as Joomla developers are concerned. The advantages of the Vertical Split View and the Live view are noticiable but not enough to justify the upgrade. They are worth it to me because one I consider it myt job to evaluate every tool out there and inform my fellow Joomla developers of new features and better ways to work, but if I was not interested in that, I could easily stay with CS3.

I do see some possibilities in regard to SVN and the live view becoming more of an integral part of my workflow and potentially justify the upgrade on their own, but the failure of SVN to work on my machine prevents me from recommending it based solely on that yet.

However, it's still early and I have only worked on the program for a little over 3 hours. There may be new features and new ways of doing things I am yet to disciover and I'll make sure to update you on this blog.

In the meantime, I'd suggest you get the demo and install it. If you find anything I have missed or misunderstood, please let me know and I'll look into it.

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