Dreamweaver MX-Mac

Rating:
Summary: WYSIWYG is what the Mac is famous for.
Review: Dreamweaver has been my choice for web editing since I figured out what I was doing. I started with Adobe PageMill, so the logical step should have been GoLive. But, I had a choice and Dreamweaver won out.

Combining the functionality of Dreamweaver, and the dynamic engine of UltraDev, MX completes this program's journey to what the web should be. Roundtrip editing for Flash MX and Fireworks MX as well, make these programs a designer's dream suite.

Macromedia has made me a fan for life with the latest updates. Fully compatible with both OS X and OS 9. (This review is based on the pre-release download version.)

Rating:
Summary: Slower and buggier than previous versions, if more powerful.
Review: On the good side, we finally have OS X versions of these mainstay web design apps (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash); on the bad side, they are so buggy that one wonders if OS 9 was really that bad at all. Overall, Dreamweaver on my G4/733 feels MUCH slower than 4.01 did on a G3/333.

For example, the behavior of dragging the panels on the right side is very inconsistant. E.g., when attempting to resize the CSS panel to be longer to show more styles in my file, the cursor often does not turn into the double-headed arrow to indicate dragability; or the cursor disappears completely; dragging sometimes works, but more often doesn't. Or, when in code view, dragging across text to select results in a nasty redraw problem, with the code flashing on and off in rapid succession until you've stopped dragging. It's like the document is having an epilectic seizure. And why haven't they put in a simple window split function? BBEdit has had this for years. They boast about how bit-chin' their HTML code view is, but jeeze, it leaves a lot to be desired (and no, I don't think switching to BBEdit should be a solution to that; I think Macromedia should do more than a half-baked job on the code editor, and then most of us wouln't need to bother with BBEdit). Or, in the Style Sheet edit window, styles are unordered, making it very hard to find a particular style.

And basic functions like launching the app, quitting, opening a file, opening the Site view, saving as, and so forth, are S - L - O - W. It's just a drag to use this software. We should be damanding far more from our application creators like Macromedia.

Rating:
Summary: Slower and buggier than previous versions, if more powerful.
Review: On the good side, we finally have OS X versions of these mainstay web design apps (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash); on the bad side, they are so buggy that one wonders if OS 9 was really that bad at all. Overall, Dreamweaver on my G4/733 feels MUCH slower than 4.01 did on a G3/333.

For example, the behavior of dragging the panels on the right side is very inconsistant. E.g., when attempting to resize the CSS panel to be longer to show more styles in my file, the cursor often does not turn into the double-headed arrow to indicate dragability; or the cursor disappears completely; dragging sometimes works, but more often doesn't. Or, when in code view, dragging across text to select results in a nasty redraw problem, with the code flashing on and off in rapid succession until you've stopped dragging. It's like the document is having an epilectic seizure. And why haven't they put in a simple window split function? BBEdit has had this for years. They boast about how bit-chin' their HTML code view is, but jeeze, it leaves a lot to be desired (and no, I don't think switching to BBEdit should be a solution to that; I think Macromedia should do more than a half-baked job on the code editor, and then most of us wouln't need to bother with BBEdit). Or, in the Style Sheet edit window, styles are unordered, making it very hard to find a particular style.

And basic functions like launching the app, quitting, opening a file, opening the Site view, saving as, and so forth, are S - L - O - W. It's just a drag to use this software. We should be damanding far more from our application creators like Macromedia.