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Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004

List Price: $399.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Looks VERY NICE, if you have a fast computer
Review: - SLOW - compared to MX, many new features such as showing width/height size of pictures/tables when you click on them, but this made it hard to make simple edits. I'm running on an Athlon XP 2000, it should be a decent CPU for a HTML editor.

- UNSTABLE - This has to be the biggest flaw of this software. Now I'm use to saving after every change because of how unstable it is. I get the annoying "Windows cannot recover Dreamweaver" and it crashes out.

- OVERALL - NICE, if it worked the way it's suppose to. I would NOT recommend it to other buyers. I wish I can get my money back =(.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Dreamweaver 2 and 3 were better
Review: Ditto to everything "arryman" said below. I am an Art Director and I recently upgraded from version 3. The older versions were built extremely well and I liked Dreamweaver, because it was one of the few WYSIWIG web design tools that did not "mess up my code." This new version runs very, very slowly, inserts code in "wrong" places, adds redundant and unneeded tags and crashes in the middle of doing all that! I like the interface and obviously the support for CSS, but I've been finding myself hand-coding in "Code" mode, and not really taking advantage of the WYSIWIG tools.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Dreamweaver 2 and 3 were better
Review: Ditto to everything "arryman" said below. I am an Art Director and I recently upgraded from version 3. The older versions were built extremely well and I liked Dreamweaver, because it was one of the few WYSIWIG web design tools that did not "mess up my code." This new version runs very, very slowly, inserts code in "wrong" places, adds redundant and unneeded tags and crashes in the middle of doing all that! I like the interface and obviously the support for CSS, but I've been finding myself hand-coding in "Code" mode, and not really taking advantage of the WYSIWIG tools.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I Concur. This is terrible.
Review: Get Macromedia Dreamweaver 4. They have turned this once great web design package into a hybrid cross of something that looks like Netscape/Flash.

I used it for a month, uninstalled it and went back to Dreamweaver 4. It really is that terrible and the work space is terribly cluttered making it very hard to work within.

Bottom Line -- Get Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 instead.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: buggy to the nth
Review: Having previously used Dreamweaver Version 4 to maintain a five- year old website, I finally bit the bullet and updated to Dreamweaver MX 2004.

The updated interface is a nice touch, but overall the program is bloated as though the designers were trying to think of things to add.

This program's greatest failing, however, is that it is the "buggiest" softeware I have ever used. Even with the update, it crashes virtually every time I use it forcing me to close and then start over. If you use this softeware, save your work constantly (always good advice regardless).

I anticipated that this software would give me a lot of bang for the buck. All I got was a chance to spend a lot of bucks.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Upgrade
Review: I am not sure why some people had trouble with this version. I haven't run across any bugs or problems of any kind. maybe other people hadn't applied the updater or maybe their computer wasn't up to the challenge or maybe I just don't do the same things they do but my experience has been troublefree. I use the program in conjunction with Coldfusion MX 7(also by Macromedia) and the integration work well, too. Maybe if people that talk it down could be more specific rather than just saying "it's buggy" I could test out their issues and see if I can duplicate their problems

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't Buy it if you Plan to Upgrade Your Computer
Review: I bought this back in November and have only found it moderately useful. It works to do a drag-n-drop type layout, but if you have to interface with a database and even do moderately complex things like outer-joins, forget about it, you're much better off hand coding. But my real displeasure with this product is its activation. I bought a new computer a couple of weeks ago and I decided it was time to move this turkey to it. So I did and couldn't activate. That much was expected, so I called product activation and they tranferred me to customer service for an "Exception", customer service let me know that I'd used it since November and they could make a one time "Exception" and let me reactivate on the new computer for $25! Well this $400 program isn't worth $25 to me and Adobe had no problem letting me re-activate the CS Suite for no charge.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't Buy it if you Plan to Upgrade Your Computer
Review: I bought this back in November and have only found it moderately useful. It works to do a drag-n-drop type layout, but if you have to interface with a database and even do moderately complex things like outer-joins, forget about it, you're much better off hand coding. But my real displeasure with this product is its activation. I bought a new computer a couple of weeks ago and I decided it was time to move this turkey to it. So I did and couldn't activate. That much was expected, so I called product activation and they tranferred me to customer service for an "Exception", customer service let me know that I'd used it since November and they could make a one time "Exception" and let me reactivate on the new computer for $25! Well this $400 program isn't worth $25 to me and Adobe had no problem letting me re-activate the CS Suite for no charge.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fun, works like magic
Review: I decided I wanted to try designing my own web site but I'm not really a computer person. To test the water before I dove into it financially, I got the HOT Macromedia Dreamweaver MX book to learn what I could about it. Although I have yet to actually put a page on the web, I felt confident enough after using the trial CD to buy the program. I've been having a lot of fun with it, and look forward to starting the site. As I noted in my review of the Green and Rudner book, however, there is a significant caveat to the situation. Eventually one has to have files of ones own with which to complete ones actual site, and that will involve one in learning other programs like Adobe Photoshop, Flash, or similar work. Furthermore, although the Dreamweaver takes the problem of computer languages off ones shoulders, these programs require even more artistic talent, patience and diligence than the Dreamweaver program does. For me, that fact suggests more fun things to learn, but for others it may be a major pain and just one more barrier to accomplishing their goals. If you find yourself in the latter group, I'd find a professional web page designer to deal with the problem. If you're like me and enjoy learning new things, then this is the program for you.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What Happened Macromedia? This upgrade is a nightmare!
Review: I eagerly anticipated upgrading to the latest version of Dreamweaver, but was thoroughly disappointed after I installed this dog on my machine.

First of all, Macromedia has a hard time accepting that there are bugs in their software. They always talk about bugs in a way that makes you think they are not bugs at all. Plus the buglist is always hard to find the first time around. You generally have to dig pretty deep on their site to find them. Once you do, you are seldom able to find the answers/solutions to your problem. I have personally relied on 3rd party reviews, and BLOG's to keep me informed.

Now that I have got that out of the way, let me talk about my specific problems:

FTP - I tried to sync my site up with my testing server and had immediate problems. I kept getting an error that says 'sync commands not available, permission denied'. Yet when I tried accessing my FTP server with a different client it worked just fine. Finally, I decided to see what Macromedia had to say about the problem. They begrudgingly acknowledged the problem, but have no estimated time for a fix. After reading forums on the Macromedia site, I discovered that there are major problems with the built in FTP functionality.

CSS - Macromedia is touting this as one of the main reasons to upgrade. I would beg to differ. The CSS tools are buggy, and function 100% different than they did in the previous version of MX.

After discovering all of these bugs, and absolutely no benefits, I decided to go back to Dreamweaver MX, and ditch the 2004 upgrade. Hopefully Macromedia will give me my money back!


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