Rating: 
Summary: buggy
Review: I used earlier generations of Dreamweaver for years for Website design and maintenance. I was a fan, including of MX. But when we upgraded to MX 2004, a lot of things that worked fine before no longer did. Graphics move around on the page for reasons you can't figure out, links sometimes work and sometimes don't, keyboard commands sometimes work and sometimes don't, even the cursor jumps around for weird reasons that you can never figure out, etc., etc., etc... I've never thought I'd say this, but i'm ready to try FrontPage. Or whatever else is out there. But best, if you have an earlier generation of Dreamweaver, I'd recommend sticking with it and not "upgrading" to this.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what people are saying
Review: I'm giving this a test drive with their free month trial. I love it already. Web design is something very new for me. I'm a novice if there ever was one, to be sure. A few books, a few months of experience using Frontpage 2000, and little else is all I have coming to this program. Even with my little background I already love it. There is a preciseness, a degree of control which I never found in frontpage. It is easy to use, though its significantly greater options make it more complicated at first to learn. I have yet to look at any book, and have already in a few days found my way around to do a basic page. What is wonderful is I know that once I learn this, my only limitations will be my own skills. Frontpage always had a degree of distaste, for I knew it was a limited program. As far as the negative reviews, which honestly made me consider whether to even try the trial, they're not up to date. Macromedia has released a very large patch, fixing most of the problems. I'm using a 850Mhz Pentium III with 380 mb of memory (a five year old computer, with a bit of updates) and I haven't the slightest bit of slowdown or other issues. It's clean and easy, and has expanded my web design world.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Upgrade, but . . .
Review: I'm one of those people who tends to upgrade their more expensive software every other versaion rather than every one. That being said I've used both DreamWeaver 2 and 4, but never MX (5). I didn't notice a lot of improvement in version 4 over 2, so I wasn't that anxious to do the upgrade. But I have to say that I love MX 2004! I won't go into an extensive list of things that I can do in this one that I couldn't before, but suffice it to say, there are a lot of them. The biggest improvements to me are the more integrated workplace and the ditching of the floating palets. I hated the floating palets! I used the drop-down menues instead because they bugged me so much! I also love the improved FTP/Site Management interface. Secure FTP, people! The tool is slick and powerfull. Well worth the cost to upgraders. The bad thing: It doesn't like my Amazon Associates code! It tags them as invalid HTML and ignores them when it uploads the site. As a result, I still have to edit those pages in FrontPage and uplaod the site using a traditional FTP client. Not good (this is why it only gets 4 stars). Also, in the next version Macormedia should add an "as you go" spell checker or at least put a button for spell check on one of the button bars. This is another thing I use FrontPage for. I edit my more text intensive pages in FP and then import them into Dreamweaver. Don't waste your money on the full suite, though. With the exception of DreamWeaver, none of them are worth the money. I'm glad I qualified for the Academic version (and discount). The tools are overrated and over priced. If you're a web designer there are free or inexpensive tools that do what you need from Freehand and Fireworx. (I am no fan of Microsoft, but after trying several tooks, I do most of my web photo editing in Picture It!) The one feature I use from Fireworx is the button creator. The rest of it's extranious. Flash may look nice, but it slows your site down too much for my taste. I almost always skip the Flash animation when I visit a website. Bottom line -- Buy DreamWeaver, but skip the suite. This is a review if the PC version.
Rating: 
Summary: SLOW... period
Review: I'm sorry.. they get 2 stars for new features and better use of screen realestate.. but every funtion on the mac is DRAMATICALLLLLY slowed down even vs MX version or 4... I've been using DW (& the suite) since v1 & was even on the beta test team... they STILL have not worked out bugs I repored in V3 & this is by far the slowest version yet... totally unusable for any real work.. (& I run a out g4 iMac/512.. On the PC it does appear to run quite faster... poor that they seemed to drop the ball here. And the price.. cmon give as a break..these prices are unreal for most users to consider yearly upgrades.. especially with very little changes.. they have been rushing since v3 to just deliver product before it was ready... They can make good software, but I'd wish they would only release software when it was ready.
Rating:
Summary: Does things right
Review: I've been a Dreamweaver devotee since version 3. It was the first visual editor I felt comfortable with after doing hand-coding for many years. I thought it was time to give myself a break and just layout pages visually - a process I've become very accustomed to over the past, oh, five years. I purchased MXStudio 2004 because I wanted to learn Flash and to get a new version of Fireworks - those alone were probably worth my $200. The Mac OS X version of Dreamweaver, however, is absolutely horrific. It's slower than Classic, slower than MX... it's just impossibly slow. In testing, I've found a web page to take 8 seconds from double-clicking it to being able to edit it. Resizing a window takes 2.5 seconds on average. This is all on a fairly quick iMac G4 running at 800MHz, with Mac OS X 10.3.2, the newest version of the operating system, installed. The new features are nice - pasting in styled text from MS Word is extremely handy when many of your clients use that program (like mine). This is the first Mac OS X-native version of Dreamweaver I've used, so not starting up Classic is a huge benefit. If Macromedia can figure out where the sluggishness is happening (and actually fix it!) , I'd be a much happier web designer. I just want a quick WYSIWYG web page editor that supports CSS well (Dreamweaver always has); the lack of speed with which this program carries out its tasks is seriously detrimental to my productivity, though. Doing a series of copying and pasting in notes from Word to Dreamweaver is just dog-slow... and it's not because Word is lagging on me. Wait for an update, then see if things are better. Edit: an update, 7.0.1, is now available. Macromedia touts it as the biggest incremental update to a program ever. I have to say it really does speed up the process. The program doesn't feel as lithe as shareware Cocoa programs designed for one app, but I doubt it would ever feel quite that good. Overall, this update easily ups my score 1 star, and more likely, 1 and a half stars. Since we can't rate my half stars, I'm going to go out on a limb and increase my rating from its previous 2 stars to 4, because Macromedia seems to have tried so hard - and really delivered the goods with this update.
Rating: 
Summary: A BIT UNDERWHELMING. I'D WAIT FOR NEXT UPGRADE.
Review: I've been designing with DW for a while now. The 2004 upgrade remains essentially the same, except for a few changes: [1] The default is now CSS. If you want a tables based layout, you can still work with it but a change needs to be made in the preferences. [2] The previous Dreamweaver MX supported CSS-P to a degree but editing it wasn't always easy. MM were obviously aware of Dreamweaver's rendering problems and for the new version, have borrowed upon Opera's rendering engine to do some of the hard work and it's now several magnitudes better. [3] Secure FTP built in [4] Microsoft Word and Excel copy and paste. Earlier version would lose the formatting when text was pasted inside DW. In this sense, DW now equals Frontpage [5] On-the-fly cross-browser compatibility checking [6] Some simple image editing like cropping and tonal adjustments without leaving the program All this is fine and dandy, some of these features are also a god-send, but the CSS handling is a bit quirky yet. Surely, there must be a simpler and more intuitive way to do all this? There's far too much jumping around the interface required. Instead of providing one really inspired WYSIWYG way to do things, it seems to offer a multiplicity of mediocre alternatives, almost as if the programmers couldn't make their minds up and say, 'Hell, we'll put it all in'. That is a recipe for camels, not thoroughbred racehorses. If you know your way around Dreamweaver already, you might welcome the new CSS editing facilities but 50% of the full price for an upgrade seems grossly excessive. I'm a bit disappointed that after all this time, Macromedia have produced something that is okay, but not great. Besides, in the rush for an upgrade (now that GoLive is getting its own feet too) MM seems to have settled for some degree of bloat. My DW updated to 2004 MX is even more of a RAM hog than before. Net net: I'd wait for the next version upgrade, by when hopefully MM would have tied in all these loose ends.
Rating:
Summary: A disaster released before its time
Review: I've used all previous versions of Dreamweaver, but this version simply sucks in terms of speed, no matter what I am attempting to do. It takes me back to the days of the floppy shuffle. I'm running it on a 1.25ghz machine with 1Gb of RAM. Everything else I use runs fine. Support is nil. Not one of my requests for help has ever been replied to. One bonus is I have been forced to do much more hand-coding and I am loving it.
Rating:
Summary: Don't upgrade if you're happy with Dreamweaver MX.
Review: I've used Dreamweaver MX on my PowerBook G4 667 (768mb RAM) with every version of OS X for over a year now. It has run flawlessly.
The upgrade to Dreamweaver MX 2004 has been dissapointing mainly because it's so slow - ridiculously slow. After previewing my work in a browser then switching back to DW, it typically takes about 5 seconds for the document window and editing windows/panes to display and then a few seconds longer before I can actually begin selecting them and making changes. Editing has the same problem whether using the 'Code' or 'Design' modes. I thought using the Code mode would speed it up since the software wouldn't have to re-draw the screen after every edit, but that didn't help a bit.
The application has also crashed many times and that says a lot because OS X applications do NOT crash often. When designing websites, I always have Safari, IE, Netscape, and Opera running along with Virtual PC running Netscape, IE, and Opera open just so I can check consistency across many platforms. I can't even recall DWMX crashing once with all these applications open, but DWMX 2004 crashes at least a few times per session whether or not I have all these applications open. It's slow and unstable. These are just a couple of the MANY complaints I have with the software.
I won't waste your time (or mine) by writing a huge negative review. I see that just about everybody is upset with their purchase of this software. If you have DWMX, I suggest you DO NOT upgrade it until Macromedia has addressed the problems that people have spoke of. I hope that somebody from Macromedia reads these reviews and the company takes acknowledgement of them. This upgrade is just not worth the hassle and definitely not worth the money. I'm uninstalling it in lieu of DWMX and I'm sure many others have done the same. I gave this software two stars because, despite its downfalls, it is functional and you can build website with it, but if I compared it to DWMX, I would give give it zero stars because DWMX is better than DWMX 2004.
Rating:
Summary: Just learn HTML
Review: In the first semester of HTML class, I learned how to use HTML code to create websites, and (not to brag) I'm pretty good at it. THis semester, I'm trying to learn how to use this horribly complecated software. You see, many people get Dreamweaver because they can actually see what the're doing when making a website. Problem is, it's damn near impossible to know how to use it. Try making a framed website! Another problem with Dreamweaver is that it doesn't give you all of the options known to HTML. Say you want to put something on your site that is really cool. You may or may not be able to put it on. Plus, it costs, [a lot of] frickin' dollars! Think of all of the different things you could buy with [that much $$]! If you really want to make a website, just learn HTML. It's free, there are plenty of tutorials on the net for HTML. E-Mail me at TealDude4@yahoo.com. I'll teach it to you for God's sakes, just don't buy Dreamweaver!
Rating:
Summary: Getting better with every upgrade!
Review: Many times, a software company puts out an upgrade just to make sure their fourth quarter numbers are good. When Macromedia upgrades a program, it's because they've actually made it better. Dreamweaver has always been one of the best WYSIWYG HTML editors available. Now, with enhanced support for cascading style sheets (CSS), templates, and database integration, it's even better. The great thing about the Macromedia programs though, is seemless integration. Dreamweaver talks to Flash and Fireworks without even a second thought. It truly is a great program made better with this update.
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