Christopher Mackay’s Blog

Summary: Dreameaver 9.0.0.3481

If you skipped Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, have an Intel Mac or Photoshop CS3, then this might be worth upgrading to. Otherwise, the ugly new icon is the most noticeable new feature. They want you to open your wallet far too wide for this upgrade, if you ask me.

Dreamweaver CS3 — The Good

Sadly, many of these fall under the catchy heading “shit that should’ve been done right in Dreamweaver MX, Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Dreamweaver 8 but wasn’t”…

• Suffix Preferences — Dreamweaver finally allows the specification of a default extension (but not the default filename). So, instead of Dreamweaver 8’s “untitled.html”, I get “untitled.php”. That’s closer to “index.php”, but not close enough.
• Keyboard Navigation
• So far, the delete key works in the Site window.
• Finally recognizing that Apple appropriated F9–F12 for Exposé is a nice touch.
• Right- and left-arrow keys can now open/close folders in the Files window. Cool. Would be great to be able to open files from the keyboard, though.
• Pollution — so far it looks like Dreamweaver CS3 no longer pollutes sites with dozens of suffix-free temp files… Yay!
• Palettes — being able to drag palettes off into new palettes without being told, like an idiot, to do it the right way, is nice.
• Style Sheets
• the CSS tools are marginally improved. It’s now much easier to deal with the various places you might like to put your CSS.
• The new CSS Templates look fine, but there’s nothing here that shouldn’t have been available for free download by all registered Dreamweaver 8 customers. These are not part of the application.
• SpryFrameworks — yeah, whatever.

Dreamweaver CS3 — The Bad

I’ll just start by noting that I’m writing this with BBEdit 8.6.

Most of these items fall under the heading “shit that should finally have been fixed Dreamweaver CS3 but, inexplicably, wasn’t”:

• Installation — what’s up with that installer? Adobe’s taken a lot of heat lately over their Adobe Reader installation process, and rightly so. Installation of Dreamweaver CS3 took forever, and it’s not an Apple installer. It wouldn’t accept my Macromedia Studio 8 serial number as a qualifying upgrade (despite copying/pasting it from my Adobe.com account), and it said it couldn’t find Dreamweaver 8 in the default location (it was in /Applications/Macromedia Dreamweaver 8/ — Adobe support resolved this issue promptly and helpfully, but it added more than 20 minutes to the installation process).
• Speed (Lack Thereof) — is it actually possible that they’ve made it slower? I can’t believe how sluggish it is on my 17″ PowerBook (with 2 GB of RAM). Photoshop CS2 sings and dances, but Dreamweaver CS3’s menus lag noticeably when choosing navigating them, especially once it’s been open awhile. Kill me now.
• Customization — they’ve managed to forget my customized keyboard shortcuts and workspace layouts. Apple can migrate my entire system to a new box and preserve everything, but Adobe can’t get me from Dreamweaver 8 to 9 without trashing my workspace prefs.
• Keyboard — Enter/Return/Escape still don’t reliably work on dialogs. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Restarting Dreamweaver seems to fix it. Lame.
• Infuriating Condescension — Dreamweaver CS3 still treats the user like a dim-witted child when deleting files. Do I really need to be asked three #^$%# times if it’s okay?? Also, if Dreamweaver’s going to put you through 3 dialogs, you think they’d let you drive them from the keyboard… but you’d be wrong.
• Open With… — The contextual menu in the Files window has an Open With… command; it still can’t remember where BBEdit is. So, by “Enable BBEdit integration” they really mean “Enable half-assed BBEdit integration”…
• Palettes — no CS3-style collapsable palettes. Lame. You’d think the cosmetics (short-shrift to usability professionals duly noted; my bad) would’ve made it in, at least. Then you’d have something visible, something tangible to justify the upgrade costs…

Dreamweaver CS3 — The Ugly

I’ve been after Macromedia about many of these issue for years, and I grow weary of it. I don’t like to be this negative, and both Adobe and Macromedia are companies that’ve earned a lot of goodwill from their customers — including me — over the years.

Come on, folks; Apple is releasing Final Cut Studio 2 without bumping DVD Studio Pro’s version number to 5 just for the sake of appearances… This feels shabbier than any software upgrade I’ve purchased in years [note; haven't upgraded the office PCs to Vista — likely won't, either. Dreamweaver CS3 is disappointing, not Vista-disappointing...].

• Save your money — this is Dreamweaver 8.2. If you’re on an Intel Mac, or if you’ve skipped Dreamweaver 8, go for it. If SpryFrameworks are a big deal to you, then maybe Dreamweaver CS3 is worth looking into.
• Note to Adobe — yes, you made it Intel-native, and it’s fair that you get to charge for that. That gets you to 8.2, or maybe even as far as 8.5 if you clear out lots of bugs; I’d go so far as to suggest that calling this Dreamweaver 9 is a cynical move on your part.]
• Integration Blues — too many of the new features — Bridge/Photoshop/Illustrator integration — aren’t features at all if you don’t have Photoshop CS3 or Illustrator CS3.
• Bridge 2? — it’s fine, but I didn’t buy Adobe Bridge, I bought Adobe Dreamweaver CS3: and it doesn’t address most of Dreamweaver 8’s shortcomings.
• If you’re on Windows — (and I’m assuming here that Dreamweaver CS3 is essentially the same as its Mac counterpart), I hope Photoshop/Illustrator integration is something that really turns your crank, cause there’s not much else new here.

And Now, the Coda…

If your sites are mainly database-driven, or your clients don’t require Contribute compatibility (and can therefore do without Dreamweaver’s Templates, roll-backs and role-based permissions), then:

1. read John Gruber’s review of Coda
2. download Panic Software’s Coda
3. buy Panic Software’s Coda