With Macromedia's new release of Dreamweaver 4, the worlds best wysiwyg HTML editor has now become even better. With its new implementation of multiple window views. The user is allowed to view either a full wysiwyg window, a split-screen window showing half wysiwyg and half code view, and a full window of color-coded HTML source. For previous users of Dreamweaver, this is a great improvement over the previous HTML source editing option.
That's one of the features that I have found to be the most useful, because even though Dreamweaver is a great tool, there will always be some obscure code to fix. The code view allows you to make changes real time.
And for all you
ASP developers out there, making a website that can navigate through a database has never been easier, and you can test it all inside of the Dreamweaver window... no need to fire up a separate browser. It will compile the code, write it up, and make a temp file to display it with. Very useful.
If you're using a Macromedia product and you don't know about the Exchange, you are missing out. At http://exchange.macromedia.com, you can find a whole community of fellow Macromedia users who are there to make your life easier by uploading useful extentions for you to download. Need a
meta-tag generator? There's one you can download that lets you setup your meta tags in a nice
GUI window. No more code for that!
All in all, Macromedia's products have always been some of the most useful and functional that I have ever seen. They don't disappoint with their new releases of
Dreamweaver 4,
Fireworks 4, and
Flash 5. These programs are all good expansions on their current suite of web tools. Highly recommended.