How to Succeed at Web Design - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, August, 2000 by Carol S. Holzberg

Dreamweaver 3/Fireworks 3 Studio

Requirements: Win 95/98/NT 4.0, 64MB of RAM, 100MB hard disk space, CD-ROM drive (PC); OS 8.1, 64MB of RAM, 100MB hard disk space, CD-ROM drive, ATM 4.x (Power Mac) Est. Street Price: $399 ($299 Dreamweaver 3 only, upgrade $249 for owners of either, $199 for owners of both) Manufacturer: Macromedia Inc., 800-457-1774, www.macromedia.com

HAVE YOU EVER LOOKED AT A WEB SITE AND thought, if only you knew HTML, you could do better? With the Dreamweaver 3 Web authoring package and Fireworks 3 graphics editor, you can. Macromedia's bundle lets all--well, all except novice--users create visually compelling Web sites with minimal HTML coding skill.

Floating tool palettes and pop-up tool tips surround Dreamweaver 3's drag-and-drop design window, while a status bar provides information about tags, the current page's download statistics, and shortcuts to other tools. Tutorials help even green designers create simple pages, though the lack of a startup wizard or any clip art may leave some beginners cold.

While Dreamweaver still lacks an automatic Save command, its History palette tracks every action for fast undo or redo. History steps can be saved as macros or reused on other Web pages. Among version 3's welcome new functions are extra Object palette elements that make it easy to add e-mail links; special text characters; and Macromedia Flash, Shockwave, and Fireworks multimedia objects. A QuickTag command lets you insert HTML codes directly into an open Web document, or edit existing tags.

Code jockeys will appreciate Dreamweaver 3's improved HTML Source Inspector, which lets you view source code side-by-side with the resulting document. The nifty Clean Up Word dialog helps remove extraneous code from documents created with Microsoft Word's HTML export function.

Dreamweaver's well-designed interface is complemented by tight integration with the industrial-strength Fireworks image editor. It's a snap to modify images, save them in DW3 format, and quickly import them back into your Web documents.

Aside from aiming over beginners' heads, Dreamweaver 3 has few serious negatives. It isn't entirely compatible with every other HTML editor, and has trouble applying global changes to some of its rivals' files; the program also devours system resources, requiring a fast processor and plenty of RAM and disk space to strut its stuff. Nevertheless, serious Web developers who want powerful visual authoring and site-management options will love Dreamweaver's robust capabilities.

THIS MONTH

Dreamweaver 3/ Fireworks 3 Studio Rating: 7

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RATINGS

HOME OFFICE COMPUTING rates products on a scale of 1 to 10--with few 9's or l0's--based on value, performance, innovation [medals go to rare standouts in these areas], ease of use, and suitability for home offices. The and symbols indicate pros and cons.