The holy grail for Web developers is a WYSIWYG Web page editor, a program
that lets you lay out Web pages as easily as you lay out print documents
with desktop publishing tools. So far most graphical editors fall far
short, so serious Web page designers opt for coding HTML by hand. A
good graphical editor would let page designers work much more quickly
than hand-coding, however, so the quest for a good graphical editor
continues.
May 2, 1998
The problem with graphical editors is that HTML isn't a fixed standard
that the editor makers control, but an ever-changing specification with
many variations. There's always something you know how to do by hand
that the editor doesn't support. This is even more true as newer browsers
come out with spiffy tricks. What can be worse is that graphical HTML
editors tend not to be very friendly to code they didn't generate themselves.
If you load pages designed by something else your editor is likely to
chew it up and spit out a horribly disfigured page.
Dreamweaver has a couple of things going for it. First of all, it's
currently pretty up to date with HTML standards. It supports Dynamic
HTML (DHTML) as supported by current releases of Netscape and IE, as
well as Cascading Style Sheets and HTML 4.0 features. This is a bit
risky considering these standards aren't even finalized yet, but Dreamweaver's
approach is to support the browsers actually in use. In some places,
as when using Dynamic features, Dreamweaver actually lets you choose
which browsers you want to support, and shows you just the options available
for that level of HTML. In cases where browsers differ, as Netscape
4 and IE 4 do with DHTML, Dreamweaver attempts to produce code which
will support both. This doesn't always work, however. On one page I
set sound files to be run when a button is clicked on. It doesn't work
in Netscape, which wouldn't be so bad except that when I browse the
page with Netscape the sound file is downloaded anyway, making the page
much slower to load for no purpose.
Loading previously designed pages into Dreamweaver is pretty safe.
The program offers configuration options to specify what you do and
don't want it to do with HTML it doesn't like. Dreamweaver can correct
broken code (tags which aren't closed, etc.) automatically, fix it and
alert you, not fix it and alert you, or just leave it alone. I'm writing
this review using Dreamweaver, from a standard Web Developer's Journal
article template, and it fixed a couple of broken tags but otherwise
left it alone.
As far as ease of use, Dreamweaver opts for giving HTML pros total
control, rather than making it easy for novice page designers to use. A novice
could probably throw up basic pages reasonably easily, but the interface
is rather confusing - it throws up scads of floating toolbars which
take a while to figure out, and even longer to master. In order to really
tweak the way the page looks you've got to know your HTML. In short,
this is a tool for pros, not for dummies.
Even for pros, Dreamweaver could make life a lot easier than it does.
Animations are very tedious, requiring painstaking placement of many
objects, going back and forth between the main page and floating menus
for each placement. After I finished a complex animation I decided I'd
like to move it lower on the page, but I couldn't find any way to do
it without painstakingly moving each of the objects I had placed earlier.
It's nice to have fine control over these things, but it would be nice
to have quick and easy tools, as well.
Dreamweaver has some minor quirks and bugs, and isn't quite as easy
to use as I'd wish. But, it is a very strong tool that HTML pros can
use to boost their productivity. So far it isn't one of those packages
I've tried out and then tossed in the corner. If Macromedia keeps improving
its usability, and keeps it up to date with the latest browsers on the
market, Dreamweaver could emerge as the tool of choice for professional
Web page designers.
I recommend that serious page designers download the demo and take Dreamweaver
for a spin. Even if it doesn't float your boat now, it's a product to
keep an eye on.
Some other features boasted by Dreamweaver:
Includes full versions of BBEdit (Mac) 4.5.2 and HomeSite
(Win).
