![]() When editing a typical, relatively simple website, you have at least four document tabs open, one for the current page, the others for JavaScript and CSS files, and an information panel with at least seven tabs, showing files, Creative Cloud libraries, HTML tags that you can drag into a file, a complex set of CSS controls, a Document Object Model (DOM) tree, a list of assets (sorted into URLs, images, media, and more), and a long list of prebuilt and custom-built snippets. This app needs all the screen real-estate you can give it. Unless you're an expert coder who won't need all the onscreen tools and panels, don't even think of using Dreamweaver on a small laptop. Dreamweaver uses the standard Adobe interface, a main editing window surrounded by a toolbar on the left and multi-tabbed information panels on the right. If like me, you get bewildered searching for some obscure feature, the Help menu can guide you to exactly the menu item you need, even when it's deep in the menu structure. Bootstrap's responsive sites are mobile-first, meaning that the Bootstrap framework is mostly optimized for phones or tablets, but Adobe's built-in Bootstrap templates are well-engineered enough to look equally good on desktops and phones.įirst-time users face a steep learning curve, but if you're familiar with Photoshop or Illustrator, you should be able to climb it fairly quickly. Dreamweaver guides you through upgrading sites based on the earlier version and tries to resolve incompatiblity hiccups by creating new CSS and JavaScript files that use the latest standard. For example, you can use Dreamweaver to design and edit sites managed by WordPress, Joomla!, or Drupal, or you can create a Git repository and use it keep track of changes in your site.ĭreamweaver uses the Bootstrap framework for responsive sites, and by default uses the latest Bootstrap version, 4.3.1, though the earlier 3.4.1 version is still built-in if you want to continue using that. ![]() But Dreamweaver also works with just about any third-party site-building tool that you might want to use. You can also use Photoshop to create a mock-up of what you want your site to look like and then use Dreamweaver's Extract menu to drag elements from the Photoshop file into your web pages. Adobe's subscription model means you get periodic feature updates at no extra cost.Īdobe wants you to work with Adobe tools, so it's easy to use Photoshop and Illustrator to edit images or Premiere Pro and Audition for video and sound files. Dreamweaver isn't cheap, but for professional-level web design, it repays the price in power and convenience. I'll describe some alternatives later in this story, but none of them comes close to Dreamweaver in terms of power and ease.Īfter more than 20 years of evolution, Dreamweaver still has some awkward spots where it can't decide whether it's a tool for advanced coders or for visually oriented designers, but these are easy for serious users to work around-and Adobe's subscription pricing means that only serious users are likely to have it. Any private or corporate web designer looking to replace an ancient desktop- or laptop-style website with a modern multiplatform site will find Dreamweaver the obvious first choice. Both the individual app and the full suite subscription come with 100GB of cloud storage.ĭreamweaver excels at creating multiplatform (responsive) websites that work equally well on a phone, tablet, or computer. Like all other Adobe apps, it comes in virtually identical Mac and Windows versions, and it's available either through a Dreamweaver-only paid subscription ($20.99 per month with 1-year commitment, $31.49 month-by-month, or $239.88 for one year prepaid) or as part of the full Creative Cloud suite ($52.99 per month), which gets you Photoshop, Illustrator, and all the other creative software and apps. The app gets the job done for individual users or teams where different team members have different levels of freedom to add or change content, and of course it works smoothly with Adobe's arsenal of graphics apps and web services. It's just as helpful when you build a site by writing actual code as it is when work in WYSIWYG graphic layout that hides all the code until you need it. You can build websites using any of dozens of tools-some that run online, some that run on your local computer, some that run partly online, partly on your machine-but Adobe Dreamweaver 2020 stands alone as the only site-building app that's just as suitable for individual designers as it for enterprise-scale projects.
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