First details of Dreamweaver CS4
September 7th, 2007
Adobe has taken the unusual step of revealing the first details of the next version of Dreamweaver less than six months after the release of current version (Dreamweaver CS3). Now, before you get too excited, the Adobe announcement says nothing about new features. Instead, it tells you what’s being taken out.
Among items destined for the chop are the much-maligned Layout Mode and Timelines. These are both sensible decisions. Layout Mode was a well intentioned attempt to make it easy for graphic designers to lay out web pages in the same way as desktop publishing. The problem is that it creates horrendous spaghetti code behind the scenes, and frequently results in cries for help in online forums. If you get your design right the first time, the code is normally stable; but as soon as you start to change things round—and who’s ever come across a graphic designer satisfied with a first attempt at layout?—the page often falls apart like a house of cards. Timelines equally rely on outdated code, and animations are much better left to Flash, so it’s good to see them finally on the way out.
More controversially, support for ASP.NET is being dropped. Dreamweaver 8 came in for a lot of criticism from ASP.NET developers because it offered no support for ASP.NET 2.0. The vocal critics conveniently ignored the fact that Dreamweaver 8 was released several months before ASP.NET 2.0, so it was impossible for Macromedia (as it then was) to support a Microsoft technology that was still in the beta process. The disappointment was more understandable when Dreamweaver CS3 came out more than a year and a half later, and still had no support for ASP.NET 2.0. However, CS3 offered no new features for any server-side language, so users of PHP and classic ASP were just as disappointed that there were no new toys to play with in their favourite language.
Instead of leaving support for ASP.NET stuck in the past with ASP.NET 1.1, Adobe has taken the bold decision to remove ASP.NET completely from Dreamweaver. It will certainly annoy a lot of ASP.NET fans, but the message seems to be that Adobe would prefer to offer no support at all for a particular technology, rather than second-rate support. At the same time, the next version of Dreamweaver will no longer support JSP. This is likely to affect fewer users, but it sends a similar message—no support, rather than a half-hearted effort.
So does this mean that we’re going to see lots of PHP, ColdFusion and classic ASP goodies in Dreamweaver CS4? Adobe is keeping tight lipped about the new features it plans to put into the next version. Although I would love to see enhanced PHP server behaviors, the existence of Adobe Dreamweaver Developer Toolbox (an updated version of the old InterAKT Kollection) suggests an alternative scenario—basic server-side functionality in Dreamweaver, enhanced features in a separate product. However, I don’t see ADDT really taking off until Adobe changes the way it dumps more than 150 files in 30-odd folders into your site root, even if you need only one or two of those files to accomplish what you want. ADDT’s problem is that it’s a complete framework. It’s very good at doing things in its own particular way, but adapting the scripts to your own needs requires advanced knowledge of the inner workings of the framework. A lighter, more flexible approach is needed.
Two pretty sure-fire bets as to what will be in Dreamweaver CS4 are changes to the user interface and an updated version of Spry, Adobe’s implementation of Ajax. A lot of people criticized Dreamweaver CS3 for not using the OWL interface that Flash and the original Adobe programs, such as Photoshop, now use. (OWL, by the way, stands for Operating system Widget Library). There’s no doubt that OWL has a cleaner, less cluttered look, but I’ve been using it intensively with InDesign over the past week or so, and find a lot of little annoyances. For instance, if you collapse the panels to icons, only one panel can be open at a time. Also, the close buttons at the top right of each panel tab are too easy to hit by mistake. Worst of all, using the panels as fly-outs gets in the way of the main document window. Of course, you can use the panels in a fixed column, but the I find the labels often difficult to read. OWL is definitely an improvement over the old Adobe palettes, but I hope that further improvements will be made before it’s applied to Dreamweaver.
My views on Spry are still mixed. The version that shipped with Dreamweaver CS3 definitely had the feel of a beta—OK as far as it went, but still very much a work in progress.
Now that we know what won’t be in Dreamweaver CS4, it would be nice to know what new goodies we can look forward to. My own shopping list includes improved support for PHP and other server-side languages, and making it easier to create standards compliant (X)HTML and CSS. The Property inspector still supports a lot of deprecated or rarely used attributes. Providing consistent support for ID and title attributes would be a great start. Even better would be a Property inspector that hides all deprecated features if you choose a Strict DTD.
Entry Filed under: Dreamweaver
26 Comments Add your own
1. matt | September 17th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Does anyone have an idea when CS4 will be appearing? I am trying to decide on an upgrade route to CS3 and whether to bother or wait.
2. David | September 17th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Adobe doesn’t normally give much advance notice of when new versions are scheduled for release. An exception was CS3, the approximate release date of which was announced about one year in advance. That was almost certainly because of the merger between Adobe and Macromedia.
Whenever I have asked Adobe executives for an indication of timing, the answer has always been that the development team aims to operate on an 18-month cycle, but that’s only a rough target. It could be shorter, but it could also be longer. Since CS3 was released only five months ago (in April 2007), my guess is that CS4 is still a long way off—but it’s no more than that: a guess.
3. Rich Mariner | September 22nd, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Thanks for the info Dave! Love your books!
Rich
4. MikeInFreeport | September 23rd, 2007 at 6:02 am
Why is http://friendsofed.com
no longer availabe?
5. David | September 23rd, 2007 at 8:29 am
The friends of ED site is still available, Mike. I suspect the server might have been down for maintenance when you tried to access it. I’ve just tested it, and it’s fine.
6. Günter Schenk | October 26th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Hi David,
—–
However, I don’t see ADDT really taking off until Adobe changes the way it dumps more than 150 files in 30-odd folders into your site root, even if you need only one or two of those files to accomplish what you want.
—–
While I personally agree that this is a somewhat unfortunate approach, I have to say that so far just 1 person actually complained a little about this in the ADDT forums, while all others don´t. I´m taking this as sort of evidence that it´s not *that* relevant after all — yes I know we had our discussions
—–
ADDT’s problem is that it’s a complete framework
—–
IMHO opinion ADDT doesn´t really take off as it could, because none of the developers *ever* take part in forum discussions. The PHP related brach is now doing quite fine, also because I´m trying hard to care for folks and provide *some* sort of reliability — so far so good, but there´s noone available for the CF and ASP.NET branch, not even those of my Community Expert respectively Ex “Team Interakt” mates who were supposed to be available to some extent.
While it´s clear that Adobe´s product forums are all “user to user” ones as a matter of principle, the ADDT forums are a perfect example for how customers will rate the value of what they bought when there´s not a single indication of “official” support — at least a little care at times would help wonders.
Cheers,
Günter
7. David | October 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Günter, I think the lack of complaints about the way ADDT dumps so many files into the site root says a lot about the typical user of Kollection/ADDT. Nearly everyone I know who uses ADDT does so because they don’t want to be bothered with the underlying code. I believe this is a dangerous approach. Even when using a framework, you should have an understanding of the underlying technology. However well-written a framework is, security breaches may be discovered at a later stage. Unless you understand how the framework operates, you are putting yourself at considerable risk.
As for the lack of official support in the ADDT forum, it’s no better or worse than other Adobe forums. ADDT’s problem is that it has a tiny user base. Dreamweaver has an estimated 3-4 million users. At the time InterAKT was acquired by Adobe, it had 10,000 customers. Even if all of them upgraded to ADDT, it’s a tiny proportion of Adobe’s overall business. Adobe is now pouring a massive amount of effort into Flex, AIR, Thermo, and Spry; and the development teams are giving a great deal of active support in the beta forums. The fact that a similar effort is not being poured into ADDT speaks volumes.
8. Ray Garrido | January 28th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
David,
first of all your books have been massively helpful to me. I just read your reply to Gunter and am wondering if it makes sense to continue building site using ADDT. I am about to embark on a fairly large project involvong user registration, several permission levels, file manipulation, ecommerce, mail lists etc. I’m wondering if Flex can handle sites like this and if I should move to it. I love ADDT but I don’t want to stick a customer with an unsupportable solution. I would appreciate your thoughts.
9. David | January 29th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Ray, using any sort of custom solution always runs a risk. When Adobe announced plans to buy out Macromedia, a lot of people were concerned that Dreamweaver might be sidelined in favour of GoLive. In fact, it has turned out the other way. Although no formal announcement has been made, it looks as though GoLive is being left to wither on the vine, while Dreamweaver goes from strength to strength.
I believe an important factor is Dreamweaver’s support for web standards. Any web page created with Dreamweaver can be imported into any other editor, and used without difficulty. You can’t say the same for pages imported from GoLive or FrontPage.
ADDT has very loyal supporters. Its PHP code adheres to good coding standards, but it’s a proprietary framework. I genuinely have no idea whether Adobe plans to develop it further, or whether it’s going to go the way of GoLive. Whichever way it goes, the code you create with it now should continue to work for many years to come. The problem arises with maintenance. If you decide to hand over the project to someone else, that person needs both ADDT and the knowledge to use it. However, the same would be true if you decided to use one of the many PHP frameworks. If somebody handed me a site that uses WordPress or the Zend Framework, I could handle it. Something built with Drupal or Symfony would involve me learning how to use it first.
As for Flex, I’m sure it has a great future, but it’s not an easy solution. Flex requires a solid understanding of both MXML and ActionScript 3.0. It’s very powerful, but it’s based on Flash, and comes with all the accessibility problems associated with Flash.
Bottom line: there are no simple answers. I wish there were, but…
10. Ray Garrido | January 30th, 2008 at 1:29 am
Thanks for the response. While I am fairly new at this, I am gaining ground - thanks again to your books. Your logic makes sense to me. I had explored Drupal but I don’t want to start learning yet another framework at this point. I agree, there are no simple answers but thoughtful ones like yours help a lot. I’ll continue down the DW/ADDT path for a while longer.
Be well.
11. Angel | February 2nd, 2008 at 1:58 am
what i really want in the new version is the capability to print code in color, and not just black and white!
12. David Powers | February 2nd, 2008 at 9:22 am
Angel, if you want particular features in Dreamweaver, submit a feature request through the official form on the Adobe site. The more people who submit requests for a feature, the more likely it is to be implemented. The way to print in colour at the moment is to open Code view, press Ctrl+A to select everything, copy and paste it into Word, and print from there.
13. Corrado Conti | February 7th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Looks like this will be the end of the line for me with DW. And the reason is the dropping of the much maligned “Visual Layout mode”.
Now, you’ll say: no serious web designer uses it anyway.
True: I have not laid out a web page in layout mode since DW1. And that was for about a day.
But, I still find the layout mode invaluable. How?
Simple: I exclusively work with pure css layouts and I exclusively develop with CMS or other script based websites.
To work on a site’s CSS I do a “view source” and link the page to my local css file.
The layout mode, in “split view” cuts the time it takes me to find code locations considerably. I visually choose the area I need to edit (with css) and at the same time DW takes me to the code and displays the css rule and its parents.
When I use equally capable editors (notepad++ for instance) the lack of a visual layout mode means that I am constantly parsing the code to find the location I need to work on. It simply takes longer and time is always at the essence of my work.
That’s why I think it’s a lousy idea to get rid of the layout mode.
14. David Powers | February 7th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Corrado, that’s an interesting use of Layout Mode, and one that I hadn’t heard of before. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to write off the next version of Dreamweaver, though. Removing Layout Mode and many of the other deprecated features gives the development team the opportunity to add new ones. The trend over the past couple of releases has been to make it easier to work with CSS, and I’m sure that trend will continue.
When the next version of Dreamweaver is released (and I have no idea when that will be), download the trial version and test it thoroughly. Only then will you be able to judge whether removing Layout Mode was such a lousy idea after all.
15. Ryan | March 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 pm
It will be interesting to see the fate of ADDT when CS4 rolls out. I’d have to echo the comments about all the files that get dumped onto the server whenever ADDT is used. There is an “ADDT alternative” called WebAssist Super Suite that doesn’t force you to upload so many files to the server. I think the extensions can be bought separately too if Super Suite is too rich for your blood. Just an FYI.
16. Kevin Cannon | May 22nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Corrado - I don’t think you’ve anything to worry about. Layout mode is the mode where you draw layers & divs and tables visually and it generates a load of poor markup. I’d wager that’s what they’re getting rid of, not the Visual view which I too use extensively. It’s a great way of editing text, applying classes to data tables and generally just seeing how your design looks.
I would be shocked if they get rid of that.
Personally I think it’s great to hear they’re ditching some things. It’s quite a brave move, which will allow them to cut some of the legacy cruft out, and means they’ve got a strong vision about where to take the tool in the future. I can’t wait to see it.
17. Jurgen Jessurun | May 30th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Any idea when Adobe will release CS4?
18. David Powers | May 30th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
When it’s ready.
Even if I knew (which I don’t), I couldn’t tell you. If Adobe does tell me, it will probably be only one day in advance of the public announcement. Everyone will just have to be patient.
19. Steveorevo | June 1st, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Dreamweaver is nice, but there is a gap with using it to design custom themes with the popular CMS WordPress. Looks like the new ‘Live View’ feature is just essentially ‘Live Data’ but with the ability to navigate code. You can now do this in Dw’s Design View for WordPress files by using a snazzy extension for Dw called ThemeDreamer and it works with CS4!
Here is a Dreamweaver CS4 screenshot:
http://www.themedreamer.com/news/adobes-dreamweaver-cs4-themedreamer
20. smcochin | June 18th, 2008 at 4:13 am
Now it is very easy to create theme in dupal using our dreamweaver extension
Dreamweaver Drupal
21. John Plain | July 28th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
It’s a huge mistake for Adobe to drop Dreamweaver support for ASP.NET. I don’t know too many people who like Visual Studio’s interface. Dreamweaver does a much better job with .NET in its present limited capacity. Who is going to buy Dreamweaver once Adobe does this? Very bad move.
22. David Powers | July 28th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
John, you’re a bit late to the party with this complaint. Adobe made the announcement nearly a year ago. I don’t use ASP.NET, so the decision makes no difference to me. I shall certainly continue to use Dreamweaver. The changes in CS4 make a huge positive difference to my workflow. Adobe has probably made its decision on the basis of research about the impact on sales of dropping support for ASP.NET. Only time will tell whether that research was more accurate than your gut instinct.
23. Parkeren in de Stad | September 12th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
When is it coming out?
24. David Powers | September 12th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Adobe is making an official announcement on 23 September. Judging from what happened with CS3, I expect the actual software will be available approximately three or four weeks after that.
25. Wes Winters | October 7th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Hi David.
I am a novice at web design and want to learn more about creating my own sites. I am a fairly quick study with learning new software. My question is will Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 be a good introduction into creating my own sites that have a professional look and feel, or should I begin with another software program? Thanks for any info you can give!
26. David Powers | October 8th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Wes, Dreamweaver is an HTML editor; it’s a tool for doing a job. What gives a website a professional look and feel is not the software used to create it, but the skill employed by the developer. Creating a professional looking website requires an understanding of HTML and CSS. You also need a good sense of design and colour coordination, as well as an appreciation of usability issues (such as how easy information can be found in the site, and how easy the site is to navigate).
Without those skills, no software will produce the look and feel that you want. However, Dreamweaver is a very good tool for building professional websites. As long as you’re willing to learn the skills of the trade, it’s an excellent choice.
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