When CS4 was released 18 months ago, I described it as the “most significant release of Dreamweaver since Dreamweaver MX ”. To my mind, Dreamweaver CS5 just blows CS4 out of the water. Before I explain why, let me address the negatives. At least three groups of people are going to be disappointed by this new release:

• Early adopters of HTML5 and CSS3—support is close to zero.
• Developers of dynamic sites hoping for new server behaviors—there aren’t any.
• Former users of GoLive—Dreamweaver CS5 hasn’t incorporated any features from GL.

With the debate that has been raging over Apple’s decision to ban Flash from the iPad and iPhone in the name of HTML5 and “web standards”, many will be stunned to learn that the only concession to HTML5 in Dreamweaver CS5 is the option to use an HTML5 DOCTYPE. There’s also no support for CSS3. Has Adobe missed the boat on this? In publicity terms, maybe. In reality, I don’t think so.

HTML5 and CSS3 are still evolving. The current web standards are still HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, and CSS2.1. Moreover, Dreamweaver is extensible. Rick Curran has already created an extension for CSS3 code hints. You can also add HTML5 tags to Dreamweaver through the Tag Library. No doubt someone will come up with an extension for that, too. In my view, it would have been a mistake for Adobe to release a half-baked implementation of incomplete standards that are still not supported on all browsers in widespread use.

The other decision that’s likely to cause controversy is the lack of new server behaviors. In fact, some have been removed: CS5 has continued the process of weeding out support for less popular (at least among Dreamweaver users) server-side technologies. JSP and ASP.NET were dropped in CS4. Now, ASP JavaScript has gone, too, although ASP VBScript still survives. There are a few minor security improvements and bug fixes to the PHP server behaviors, but nothing new.

The basic design of the server behaviors is now eight years old, so many people had been asking for new, improved ones, particularly after the decision to drop Adobe Dreamweaver Developer Toolbox (ADDT) last year. Few people realized the significance of that move. This is only my personal opinion, but I think Adobe was sending a clear signal that it’s not in the business of creating server behaviors to automate the generation of server-side code. It’s leaving that market to extension developers like WebAssist, CartWeaver, DMXZone, and others.

So, what is it about Dreamweaver CS5 that I like so much? Lots!

One of the biggest improvements is that Live View now works like a browser. “What’s new about that?” you might think. The difference is that in CS5, the links work. Hold down Ctrl/Cmd while clicking a link, and the target page loads into the Dreamweaver Document window—even if it’s a live page on the internet (assuming, of course, that you’re connected). The Related Files toolbar gives you direct access to the code of all pages linked to the new page. If the target page is on a remote site, the code is read-only; but on a local site, you can edit the code, and press F5 to see the results in Live View. If you want to keep the changes, there’s a new option on the File menu to Save All Related Files.

If you’re still wondering why this is an improvement, just try it with a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla! As long as you have set up a testing server, you can now view a CMS in Live View. Not only that, Dreamweaver CS5 lets you interact directly with a database. You can test online forms in Live View, inserting database records, updating, and deleting them. Dreamweaver CS5 eliminates the need to make constant round trips to a browser for testing, because the browser is right there in the Document window.

Of course, you still need to test pages in a variety of browsers, but you can launch BrowserLab directly from Dreamweaver to test your pages in Adobe’s online service. Up to now, BrowserLab has been free, but it’s being turned into a paid-for service. Your purchase of Dreamweaver CS5 or one of the suites gives you continued free access to BrowserLab and InContext Editing for another year. [Update] Adobe announced today that development of InContext Editing is being terminated. You will be able to maintain existing sites, but the service will cease to exist as a standalone service in 2011. For more details, see the InContext Editing FAQ.

The related files feature now searches for dynamically related files, in addition to those directly linked to the current page. This gives users of WordPress and other CMSs access to the style sheets, which you can edit in Split view or through the CSS Styles panel, seeing the results immediately right inside Dreamweaver. You can even navigate to inside pages of a CMS to style them. And to make it easier to work with CSS, Live View has a CSS Inspect button that highlights block-level elements, padding, and margins in the same way as Firebug—all within the Document window. Another Firebug-like feature is the ability to disable a style rule temporarily by clicking next to the property name in the CSS Styles panel.

As a PHP developer, it’s the changes in Code view that really excite me. When you start typing a PHP script in Dreamweaver CS5, you’ll immediately notice a red marker in the line numbers column and an alert about a syntax error.

Complete the line without errors, and the marker and warning disappear. Dreamweaver constantly checks your syntax on the fly. It doesn’t tell you what the errors are, but it highlights all lines with errors, making the debugging process much quicker. PHP code hints have also been improved dramatically. There’s full support for all core functions, constants, and classes (as of PHP 5.2).

Code hinting is also much smarter. Instead of needing to search through code hints alphabetically, Dreamweaver CS5 searches for substrings. This is helpful when you can’t remember the exact name of function or class—just type the part of the name that you remember, and Dreamweaver includes it in the list. You can also work out your own shortcuts. For example, if you press Ctrl+spacebar and type gesi, the code hints take you straight to getimagesize() by recognizing the ge of “image” and the si of “size”. And in case you don’t know how a function or class works, the official manual page—complete with code examples—appears as a tooltip at the bottom of the selected code hint.

Incidentally, the smart nature of code hints also applies to style sheets. If, like me, you constantly pick widows instead of width, just type dt—it takes you straight to width.

For serious PHP developers, it gets even better. Dreamweaver CS5 is capable of code introspection, so it builds code hints on the fly for your own functions and classes, as well as for third-party libraries, such as the Zend Framework.

The definition files don’t even need to be directly attached to the page you’re working in. With Site-Specific Code Hints, you tell Dreamweaver where your library files are located, and it scans them for you automatically.

My feeling is that Adobe made the right decisions. HTML5 and CSS3 are not ready for prime time; and server behaviors can offer only a limited number of options if they’re to remain manageable. Site-Specific Code Hints and the improvements to Live View open up a vast new range of opportunities to the beginner and more experienced PHP developer alike. I liked Dreamweaver CS4 a lot, but CS5 is a huge improvement.

Of course, Adobe can’t stop there. CS6 will need to offer solid support for HTML5 and CSS3, but by that time the specification should have settled down and browsers should have caught up.

This second problem is finally becoming less acute, thanks to the release of Internet Explorer 8 in March this year. IE8 supports the whole of CSS2.1, and its accurate rendering of CSS puts it on a level with other standards-compliant browsers, such as Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Getting StartED with CSS was written after the release of IE8, so it’s bang up to date; and it concentrates on CSS as rendered by modern browsers, rather than getting bogged down in details of hacks to persuade older browsers to behave. However, since the bane of web designers’ lives, IE6, is likely to be around for some time to come, the book does offer advice on how to deal with the most common bugs in IE6.

Where I hope my book stands out from others is in the way it avoids throwing a whole load of theory at your before you can achieve anything practical with CSS. Instead of forcing you to wade through a detailed explanation of classes and other selectors before you start using CSS, I show you how to achieve practical results with the most basic selector of all, the type (or tag) selector, which redefines the default look of HTML tags. I don’t get into classes until Chapter 4 (of 12).

Another difference is the way I approach the box model, an understanding of which is essential to working with CSS. Instead of bamboozling you with a whole pile of theory, I devote a whole chapter to showing how margins are used to create space between elements and lay them out. The following chapter builds on this by discussing how to add backgrounds and borders. Finally, a third chapter brings the whole box model together by adding padding, width, and height into the mix. My aim is that by introducing each aspect of the box model gradually, you build up a better understanding of how it all fits together. By the of the twelfth chapter, you have studied all visual and print properties in CSS2.1, including some of the less well-known ones, such as generated content.

Perhaps my only disappointment with the book is that it’s printed in black and white. However, the plus side is that the publisher has given it a relatively inexpensive price tag, at least for a computer book. The cover price is $24.99, and many online sellers are offering it for a discount. Sadly, the price is more expensive outside the USA, but that always seems to be the case with books.

The book’s companion website contains a complete reference to all CSS2.1 visual and print properties, and selectors, together with lots of examples of the properties in action. I hope you’ll find the site useful even if you don’t buy the book. But, of course, I hope you will decide to buy.

It’s obvious that people love the ability to create a menu bar in seconds, but they hate banging their head on their keyboard trying to figure out how to edit the CSS. In response, I’ve created a couple of tutorials that are now live on my site. The first one goes into considerable detail, explaining the basics of customizing the CSS of a Spry Menu Bar, with instructions for both horizontal and vertical menu bars. The other, shorter tutorial shows how to centre a horizontal menu bar. I hope you find them useful.

My motive for writing the book was the release of Internet Explorer 8, which offers full support for the whole of CSS2.1. Of course, it will take some time before older, buggy versions of Internet Explorer finally disappear. Even so, the rapid uptake of IE8 means that more than half of all people surfing the web now use a standards-compliant browser. IE8′s support for CSS2.1 is as good as Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera. In some respects, it’s even better. If cross-browser support for CSS has been holding you back, it shouldn’t do so any longer.

The other thing I had in mind is that most books I have read on CSS either throw a lot of rules at you all at once, or they just concentrate on “cool” techniques. My aim was to avoid front-loading the book with a mass of rules. After outlining a few basics, I introduce new rules and concepts only as they’re needed. However, you can’t avoid rules in CSS; and by the time you reach the end of Getting StartED with CSS, you will have studied every visual and print property in the CSS2.1 specification. The book teaches you some cool techniques, but the main emphasis is on understanding how CSS works by explaining how everything fits together and showing you how to use CSS analysis tools, such as Firebug, the Web Inspector panel in Safari 4, and the Developer Tools panel in IE8.

Like most of my other books, it’s a mixture of reference material and hands-on exercises. There’s also a very comprehensive appendix that lists all properties with their permitted values, and references back to the chapters where you can find a full description of how to use them.