Adobe Dreamweaver

"Dreamweaver" redirects here. For other uses, see Dreamweaver (disambiguation).

Adobe Dreamweaver

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Icon
File:Dreamweaver CS4 screenshot.png Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 under Windows XP
Developer(s)	Adobe Systems (formerly by Macromedia)
Stable release	CS4 (10.0) / September 23, 2008
Written in	C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows Mac OS X
Type	IDE
License	Proprietary
Website	Adobe Dreamweaver Homepage

File:Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 retail box.jpg

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 retail box

Adobe Dreamweaver (formerly Macromedia Dreamweaver) is a web development application originally created by Macromedia, and is now developed by Adobe Systems, which acquired Macromedia in 2005.

Dreamweaver is available for both Mac and Windows operating systems. Recent versions have incorporated support for web technologies such as CSS, JavaScript, and various server-side scripting languages and frameworks including ASP, ColdFusion, and PHP.

Features

Although a hybrid WYSIWYG and code-based web design and development application, Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG mode can hide the HTML code details of pages from the user, making it possible for non-coders to create web pages and sites. One criticism of this approach is that it has the potential to produce HTML pages whose file size and amount of HTML code is larger than an optimally hand-coded page would be, which can cause web browsers to perform poorly. This can be particularly true because the application makes it very easy to create table-based layouts. Some web site developers criticized Dreamweaver for producing code that often did not comply with W3C standards, though recent versions have been more compliant. Dreamweaver 8.0 performed poorly on the Acid2 Test, developed by the Web Standards Project. Adobe has focused on support for standards-based layout in recent and current versions of the application, including the ability to convert tables to layers.

Dreamweaver allows users to preview websites in locally-installed web browsers. It also has site management tools such as FTP/SFTP and WebDAV file transfer and synchronization features, the ability to find and replace lines of text or code by search terms and regular expressions across the entire site, and a templating feature that allows single-source update of shared code and layout across entire sites without server-side includes or scripting. The behaviours panel also enables use of basic JavaScript without any coding knowledge, and integration with Adobe's Spry AJAX framework offers easy access to dynamically-generated content and interfaces.

Dreamweaver can use third-party "Extensions" to extend core functionality of the application, which any web developer can write (largely in HTML and JavaScript). Dreamweaver is supported by a large community of extension developers who make extensions available (both commercial and free) for most web development tasks from simple rollover effects to full-featured shopping carts.

Dreamweaver, like other HTML editors, edits files locally then uploads them to the remote web server using FTP, SFTP, or WebDAV. Dreamweaver CS4 now supports the Subversion (SVN) version control system.

Syntax highlighting

As of version 6, Dreamweaver supports syntax highlighting for the following languages out of the box:

• ActionScript
• Active Server Pages (ASP).
• ASP.NET
• C#
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• ColdFusion
• EDML
• Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML)
• Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT)
• HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
• Java
• JavaScript
• JavaServer Pages (JSP)
• PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)
• Visual Basic (VB)
• Visual Basic Script Edition (VBScript)
• Wireless Markup Language (WML)

It is also possible to add your own language syntax highlighting to its repertoire.

In addition, code completion is available for many of these languages.

Version history

File:Dreamweaver CS3.png

CS3 Icon

Provider	Major Version	Minor/Alternate Name	Release date	Notes
Macromedia	1.0	1.0	December 1997	Initial release, for Mac OS only.
		1.2	March 1998	First version for Windows.
	2.0	2.0	December 1998
	3.0	3.0	December 1999
		UltraDev 1.0	June 1999
	4.0	4.0	December 2000
		UltraDev 4.0	December 2000
	6.0	MX	May 29, 2002
	7.0	MX 2004	September 10, 2003
	8.0	8.0	September 13, 2005
Adobe	9.0	CS3	April 16, 2007	Replaced Adobe GoLive in the Creative Suite series
	10.0	CS4	September 23, 2008

Color	Meaning
Red	Old release; not supported
Yellow	Old release; still supported
Green	Current release

Internationalization and localization

Language Availability

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 is available in the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified (Windows only), Chinese Traditional (Windows only), Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean (Windows only), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Specific Features for Arabic and Hebrew languages

The older Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 also features a Middle Eastern version that allows typing Arabic, Persian or Hebrew text (written from right to left) within the code view. Whether the text is fully Middle Eastern (written from right to left) or includes both English and Middle Eastern text (written left to right and right to left), it will be displayed properly in the browser.

See also

• KompoZer
• List of HTML editors
• Comparison of HTML editors
• Macromedia HomeSite
• Web application
• Web design
• Quanta Plus
• Microsoft Expression Web

External links

• Dreamweaver Official site
• Adobe Dreamweaver Extensions