Software Review: Adobe Master Collection — Dreamweaver CS5 from Adobe Systems

This is the fifth of a series of reviews that will cover what is contained in the Adobe Creative Suite 5 (CS5) Master Collection. When Adobe released CS5 this year, they not only will release single version products, but also five separate suites of products. They are Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, Production Premium, and Master Collection. You can go online to compare what is contained in each version. The goal of this series it to define what each product does and provide information of what the new version brings to the table.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, a hybrid based Web development software application that was originally developed and distributed by Macromedia. It was acquired by Adobe in 2005, and it is available for both the Mac and Windows operating systems.

As a hybrid, Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 is both a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to see the results of what you are developing before having to publish to your Web site and a code-based editor that lets you hand code your sites as well. This lets less experienced developers work without having extensive coding skills as well as more experienced developers fully hand-code. It doesn't stop there; it also gives developers the tools to create professional grade Web sites as well. Please visit Adobe for complete system requirements.

So what is new with Dreamweaver CS5?

• Simplified site setup – through a revamped Site Definition dialog box. To access your files in Dreamweaver, it was always a requirement to have a site definition. Now you can start off with just a site name and local site folder. From there, you can add as much detail as you like. Dreamweaver will prompt you for the additional details as they are needed. For more advanced projects, you can specify multiple servers with custom names to make use of staged, networked, or other server types.

• Enhanced CSS starter layouts – have been rewritten based on user feedback and CSS best practices. These changes range from simplified selectors to modified document structures and starter code for menus. To help ensure success with the new layouts, instructions and comments are included both in the CSS code and in the text of the document. This means that if you’re just beginning to design for the Web, CSS starter layouts ease the learning curve by providing a structure upon which you can create your own designs.

Article Author: T. Michael Testi

T. Michael Testi is a writer and a photographer out of Edmond Oklahoma. You can see his photographic and art work at T Michael Imaging.

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