Dreamweaver CS3 beta
Published: 28 Mar 2007
We wouldn't go so far as to call Adobe's Dreamweaver CS3 a trivial upgrade, but we do expect it will appeal to a rather limited audience. For this version, Adobe focused on two primary areas for enhancement: CSS and Ajax. Both are certainly worthy of attention. CSS is one of the major pain points for Web designers, while Ajax is the latest fad in Web development — plus Adobe has its new Spry framework for Ajax that it needs to promote. However, unless you're really struggling with complex, nested, multilinked stylesheets, specifically want to author to the Spry framework, or need better back-and-forth with Photoshop, there probably isn't a lot here for you.
On the CSS front, Dreamweaver CS3 will ship with a passel of layout templates, and a Move CSS Rules option is marginally more helpful than cut and paste for consolidating stylesheets. Errors that pop up in the enhanced Browser Compatibility Check link to Adobe's new CSS Advisor community, although it seems superfluous to create a new community when there are so many. Plus, at least with the Dreamweaver CS3 beta, it drops you at the door of CSS Advisor and you've got to search from there. It really needs better integration to be truly useful.
As a platform for experimenting or getting started with Ajax, Dreamweaver's Spry implementation is straightforward and non-threatening. It comes with some interface widgets, data connectors and objects, and a handful of special effects behaviours, such as Shake, Slide and Squish. A more thorough look at the Spry implementation will have to wait until Dreamweaver CS3 ships later this spring.
Dreamweaver CS3 costs £335 (ex. VAT), or £139 (ex. VAT) to upgrade from a previous version.
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