Post Description

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.