Adobe Dreamweaver has dominated the Web-editing field for longer than most people can remember, but in the past few years it has seemed willing to coast on its reputation, offering worthy but uncompelling upgrades with each recent version. Dreamweaver CS6 version is different. It’s an essential upgrade for anyone who wants to build Web pages or apps that automatically adapt when viewed in a Web browser on a phone or tablet or a browser on a laptop or desktop. For the past few years, I’ve been doing most of my Web design in Microsoft’s clean, efficient, and underpublicized Expression Web, but Dreamweaver CS6 is the first Web editor built for the multiplatform era, with full support for HTML5 and CSS3. Like the rest of the CS6 suite, Dreamweaver is targeted to professionals who are willing to climb its steep learning curve, but even occasional coders can use it to build impressive-looking sites.
Important Notes :
Before installing the software.. Read "how to install and crack" note in the crack files first
Whats New ?
The big new features in Dreamweaver are
these. First is “fluid grid layouts” that let you specify exactly how
page elements will be arranged when your site is displayed on a
small-screen phone, a midsize tablet, or a full-screen desktop. (Keep
reading for more detail on this.) Next is built-in support for PhoneGap
Build, an open-source platform that makes it easy to create a single
Web-based app that runs on multiple phone platforms. Dreamweaver also
improved its integration with Query Mobile, a JavaScript-based platform
for building browser-based phone and tablet apps. CSS Transitions—the
Web-based counterpart of transitions in traditional presentation
apps—are now supported through a reasonably intuitive interface.
Adobe has improved the fidelity and flexibility of Dreamweaver’s
“Live” preview, and improved its “multiscreen” preview panel that shows
what your page will look like at phone, tablet, and desktop screen
sizes. Adobe’s online “browser lab” makes it possible to test your pages
on older browser platforms, though Microsoft’s comparable SuperPreview
feature offers an even wider choice of old and new browsers to test in.
Another Dreamweaver feature that I’ve wanted for years, and which
Adobe scarcely mentions in its PR, is built-in Web font support through a
simple dialog that lets you install fonts to your Web server so you can
use them on your pages; this was always possible through laborious
hand-coding but Dreamweaver makes it easy. Other improvements that I’m
glad to see include a completely revamped—and speedy—FTP module with
full support for secure protocols. Built-in support for the W3C
Consortium’s page-validation tool guarantees full compliance with
current Web standards.
The most spectacular new feature in Dreamweaver is its support for
“fluid grid layouts,” which means that it creates pages organized
according to an invisible underlying grid that changes according to the
size of the screen. Text and graphic elements on the page automatically
readjust their position when the page is viewed on a phone, tablet, or
desktop. I had to watch a demo video (accessible from Dreamweaver’s
opening menu) to figure out to use it, but after that it was easy.
You create a fluid grid layout by targeting three screen sizes:
phone, tablet, and desktop. First you arrange the page elements as you
want them to look at one screen size, with each element aligned to the
invisible background grid. Then you click an icon to switch to a
different screen size, and arrange the elements in a different way on
the grid. So, for example, a phone will display your whole page in a
single column with a dropdown navigation menu at the top, while a tablet
will display parts of the page in three columns, with a wide navigation
bar at the top. The underlying CSS automatically switches between
layouts according to the screen size of the device displaying the page.
The multiscreen preview panel lets you change any or all of the three
built-in screen sizes, so you can test the way the fluid grid will work
on any size you want. Flash IntegrationDreamweaver, predictably, is
tightly integrated with Adobe’s Flash format. But if you’re developing
for iOS, you can’t use Flash in your apps or Web pages, unless you buy
Adobe’s $4,500 Flash Media Server to stream Flash in a way that iOS
permits. Dreamweaver let me drop Flash video into my Web pages without
an hiccup and with plenty of layout options, but when I tried to add
HTML5 video to my page, I had to figure out for myself that I needed to
download and install an HTML5 Video “widget” and then modify the
widget’s code by hand. InterfaceLike the rest of the Adobe’s Creative
Suite Dreamweaver’s interface is a forest of panels and “tab groups” and
toolbars that takes time to get used to. Unlike the rest of the suite,
which uses a graphic interface to edit graphic objects like animations,
photos, illustrations, and printed pages, Dreamweaver’s graphic
interface is a set of tools for editing raw HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and
other text-based code. Most of the time, you can use one of
Dreamweaver’s GUI-based buttons and menus for modifying the underlying
code, but sometimes you can’t and that means getting your hands dirty
while editing the code directly. This is good if you know how to edit
raw code, frustrating if you don’t. Sometimes, especially while working
with the new fluid layout grid feature, I gave up trying to find a menu
or toolbar for modifying a layout detail, and had to dig through the raw
code to make the change. The fluid layout grid feature is obviously a
work in progress, and future versions will make this kind of thing
easier, but you should be prepared for some minor first-version
frustrations in the meantime. Extreme FlexibilityFor
basic HTML and CSS editing, I still tend to prefer Microsoft Expression
Web 4, but Expression Web works only on Windows, while Adobe’s apps work
more or less identically on Windows and Mac machines. Also, Dreamweaver
CS6 is unquestionably the first and only Web-building tool that works
smoothly and capably in the new multi-platform world. It’s got its rough
edges, but Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 also has more power and flexibility
than anything else in its category, and it deserves our Editor’s Choice.
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