CO PY RI GH TE D MA TE RI AL Laying the Groundwork in Dreamweaver CS4 In This Part Chapter 1 What’s New in Dreamweaver CS4 Chapter 2 Introducing Dreamweaver CS4 Chapter 3 Touring Dreamweaver Chapter 4 Setting Your Preferences Chapter 5 Setting Up Sites and Servers
What’s New in Dreamweaver CS4 L ooking over the new feature set of Dreamweaver CS4, you get the feeling that when the engineering team first starting working, its motto was “Everything is on the table.” The latest version of the world’s best-selling Web authoring tool has undergone major revisions, from a complete facelift to implementing a whole new way of working.
Part I Laying the Groundwork in Dreamweaver CS4 Overall, if I had to sum up my impressions of Dreamweaver CS4 in one word, it would be “professional.” Dreamweaver has truly stepped up its game to keep pace with the shifts in the Web design climate while at the same time remaining accessible to the full spectrum of developers. That’s the attitude of a true professional, and Dreamweaver CS4 has it in spades.
What’s New in Dreamweaver CS4 The third feature, Code Navigator, brings immediacy to your coding never available in Dreamweaver before. Use the Code Navigator to jump directly to any CSS rule affecting the current selection, no matter whether you’re working in Design, Code, or Live view. Expanded Integration In many ways, Dreamweaver is a true destination product. Whether you develop your Web content in Photoshop, Fireworks, or Flash, you have to go through Dreamweaver to reach the Web.
Part I Laying the Groundwork in Dreamweaver CS4 out-of-sync one. Designers can decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not to update the Web page image. For example, if an image has been rescaled in Photoshop, the updated graphic is resampled in Dreamweaver to match the new dimensions. Figure 1-3 The Smart Object sync indicator is all green when the Photoshop source and Dreamweaver graphic instance are the same; when the Photoshop file is modified, it becomes half-red and half-green.
What’s New in Dreamweaver CS4 Figure 1-4 Test your AIR application without leaving Dreamweaver through the AIR extension. Modern Web Practices Not only does the new Live view render CSS stylings with great fidelity, Dreamweaver CS4 has also enhanced the way CSS rules are created, modified, and applied. To achieve a smoother workflow, the Property inspector has been split into two tabs, one for HTML properties and the other for CSS.
Part I Laying the Groundwork in Dreamweaver CS4 Figure 1-5 The revamped Property inspector identifies the existing rule for the current selection and makes it easy to modify related properties or create a new CSS rule. Property inspector’s HTML and CSS tabs One of the biggest innovations in the previous version of Dreamweaver, the JavaScript framework known as Spry, continues to evolve. Now, it’s easier than ever to incorporate external data into Ajaxdriven pages.
What’s New in Dreamweaver CS4 site visitors choose one. With the Spry Validation Password widget, you can specify the required strength of a password that the user might enter—with a set number of numbers, uppercase or lowercase letters, and more—and display an error if your criteria is not met. Use the Spry Validation Confim widget to verify a previous input for password, email, or any other type of text field.
Part I Laying the Groundwork in Dreamweaver CS4 Figure 1-7 This YUI calendar widget was added to Dreamweaver’s Insert panel and can be easily previewed in the new Live view. Just as CSS trumpets the separation of content and presentation, a movement known as unobtrusive JavaScript is underway to separate interactivity from content. When a page employs unobtrusive JavaScript, all of the code functions are removed to an external file and linked from the HTML source file.
What’s New in Dreamweaver CS4 New Adobe Services In an increasingly online world, it’s only natural that network services begin to play a larger role in the life of every Web developer. For the CS4 release, Adobe has introduced a number of such services, the most notable of which is InContext Editing. When a Web page has InContext Editing enabled, the owner of the site can make changes to the page right in her Web browser—without downloading or installing any additional software.
