Macromedia Dreamweaver was first introduced way back in December 1997, since then it has established itself as the leading development tool of choice for professional Web Builders.

With the release of Dreamweaver 3, the Macromedia team have once again improved on an already good product, making it even more a tool of choice for the serious Web Builders.

Now before I start to go into detail on some of the features on offer in Dreamweaver 3, I thought I would first let you you know that we actually utilise Dreamweaver in the development of the Cyber Aspect site. If your new to Dreamweaver you'll find the menu system and navigation controls take a little getting used to, but once mastered you'll wonder how you ever managed prior to obtaining your copy of Dreamweaver.

Main Features.

1. History Palette - The History palette is perhaps one of the most useful tools possible. It works in a similar fashion to how Adobe Photoshop presents it history in a visual mode allowing you to move backwards and forward through the history folder. However Dreamweaver has really gone to town on this feature making it extremely easy to use, it allows users a virtually unlimited number of number of undos.

Nothing so new here, well what's really revolutionary about the History Palette is the ability to save this visual representation of your workflow as an encapsulated Javascript command. This means that people using this feature to build macros can comfortably work through their steps without worrying about making mistakes or leaving out steps. After you have finished you can save the macro as a Javascript command and edit the macro's script to meet your exact needs. Also, extension authors can now dramatically shorten their development cycles. Using the History Palette, they can build out a series of steps, then quickly save this as a Javascript command. This rapidly constructs the skeleton of their extension, the scriptwriters can the open up the file and add the extra code, if needed.

2. Microsoft Office integration - As any Web Builder will tell you, an enormous amount of content that is destined for the Web originates in Microsoft Word. The main challenge has always been to convert this content to HTML, while maintaining their standards of quality. With Microsoft Word 97 & 2000, users can save their files in HTML format, but the HTML code produced has always been 3 to 5 times larger than hand-authored HTML code, and much of the code generated is only viewable on the Internet Explorer browser platform.

How many times, have you actually sat down and cut and pasted a word document, or even retyped it, just so that the quality of the HTML coding was up to scratch and not bloated. Well as you've guessed Dreamweaver 3 now males it easy to produce optimal code from HTML generated in Microsoft Word. Dreamweaver allows you to simply open up the Microsoft Word generated HTML documents and select the the command "Clean Up Word HTML". After a short while the page is cleared of Microsoft specific styles and XML tags and is ready to be published or further worked with as required. I have tested this feature extensively and its amazing to see how the file sizes generated by Microsoft Word can be dramatically reduced, for example 398 lines of code being reduced to 149 lines of code, which obviously reduces file sizes.

One point worth noting, is that if your working on a particularly large Word document, you'd better have a reasonably powerful machine, as the load is tremendous and our test document brought our lowest specified machine (P133 - 48MB Ram) to a standstill although the PIII 450 - 128MB Ram managed without a problem.

Another integration challenge for Web Builders is importing structured data from applications like Microsoft Excel or Access into Web authoring software for deployment on Intranets and Web sites. Dreamweaver 3 introduces a new object called the Tabular Data object to handle this task. The Tabular Data object is similar to the HTML Table object, but instead of inserting a blank HTML table, you can define a "data source" to populate the HTML table.

Once the table and its contents are imported into Dreamweaver, it is up to the Web Builder to format the table inside Dreamweaver. The unparalleled table editing controls in Dreamweaver allow for rapid formatting, alternatively you can use the Format Table Command to automate the formatting of the HTML table.

The two features above more than justify the cost of Dreamweaver 3 in our opinion, the time saved over the course of a development project, more than pay back the cost of purchasing Dreamweaver. But that's not all a whole host of other features are included, which truly make Dreamweaver one of the best development tools currently available.

I'll give you the top ten reasons according to Macromedia to buy Dreamweaver 3.

1. Roundtrip HTML,, and Quick Tag Editor offer unparalleled control over source code with simultaneous access to visual and source editing.
   
   
2. Powerful visual design features include drag and drop tables and frames, tracing image, pixel precise positioning, rulers and grids.
   
   
3. Library of pre-coded objects to quickly add elements to your Web site, or extend the Objects Palette to include your own commonly used HTML elements.
   
   
4. Visual Roundtrip Editing between Dreamweaver and Fireworks speeds development of graphics and HTML, editing Tight integration with Flash and the entire Macromedia family of Web publishing software makes it easy to create compelling, high-impact Web sites.
   
   
5. Exceptional support for Microsoft Office makes it easy to integrate Word, Excel or Access content contributed by team members into professional Web sites.
   
   
6. Collaborate with reusable templates, file checkin and checkout, size synchronisation and Design Notes that let you track information about the progress of Web pages.
   
   
7. Automate repetitive tasks with the revolutionary History Palette, which keeps track of every design task. Select a series of steps and save them as a reusable command.
   
   
8. Develop dynamic applications easily with Rountrip Server Markup that recognises proprietary application server tags and never rewrite script in pages containing ASP, ISP, Cold Fusion or PHP.
   
   
9. Manage site wide content with a visual site overview, automate link management and site-wide search and replace for faster edits.
   
   
10. Easily customise the entire Dreamweaver application to your own preferences, using Javascript and HTML. Create your own keyboard shortcuts, add or remove menu items and build new palettes to inspect your documents.
    

Conclusion : Dreamweaver 3 is definitely the development tool of choice for professional Web Builders, it allows you to quickly and easily develop professional quality Web sites, while saving you valuable development time and thus money. It's still not the perfect tool, but it's certainly a firm favourite of ours and already a leading contender for best development tool of 2000.