Anyway, since Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 is out, I thought I would try the trial and see if I thought it was worth the upgrade. The last version I bought was Studio 8 when it was still Macromedia. I hadn’t seen anything big in CS2 and/or CS3 to push me to upgrade the studio, other than the post-merger integration of Fireworks and PhotoShop…but that is another topic.

However, being a Dreamweaver user since version 2, in like 1997?, I wanted to give CS4 a try and see what they had added to make the case to upgrade.

The biggest improvements I wanted to see were better performance, better PHP code completion, CSS suggestion and I wanted to see how the Live View feature would work.

My basis of comparision, besides Dreamweaver 8, was Aptana, that I have been using inside Eclipse. It is NOT WYSIWIG, but has functioned well for code generation, and has a great price point..FREE!

Performance Improvements
So far I haven’t seen any huge performance improvements. I am testing on a better machine, so moving a little bit better. At least it isn’t wanting to constantly check the database, which it seemed to do randomly on any dynamic site before, so that is a plus. But overall, no huge jump…maybe they soon will let it be 64-bit and multi-core aware, LOL.

PHP Code Hinting/Additional Functions
This would be my biggest disappointment. DW8 didn’t have much help, that I found for PHP, beyond the basic server behaviors that it shipped with (which actually are very useful when getting started). CS4 doesn’t show a lot more server behaviors than DW8 did. Moreover, and this is where Aptana shines vis-a-vis Dreamweaver, is that if I had a function or class defined in another included file, I didn’t get any code hinting for that function. I got code hinting for pre-defined PHP functions, but again, that was in 8. Aptana will offer code completion for any class or function that I have defined in an include, which is a HUGE help.

CSS Improvements
The push for accessible, clean CSS and code has been a big area that DW has helped push the community in the right direction. Being able to see what CSS is acting on a class or a DIV is a big help in this version, esp. in Live View. That being said, I am disappointed that in Aptana I get code hinting that shows me what browsers a style will work in and even color examples. I hope that Adobe will continue to improve in this area.

Live View
I thought this would be my #1 new feature. Sadly, I am disappointed.

To me the whole point was not to have to round-trip to my testing server and upload and run the files at the server. I guess I thought maybe they were running a dev server on my machine or some other method. However, since to use Live View it still uploads the files, I can just go to the browser and refresh it. Especially since we have to test in what 5, 6, 7… browsers these days, I am going out there anyway, and using Firebug in Firefox for most testing. It is helpful to not have to go to the browser,  but still not what I expected or wanted.

Related Files
The other new feature they added, that is I have found enormously helpful is Related Files. When you open a page, it loads the referenced included files, any JavaScript pages, CSS or PHP pages. You can go back and forth among the other files right from your main page. This worked even when I opened a page on my hard drive, not in my site. With so many files being used to determine the final look and function of the page, this is a huge help. My only complaint so far is what I stated above, that I don’t get help with code completion from what I have in those related files, other than the CSS, which they have always done.

Other New/Improved Features
Unfortunately, I do my development one way, at least on my current projects. So I haven’t had time or ability to delve into any of the other new features.

I haven’t used any of the JavaScript frameworks, esp. Spry which come pre-loaded, but I know they mentioned some ability to add frameworks and it have code hinting. So far I haven’t used this to see what the improvements there are.

Also, I am not using Subversion, so that is not of value to me currently, besides I can do that in Eclipse if I wanted, for free.

After using for a few weeks, there are some nice improvements, but in my areas of concern, it is still not a big enough jump to justify the cost. I will probably continue to use DW8 for those times I need WYSIWIG and probably stick to Apatana for the better coding environment. I find it ironic in a way that the great thing about Dreamweaver was always my ability to code more pages, faster as a site grew, but with them all being so dynamic now, other tools have come out that are better suited for that purpose. I think DreamWeaver is still a good visual tool with some cool tips and development tools, but not what I would consider a full-featured development IDE.

As you can tell I am excited about this development.

Get the plug-in here.