The Philosopher's Toolbox

Dreaweaver MX first impression: The visual editing side of this visual editor is greatly enhanced and much more can be done with a click of a mouse. The site management and content menagement features (carried through from earlier versions) are also very handy, and the ability to view the markup directly (a necessity!) remains, and is easily accessible. But somehow I feel I was more efficient writing markup with just BBedit and a browser. The help function also seems to be greatly expanded and better integrated with other MX products, but also more unwieldy (i.e. more navigation and less text per page -- very irritating when you want the answer to a question fast). However, since I'm not producing Flash or using .asp, .jsp, .cfm, .php, etc., I haven't found any advantage to the MX side of Dreamweaver MX so far, or to its much-heralded easy integration with other development tools. But we'll see. On the plus side -- the new version installed without a flaw and recognised all my old settings and sites, and it does what it says it does very well -- i.e it is a powerful visual editor.

Summary: With a much expanded graphical interface, Dreamweaver MX lets you do more with the click of a mouse than ever before. Dreamweaver MX also promises more integration with other authoring tools, but if you prefer to edit your markup directly and your needs are simple (i.e you are not serving pages dynamically), you aren't going to see much of an advantage (beyond the possibility of future expansion as your needs and skills grow). On the other hand, the built in site management and content management features are very useful. This, combined with the ability to edit the markup directly makes Dreamweaver a keeper for me.