Dreamweaver CS4 Beta is out

Posted At : May 27, 2008 12:16 PM | Posted By : Dave
Related Categories: Dreamweaver CS4 Beta,Dreamweaver

As you may or may not know Dreamweaver CS4 Beta is out at labs.adobe.com. I took it for a short test run a little while ago and here are my first impressions (for what they are worth).

Overall Look: The look of the app has changed drastically. The standard windows title bar is gone. All of the tabs have a very boxy feel to them. I am not a mac guy but the interface seems very macish. The gutter bar next to an open file is a little dark and hard to recognize what options are available.

New Features: One of the coolest new features to me is the Code Explorer. This allows you to navigate to included code without using the flies panel to open them. I can see this working great for standard non-dynamic include sites. However, if you use a dynamic path to your include or do not store your code below the web root it does not work. It will also not follow an extends or a createobject to a cfc. Maybe I am missing something but I also do not see a way to turn this feature off.

Another new feature is the split code view. You can now open a file and have 2 scrolling windows that scroll the same file. This is very handy when working with large files.

Overall it is a nice product. However, I still feel if fails in comparison to code editors like CFEclipse. It still feels to design centric and not like a true coding IDE.

So, go download it and form your own opinion.

Till next time,

--Dave

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"The standard windows title bar is gone" - Not gone, just hidden as you'll soon find out when the application goes into non-responsive / frozen mode for having too many files opened. The code explorer was nice, but after 2 hours of working I found myself wanting to turn it off. The interface isn't mac'ish at all, it's following the new Photoshop/Lightroom interface.
# Posted By Todd Rafferty | 5/27/08 2:09 PM
I just installed the mac version and really like the new interface. It has the same interface as photoshop which I really like. showing more with less space. I like the split code option that is new with this version so I can open one page and not have to constantly be scrolling up and down and changing code so I can look at a javascript function in the top and reference it correctly further down in the page. I'm not to fond of the bar underneath the title bar but will have to go through the preferences dialog to see what can and can't be changed. All in all I like the new changes.
# Posted By Alfio Raymond | 5/27/08 4:09 PM
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