Dreamweaver 3.0 provides advanced design and layout tools, as well as making it easy to use Dynamic HTML features such as animated layers and behaviors without writing a line of code. This is a must for those of us without formal training in Web development. Browser targeting checks your work for potential problems on all popular platforms and browsers (this feature is especially helpful to me, as I may spend as much as 40 percent of my time troubleshooting browser incompatibility). Macromedia's Roundtrip HTML technology imports HTML documents without reformatting the code-and you can set Dreamweaver 3.0 to clean up and reformat HTML when you want to.

Dreamweaver 3.0 is fully customizable. You can create your own objects and commands, modify menus and keyboard shortcuts, and even write JavaScript code to extend Dreamweaver 3.0 with new behaviors and property inspectors. The Property Inspector makes for handy edits and I found it quicker than my Notepad text-editing methods. Getting started in Dreamweaver 3.0 is as easy as opening an existing HTML document or creating a new one. But to get the most out of your Dreamweaver 3.0 experience, you should understand the basic concepts behind the Dreamweaver 3.0 work area and how to choose options that best fit your style of working.

There are many small tool windows in this product that remind me of my favorite, and much used, graphics editor. That made the transition from Notepad to Dreamweaver 3.0 much easier for me. The Window menu provides easy access to all of the windows, inspectors, and palettes in Dreamweaver 3.0. Most of the palettes and inspectors in Dreamweaver 3.0 can be docked, or combined into a single floating palette with multiple tabs. This makes it easy to access the information you need without cluttering your workspace. The current dimensions (in pixels) of the Document window appear in the window's status bar. Clicking the window size brings up the Window Size pop-up menu, which allows you to set the window size to fit any of several common monitor sizes.

To help you design a page that looks good at a specific size (or several different sizes), you can adjust the Document window to any of the sizes listed on the pop-up menu.

The Launcher contains buttons for opening and closing various palettes, windows, and inspectors.

The Object palette contains the following panels:

• The Common panel contains the most commonly used objects, such as Image, Table, and Layer.
• The Characters panel contains special characters such as the copyright symbol, curved quotation marks and trademark symbols. (Note that these symbols may not display correctly on browsers other than Netscape Navigator 3 and 4 and Internet Explorer 3 and 4.)
• The Forms panel contains buttons for creating forms and form elements.
• The Frames panel contains common frameset structures.
• The Head panel contains buttons for adding various HEAD elements, such as META, KEYWORDS, and BASE tags.
• The Invisibles panel contains buttons for creating objects that are not visible in the Document window, such as named anchors. Choose View > Invisible Elements to display icons that mark the locations of these objects. Click invisible-element icons in the Document window to select the objects and change their properties.

The History palette keeps track of every step of your work in Dreamweaver 3.0. You can use the History palette to undo multiple steps at once, to replay steps you've performed, and to automate tasks by creating new commands. The HTML Source inspector shows the code that browsers use to display the document as a Web page. Changes you make in the Document window are immediately reflected in the HTML Source inspector. When you enter HTML into the HTML Source inspector and then click outside the inspector, corresponding changes appear in the Document window. I like to check the source code at times to see just how Dreamweaver 3.0 writes HTML.

One thing I did not like about Dreamweaver 3.0 was the HTML segregation tag writing style. I have been used to writing <font face="Arial" size="3" color="#F00000"> in an effort to save file size and load time. Dreamweaver 3.0 writes <font face="Arial"><font size="3"><font color="#F00000">, closing the font tags with the three corresponding </font> tags. Fortunately I can easily overlook this shortcoming by using the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) format now recommended by the World HTML Consortium and one of Dreamweaver 3.0's features.

The Layer palette is a visual map of the layers in your document. Layers are displayed as a stacked list of names; the first created layer is at the bottom of the list, and the most recently created layer is at the top of the list. Nested layers are displayed as names connected to parent layers. Use the Layer palette to prevent overlaps, to change the visibility of layers, to nest or stack layers and to select one or more layers. I didn't find this feature immediately useful, but did find it interesting. Those new to Web design may find it very helpful, though, as it allows one to hold text and graphics on a page without a table format and later convert to HTML table format.

Dreamweaver 3.0 can be customized in many ways, allowing you to work in a manner that's familiar, comfortable and efficient for you. The following are some of the ways you can customize Dreamweaver 3.0:

• Rearrange the objects in the Object palette so that the ones you use most often are always visible, create new panels to reorganize the objects, or add new objects.
• Change the keyboard shortcuts or names of menu items, add new commands to menus, and remove existing commands from menus.
• Edit the source formatting profile to gain even finer control over the HTML that Dreamweaver 3.0 creates. The SourceFormat.txt file includes all the settings from the HTML Format preferences and more.
• Create your own commands and floating palettes using JavaScript.

• Change how third-party tags (such as ASP and ColdFusion tags) appear in the Document window.
• Set preferences for everything from color schemes and highlighting to site configurations and browsers.

I'm sure many of us appreciate the use of templates in our favorite word processor program. In Dreamweaver 3.0, you can create a template from an existing HTML document and then modify it to suit your needs, or you can create a template from scratch, starting with a blank HTML document. Want to add some interest to that template? Insert a Java applet, Shockwave movie, Flash movie, ActiveX control or other audio or video objects in your template page. Yes! You can do it in Dreamweaver 3.0! I have embraced the use of this product, found it easy to maneuver within its tool bars, and have decided to create all my future sites using Dreamweaver 3.0.

Dreamweaver 3.0
Macromedia, Inc.
600 Townsend St.
San Francisco, CA 94103