Dreamweaver 8 is announced along with Studio 8
Posted by Jesse Rodgers on August 08, 2005 at 08:00 AM
On 8/8 Macromedia has announced Studio 8 – which could be the last release of Studio under Macromedia. With this version comes the standard tools you can use – Flash Professional 8, Fireworks 8, Contribute 3.11, and Dreamweaver 8.
Dreamweaver 8
For me the big deal is Dreamweaver 8 (DW8). First off, dropping MX (insert name here) naming is a great step. Easier to talk about and it gives me a three letter way to refer to it – DW8. There is a real good feature tour on the Macromedia site.
Working with Contribute Publishing Services (CPS)
DW8’s only feature related to the Web Publishing Systems CPS is that was added is with the event logging. All your file movements are logged just as they are with Contribute 3. This is really nice for places that rely on those logs as a sort of audit trail for page updates. It also opens up some possibilities. As soon as something appears online about that, I will link to it.
Of course DW8 should work nicely the roll backs, notes, check in/out, etc.
DW 8 and Accessibility
What does DW8 do that MX2004 doesn’t? I am not entirely sure. Problem with accessibility is that so little of it has to do with actual code. With regards to DW8, it will not get in the way of accessible code and it gives you a way to check your code. But the design, layout, content, and structure is up to you. No tool will do that for you.
To upgrade or not?
For UW sites based on the CLF, it should work pretty well. You no longer need to use the Design Time Style Sheets to render the central CSS as DW8 can render any CSS you link to (as long as you are online). The panels will be of a huge benefit for you as you create your CSS as well.
Is DW8 required for CLF sites? No it is not, it is simply recommended. In fact all that is required is that your XHTML uses certain div tags and you point to a specific set of CSS and images. You can use any tool for that. But DW8 will make larger site management a little easier.
Stay tuned for some ‘working with new features and CLF pages’ posts.