Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks join CS4 update parade
Adobe Dreamweaver has a couple of interesting new features in this update, highlighted by the addition of Live View. This new view allows designers to see what their layout will look like under real-world browser conditions.
Using Live View, designers still have access to the code while using WebKit to render CSS navigation, JavaScript, Flash and other technologies typically not available when previewing a Web site. Live View may seem like a duplicate of the Preview in Browser feature, but that’s not how Adobe sees it.
“It’s not so much of a replacement for Preview in Browser, it’s more of a workflow gain because you don’t have to leave Dreamweaver,” said Dreamweaver product manager Devin Fernandez.
In keeping with its theme of making designers more efficient Adobe introduced Code Navigator in Dreamweaver. The Code Navigator is a smart pop-up window that shows you links to all the CSS code sources that affect your current selection.
You can also hover over the CSS style and see the definition for that particular rule. When you click a CSS style, Dreamweaver will take you to that rule in your CSS Stylesheet, so there is no more searching style sheets to find the rule you want to edit.
Dreamweaver and Photoshop are more tightly integrated in the new release. Designers now have the ability to drop a Photoshop PSD file into a Dreamweaver page to create a Smart Object. The object stays linked to the Photoshop graphic; if it’s changed, an icon on the Dreamweaver version will alert you to the change. You can simply click to update the graphic in the Dreamweaver document.
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