Wednesday 11 January 2012

Do You Need To Upgrade To Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5?

If you design websites professionally then there is every chance that you already have at least one version of Adobe Dreamweaver, because the software has become ubiquitous among professional web designers.

Dreamweaver is a much older application than you may realize, with the first version being released for the Mac only in December 1997, and the first Windows version arriving in March 1998. Since then the overriding advantage that Dreamweaver has maintained in the web space has comes from its ability to continually reinvent itself, so that it always stays on the cutting edge of what is possible to achieve in terms of web design on the internet.

The latest CS5.5 version was released in April 2011 and has a number of key new features that are compelling if you are a web designer.

The first of these is the greatly enhanced support for the HTML 5 standards.

This is a big deal, because Apple's unexpected move to block all Adobe Flash content from appearing on its iPhone or iPad has had the effect of dramatically increasing the uptake of the HTML 5 standard online, particularly for video where Flash was often the option that web designers would choose to opt for because of the increased control it offers over multimedia content.

The removing of an established standard by Apple was probably done for reasons of maintaining control over their web apps store, rather than for any high-minded reasons that their PR department may claim, but the fact remains that it has catapulted the HTML 5 standard squarely into the sights of all web designers, because they do now need to use it in order to make sure of cross compatibility between all devices.

The iPad and iPhone are now so common and well-used, that they cannot be ignored, and the knock-on from this is to place Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 very much at the heart of the web design landscape once more.

The other big recent move with Dreamweaver that really started around version CS5 is to allow the program to work with dynamic, database driven websites such as WordPress.

It used to be the case that Dreamweaver was primarily a tool for designing static HTML websites, but in recent years free CMS and Blogging platforms like WordPress have made it much easier for even people with no technical skill to set up a database driven website that offers much greater flexibility. Adobe have reacted to the threat of Dreamweaver becoming obsolete by again re-inventing how the program works, so whilst it still remains the best design tool on the market to edit and create static websites, it is also now a great tool to edit database driven websites.

There are a number of new ways to look at code in the software, including a "Live Code" view so you can see exactly how database content is being loaded, and a multiscreen version.

The new Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 remains the best software on the market for manipulating websites and is well worth an upgrade form an older version.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6749655

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