Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5

Adobe Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG and text editor for Windows Macintosh best suited to Professional Web Designers and Professional Web Developers. It costs $399.00. There is a free trial.

Rating

4 Stars
Score: 254 / 78%

The latest version of Dreamweaver at first didn't seem like that big a change. And honestly, if you don't have mobile web design in mind, it might seem like a minor update. After all, it is only a .5 update, right? But the new additions for mobile web development are perfect if mobile has even slightly caught your attention.

HTML5 Without a Plugin

HTML5 has much better support in Dreamweaver CS5.5. You no longer need a plugin to write in it. CSS3 is supported, but it's still not included in the CSS editor that Adobe inherited from Macromedia three or four versions ago. So you have to know the CSS3 properties you want to use, and the browser extensions. Although a lot will show up in code hints as you type.

Preview and Design for Multiple Screen Widths

The first thing you can do to start supporting mobile with Dreamweaver CS5.5 is to check out your web page at various widths—to compare how it looks on different device widths. There are a bunch of pre-defined device sizes, or you can set up your own.

But previewing doesn't do any good if you don't have any way to affect the different views. Dreamweaver CS5.5 now supports CSS3 media queries. It's easy to define as many different style sheets for as many device widths as you would like. You can even change the screen orientation between landscape and portrait.

Then with the connections to Adobe Device Central and BrowserLab you can do even more testing and previews of your pages in both mobile emulators and browsers.

Use Dreamweaver CS5.5 to Create Mobile Web Applications

Dreamweaver now has jQuery Mobile starter pages you can use to create your own mobile web application. You can choose to store the jQuery and jQuery Mobile files locally on your server or point to remote servers. You can even use custom mobile files and folders.

But that's not all. Dreamweaver CS5.5 has integrated with PhoneGap to make it easier to create native iOS and Android applications that use all the device features you expect on the iPhone and Android like the camera, GPS, and basics like swiping, tapping, and pinch-to-zoom.

Dreamweaver CS5.5 Has All the Great Features of CS5 Still

Don't worry, if you liked the new features of Dreamweaver CS5 like easier site creation, built-in BrowserLab, editing WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla! templates, and so on, you won't be disappointed. They are all still here.

Still Has the Same Issues, However

Unfortunately, Dreamweaver CS5.5 does not fix any of the things that were missing from version CS5, including:

• Link checking is still only for the local site
• There are no built-in validators (but it does connect to the W3C validator)
• Ecommerce, sitemaps, and SEO still require plugins
• Plus the other missing features I noted

This product was reviewed using an NFR copy supplied by the publisher and information on their website. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.