Dreamweaver 8
Review by Gabe Marihugh (www.creativelevity.com)

Right away I want to cut to the chase: without Dreamweaver, I probably wouldn’t be a web designer. Coming from a non programming background, it was Dreamweaver alone that held my hand the whole way, helping me learn as I go and doing (at times) most of the work for me. But it wasn’t a crutch. Like a good spellchecker, it helped me to see the areas I was weak in, and therefore point the way to my success.

The first time you open Dreamweaver, you may be intimidated. But don’t be. The program offers endless tools for all kinds of web design and development. With just a little orientation you will find yourself putting together your web pages in far less time than you did with lesser tools. Everything from document types to meta tags, images, and text formatting. It will serve as a great introduction and aide to help dial you in on such topics as CSS and Javascript. And when you are ready to go beyond, it will always be right there with the next level, whether you need to build custom code snippets or set up a local testing server for your preferred server side code.

One of my favorite features of Dreamweaver is its FTP client. Being able to keep a site project clear and organized within Dreamweaver, and then seamlessly update my edits to the live server without having to first open and connect through another FTP client is not only time saving, but brain saving. Also the use of Dreamweaver layout templates has brought my site production times way down. Just make my edits, update the pages from the template, and FTP them away.

And then there is the 3rd party support. Not sure how to integrate something into a page? Head to the Adobe Exchange and browse the free components. Numerous times these have come to my rescue. No matter how odd your problem, chances are someone has already solved it for themselves and provided the key as an easy download to you.

Overall, Dreamweaver has done more for my education as a web professional than any other tool. It has always kept me up to date on best practices and the latest technologies. Always there with a guiding hand.