Introduction

Welcome to Dreamweaver 8 Advanced for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickPro Guide! Macromedia Dreamweaver is one of the best WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") Web design and development tools available today. Each new Dreamweaver version offers more features to make Web design and development easy and fast, while at the same time supporting best practices, industry standards, and Web-standards guidelines.

As the Web has evolved, the line between Web designer and Web developer has become less clear, and most people creating Web sites today use a combination of both design and development skills. Dreamweaver provides features that are easy to use and learn for designers, developers, and the new breed of designer/developer.

Dreamweaver 8 integrates with application servers and databases so that you can quickly and easily create database-driven Web sites, and adds support for ColdFusion MX 7 and PHP 5. In addition, Dreamweaver 8 makes it possible for you to add XML data to your pages and create XSLT style sheets for transforming your XML data.

Dreamweaver 8 also introduces new tools to make your Web design and development work easier and faster, including the unified CSS panel, CSS layout tools, new starter pages, the Coding toolbar, and Code Collapse.

Best of all, whether you prefer working with design, code, or both, Dreamweaver lets you set up a Web design/development workspace for the way you choose to create Web pages and Web sites. It contains a multitude of design and development features, but at the same time it gives you the flexibility to choose which features work best for you.