Summary

Chapter 1 - What is PHP?
byGareth Downes-Powellet al.
Wrox Press 2003

We have briefly looked at the history of PHP and how developers were able to use previous versions of Dreamweaver to create PHP pages even though they weren't natively supported.

This chapter has taken you through the new-look Dreamweaver MX user interface, and has explained PHP's role within that interface. There is of course much more to the Dreamweaver interface than what we have covered here, as that subject alone could cover the content of a book in itself.

Dreamweaver is, and has always been, a revolutionary tool. Dreamweaver MX is no exception. With the natural integration of development tools, it is little wonder that this software is amongst the most popular web design packages available on the market today.

The addition of native PHP support to Dreamweaver can only be a benefit to the web design community as a whole, as it opens up extra possibilities to the developer. It should be noted here, that one of the greatest things about Dreamweaver as a development environment is that you can take all the skills that you gained from using one server model, for example PHP, and apply the same skills and processes to any of the other server models. Before you know it, you will be a multi-talented developer, which is as it should be.

We've also looked at installing and configuring PHP onto your development web server, a task that can appear quite difficult to the uninitiated, but one that is well worth the effort. This is the first step towards a dynamic development process, and one that we're sure will change the way you view web development in the future.

If you want to truly harness the power of PHP and Dreamweaver MX, though, there is one more tool that you will need to use, a database.