Introduction

Wherever I talk to Web developers, I hear the same stories. The work is there, but the budgets are tight and resources are laughable ”if they exist at all. Bosses and clients need to squeeze out more productivity at a lower cost; their jobs ”and the developer's future job opportunities ”are at stake. Do more with less is the order of the day, and do it now. Traditional boundaries between designer and coder are being blurred, if not dissipated altogether, by the work pressure. Web site creation has moved well past vanilla HTML. New standards and technologies break like waves, and developers must master them on-the-fly or go under. I hear the same stories wherever I go.

Beyond Dreamweaver is my reply. The title is not meant to lessen Dreamweaver ”I'm certainly not suggesting that the program should be left behind. Far from it; it's latest incarnation, Dreamweaver MX, has more reach and power than ever before. Rather, my goal with this book is to demonstrate how the professional web developer can go further with Dreamweaver than ever before.

In one sense, Dreamweaver is a roadmap into the uncharted territories of web development. You know there must be a way to integrate your content management system with Dreamweaver, but how exactly is it done? You're sure there is a faster, more efficient way to bring your site into Section 508 compliance, but what are the techniques? You've seen Dreamweaver extensions boost productivity generally , but what's the key to dissolving your specific production roadblocks ? I wrote Beyond Dreamweaver to answer these questions, and more.

Beyond Dreamweaver is also a celebration : I love this program. I love how the Dreamweaver engineers anticipate user needs with entire open architectures rather than locked-down single features. I love pushing Dreamweaver to the absolute limit and then finding a way to work past the limitations. I love Dreamweaver because the program constantly surprises me with its flexibility, grace, and brute strength.