Developing a relationship with an application is usually slow process and with really good software, it probably never really ends.
Opening the Dreamweaver 8 box for the first time a few months ago was all about ‘how different is it?‘ and ‘gee, I hope they haven’t broken it‘. I may well have a serious lack of imagination, but at this stage it always seems to me that the old version was perfectly good, and surely they could only wreck it from here? Sometimes I’m right, but this one seemed pretty good from the start.
Although it’s been almost ignored in most feature listings, ‘FTP in background’ was the feature that actually impressed me the most. I’ve got three, shiny, fingertip-sized indents in my keyboard from waiting in upload limbo.
Not long after I got to proof-read the final edits of Rachel’s Dreamweaver 8 ‘tour-de-force’ (still Word docs at that stage) and started to get a more serious appreciation for the improvements in the version 8. Thankfully Macromedia devoted most of their development attention to the areas that needed it most — namely CSS-centric design tools, standards and accessibility, while throwing in some nice code view improvements.
But is it all grindstones and productivity gains down the Dreamweaver labs?
Of course it isn’t! The Macromedia boys know how to have fun.
If you have Dreamweaver, and you’re feeling a bit crazy on Monday morning, try this.
- Open any HTML page
- Click anywhere inside the BODY
- Go to the Properties panel and find the colors text entry box
- Enter ‘dreamweaver’ and press return
- Get ready to steer with your mouse ;)
If you don’t use Dreamweaver, watch the demo below.
Nifty that.
P.S. I’ve got an idea this works in MX 2004, but I can’t confirm it ATM.
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Yep, works in MX2004 too :) Nice find.
My only complain w/ DW8 is that it breaks integration with VSS. Bad.
October 31st, 2005 at 4:14 am
I applaud their strong support for CSS this time around but they are missing the development in ASP.NET. ASP.NET is now ripe for designers to try their hands-on especially with the release of designer friendly features like Masterpages and themes.
How exciting it would be if Macromedia will focus some of their development in the designer feature of ASP.NET version 2.
October 31st, 2005 at 4:43 am
Yes it does with in MX2004 but it also crashed my Dreamweaver when I tried it! Luckily, I have the version 8 upgrade waiting to be installed. Ping pong instead of work here I come….;)
October 31st, 2005 at 5:29 am
If you have Flash MX2004 notice the little TM sign in the top right of the word flash. If you click it (it’s hard to get at first) you get 6 retro games like breakout.
go to Help > About Flash and wait for the flash logo before you try.
October 31st, 2005 at 6:10 am
Sadly, I tried it a few times with Dreamweaver 8 and it doesn’t work.
I am running Mac OS X however so maybe that is the reason. If anyone has any suggestions of what to do, that would be great.
The most noted improvement for me is the ability to have tabs when working with many files. This was a vast improvement for me and really helps keep me organized.
October 31st, 2005 at 7:32 am
I, like bend3r, wasn’t able to get it to work in OS X…oh well, one less thing distracting me :P
October 31st, 2005 at 9:53 am
Mac OSX as well. No go :(
October 31st, 2005 at 6:57 pm
maybe they thought playing with the dock bar was enough fun ?
November 1st, 2005 at 5:42 am
It crashed my DW8 as well Jo… Actually, I’ve found version 8 to be particularly unstable for general use – crashes far too often really.
November 1st, 2005 at 7:35 am
Doesn’t work in Dreamweaver MX 6.0 :(
November 1st, 2005 at 5:59 pm
I’m kind of surprised it doesn’t work on OS-X. I always assumed DW was mac-native and ported to Win. Course the lack of a pong game doesn’t disprove that.
Jo and Jason: What OS are running it on?
November 1st, 2005 at 7:34 pm
I’m on Win XP Pro Alex. It’s on a laptop with a Pentium M 1.6 admittedly… but I do have 1 Gig RAM, you’d think it would be okay.
MX2004 ran fine (a little memory-hungry, but it was stable) but DW8 crashes often… I’m half inclined to take it off and go back to MX2004.
Hopefully a patch will be released soon…
November 1st, 2005 at 8:02 pm
i have found dw 8 to write very sloppy code…but anything is better than nothing it would get coming form me instead…i do find myself cleaning up the code all the time…
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:14 pm
I’m glad that the Mac folks now have tabbed files with DW8. We Windows folks had that way back in Dreamweaver MX.
November 9th, 2005 at 1:18 am
It crashed my DW8 as well Jo… Actually, I’ve found version 8 to be particularly unstable for general use—crashes far too often really.
ditto
When you loose it makes a sound!!!
November 9th, 2005 at 5:18 am
Haha, this is great. That is the best easter egg I have ever seen! It was cool even though it did make Dreamweaver crash. I got the crazy sound too after loosing. All apps should have built in games for when your bored at work.
November 26th, 2005 at 10:09 pm
I’m rather disapointed, but not the least bit surprised, that they didn’t provide this Easter Egg to Mac users as well. :|
March 5th, 2006 at 3:50 am