We don't dispute the importance of the Web as a news medium—quite the contrary—and we even grant that the ugly, primitive appearance of the Starr Report online aptly reflects its tawdry contents. But just as the Lewinsky affair represents a kind of spectacular regression, a roadblock in the nation's forward momentum, so too does the reflexive publication of the Starr Report represent a step back for the Web, at least in some respects. This is because the major Web news sites have built their growing reputation on balanced coverage and compelling, continually enhanced user experiences, neither of which the already infamous report provides. So it is with conscious relief that we turn from the nightmare in Washington for a look at Dreamweaver, one of the tools used on the Web at its best.

Real Progress

The tools used to build Web pages and sites have improved tremendously over the past year. A "first-generation" product like Adobe PageMill, which we gave a four-star rating 18 months ago, would barely rate two stars today (although even PageMill could have been used to create a more professional look for the Starr Report). The strengths of these early products (quick prototyping, semi-automation of tables and frames) have been surpassed by newer, more advanced competitors, and their weaknesses—particularly the quirky HTML code they generate—no longer seem acceptable. In the right hands, the first-generation tools can still turn out credible work (the British music magazine Gramophone built its first site with PageMill, for example), but most professional site builders require more capable tools today. That's where Dreamweaver comes in.

It's not a complete solution, of course, nor could it be—the market is divided into too many specific areas of functionality for that. At the high end, programs like Vignette StoryServer are used to automatically generate pages that customize user experience. Database integration per se continues to grow in importance as well, and there are a wide range of programs specializing in this function. (Macromedia has just announced that Dreamweaver will operate with one of the best, Allaire's Cold Fusion. Editor's Note: Macromedia and Allaire have since merged.) Down in the trenches, where individual pages are built and a site's overall look and feel are defined, two programs currently compete with Dreamweaver for top visual-tool honors (some would add a third program, Microsoft's FrontPage; we would not). These are GoLive CyberStudio and NetObjects Fusion, both of which have recently beefed up their collaborative authoring environments. But CyberStudio remains a Mac-only program, at least for now, while Fusion still relies heavily on tables-within-tables formatting—Dreamweaver suffers from neither restriction.

A Moving Target

Of course, Dreamweaver has far more going for it as well. First and perhaps foremost, it is the only authoring program to completely bypass the text editor vs. WYSIWYG argument—Dreamweaver provides the best of both environments with its "round-trip HTML" feature, which does not change the code of pages imported into the program from other sources. Furthermore, the program comes with—and is closely integrated with—the best HTML text editor on each platform: BBEdit on the Macintosh, HomeSite on Windows. In addition, Dreamweaver does the best overall job of hitting the moving target of evolving Web specifications: it was the first to incorporate Dynamic HTML and CSS support, and we think it's still the best. The Dynamic HTML implementation, for example, combines precision and ease-of-use by means of a timeline similar to those found in Macromedia's Director and Flash programs.

Dreamweaver is not flawless—it requires plenty of horsepower, lots of RAM and a large amount of screen space to accommodate its many windows and floating palettes. Its site management tools are still shy of the competition's, although it will let you coordinate local and external sites and it does a fine job of link checking. You can almost certainly count on more back-end capabilities in the next version; in the meantime, Dreamweaver offers the most elegant and innovative way to construct compelling, state-of-the-art pages. When used by those who can furnish the content to match, this program will help to move the Web forward.

(Reviewed September 15, 1998)