Workspaces

Much improved workspace layouts make working in Dreamweaver 8 very easy. Previous versions offered either “Coder” or “designer” layouts, and that was pretty much that. Dreamweaver 8 ships with four predefined layouts, but you’re not bound to those: you can customize the layout to suit your own specific needs, and save it as your own. This feature truly rocks — you can have your panes, panels, etc., all exactly where you want them. The built-in dual screen workspace is great, and making it suit my likes and dislikes is easy. The things I want are right where I want them, and they stay there, even when I close Dreamweaver and reopen it later.

The reference materials from O’Reilly have also been updated. New content for XML, XSLT, and Xpath have been added, and the materials for JSP and ASP have been overhauled. ColdFusion 7 and PHP 5 are now supported, as well. I don’t write much PHP at the moment, but I’m told the server behaviors and PHP 5 references are truly great!