Adobe Dreamweaver MX 2004 Full Version for PC, Mac (DWD070D000)

Pros: Noticeable improvements from earlier versions, even for intermediate users
Cons: Well, see, now there's this program called Dreamweaver 8 . . .

If you, for some reason, are not in the market for or can’t afford M acromedia Studio 8, Dreamweaver MX 2004 is a fine earlier version of the popular web design program sans Fireworks, FlashPaper, Contribute etc.. ...

Pros: Builds great web pages with W3C compliant code.
Cons: I can't think of any cons about this program!

DW MX 2004 is really the best web design program there is. Spend a little bit of time taking the tutorials and going through some of the on-line materials that Macromedia has available, and you should be up and running with this program in no time. It's great CSS capabilities have converted me from using Top Style Pro. It's FTP capabilities are the best. Macromedia had some bugs in this program when it released it last year, but that has all been fixed. I can't recommend this program enough! It is the industry standard.

Pros: Excellent user interface improvements, better concentration on current web standards.
Cons: If you program in xhmtl and css2 you are likely to encounter the bugs.

I purchased this product as an upgrade from the previous release. In less than three weeks, I was able to find a half-dozen bugs that Macromedia reproduced and escalated. One of those bugs causes the program to vanish from the screen instantly without so much as an error message! There was a region on all but a few pages of my web site that I couldn't click on without crashing Dreamweaver MX 2004.

There are circumstances under which a user might never encounter those bugs, but they were severe enough in my case that the product was unusable.

I received a quick and courteous refund and have gone back to the previous release. It shows promise, though. When the update comes out, I will repurchase it.

Pros: Prettier interface (but slower), better rendering of CSS (thanks to Opera)
Cons: Many bugs, very slow to work with, Macromedia unresponsive to user complaints

This update to the venerable Dreamweaver package is the worst ever. It introduces a slew of new bugs, which Macromedia has failed to fix a full four months after this version was released. It is the slowest version of DW yet, almost impossible to use in some instances. Look over on the Dreamweaver forums on Macromedia's site to see the many people who have been yelling BUGS BUGS BUGS and WTF WHY IS THIS SO SLOOOOOOWWWWW!

Man, I'm telling you, this is a rip-off. MM is charging like 50% of the new price for this update, which is guaranteed to REDUCE your productivity! And they will not even issue a bug-fix, which should be no surprise, because Macromedia never issues bug fixes. Bugs that were in version 4 and MX still exist, for god's sake! This is a very bad situation.

Pros: New interface, good PHP and CSS support.
Cons: A little buggy, nothing to get upset about.

I was a little weary about purchasing the "2004" version of a product. I figured...if Macromedia is promising lots of new features...why don't they rename it Dreamweaver 10 or something instead of just adding "2004" to the current title. At any rate. When I purchased the product I was happily surprised by the newer, sleeker interface. And even more pleasantly surprised by the increased support for PHP and CSS. The Dreamweaver "suggestion feature" is very useful while writing tons of code as it speeds things up quite a bit. Also the new "debug" feature is very useful although I doubt some of it's accuracy.