Check out more details on Nitobi’s Complete UI 2007, which is easy because they’ve got a trial version you can play with too. I think you’ll be impressed. This is great stuff- kudos, Nitobi!

Yes, this list will likely be controversial to some – particularly if you’re relying on one or more of these features today. However, the team decided to publish this list early- to both help you prepare for the changes, evaluate other options and adjust your own workflows. Most all the deprecated features either have become more code-centric workflows in other dedicated IDEs/environments (JSP, .NET), or had visual user interfaces that enabled DW developers and designers to generate poorly-formed code in the back end (Layout Mode and Timelines, for example) – something the team takes very seriously.

My personal opinion is that this move will really free up resources to do a LOT in the next few releases of Dreamweaver, and start doing more ‘revolutionary’ feature and architectural work as opposed to strictly ‘evolutionary’ features and polish. If any of the features to be removed give you pause, post a note, and it’s likely we can suggest alternatives for the post-CS3 era to help smooth the transition.

Personally- I hope that when we’re able to talk more about what’s being planned for the next version (or two) of Dreamweaver, the tradeoffs made here will be more than justified in your eyes. But that’s a subject for a much later date with a lot more details- so keep posted.

CSS Sculptor is an elegant Dreamweaver extension that helps you quickly build a customized CSS layout, starting with 30 of the most popular variants- elastic, liquid and fixed layouts, 1-3 column configurations, and much more. The interface doesn’t just help you choose from a completely ‘pre-canned’ design, but gives you a clear starting point to help expose the CSS and attributes required to customize a layout for your specific project and design- helping educate users on CSS best practices as well as expedite their development. Win/win.

The community is taking notice, too- you can read Jeffrey Zeldman’s aforementioned take on CSS Sculptor (great comment thread, too), articles from InfoWorld and Website Magazine, and of course Eric’s own take on CSS Sculptor at his personal weblog. Don’t forget to digg the news, as well.

Great product from two heavyweights in their respective spheres of influence, and yet another reason why Dreamweaver’s such a rich product to work with- the extensibility/third-party developer community around Dreamweaver just plain rocks! Awesome job, guys.

(Side note: I feel compelled to put a little plug in here for the standards-compliant CSS Layouts that ship with Dreamweaver CS3 for the record – which are also great sources of education on CSS design/layout best practices – heavily commented, and coded for Dreamweaver by The Web Standards Project‘s Stephanie Sullivan.)

This screencast covers installation and general functionality of the extension, and should get you up and running quickly. From there, it should be a snap to start leveraging your existing XHTML/JS/Spry/CSS skills to write sweet desktop apps using the AIR runtime.
Enjoy!

Between August 24th and 28th Adobe will be shooting on-camera interviews of Adobe software enthusiasts, talking about the software and work they love, for a video to be shown at the MAX conference in Chicago. If selected, you’d only be needed for one of those days (individual shoots will range between 1 to 2 hours maximum, FYI). If you want to be considered for this big-screen appearance you just have to drop a note to ‘adobecast@yahoo.com’ providing:

• Your occupation
• What Adobe products you use
• A recent photo or two of yourself
• Contact information

If you’ve got an interesting story to tell – especially if you’re using Dreamweaver, of course (as I’m biased that way) – drop a note to the production email account and get yourself in the running. I’m really looking forward to seeing the final piece, as well as the blooper reels…

The comments in the Ajaxian article’s thread are interesting- I was pleased to see there’s certainly a contingent of folks within giving a thumbs-up to recent release(s) of DW, along with the expected ‘WYSIWYG editing is for dolts’ responses, the latter of which Dion’s question may actually be a valid one for. My answer is simple- I’m a designer who likes code. I spend most of my time in DW’s code view exclusively, and occasionally do quick mockups/proof-of-concept work with the WYSIWYG tools. DW CS3 is speedy and nimble for me (particularly when compared to the glacial performance of MX 2004 and perhaps DW 8), and I have no problems using it regularly as a code editor – again, with the occasional drift into the GUI-driven features if I’m doing quick tests/proofs.

Now I can’t (and won’t) argue with those who simply prefer completely stripped-down tools like Notepad or TextMate/BBEdit – I occasionally do as well (have been a BBEdit user longer than a Dreamweaver user), and understand the minimalist approach – but the extended features of DW (along with it’s recent updates for code-centric folks) are way too much to discount wholesale just for percieved street cred on my part, or the spectre of old (and now- largely resolved) code trust issues in the visual editing features.

Anyway, I’d be interested in your comments, suggestions and opinions on this, too- as Dreamweaver is a app very near and dear to my own workflow I’ve also got strong (and yes- potentially biased) opinions upon it myself. Sound off below, why dontcha?

The Adobe web team’s David Hatch talks a little more about the update in this forums thread, and notes that this is the first, interim release of several updates the web team will be making to the Exchange app based on extensive user research across the Adobe product communities they’ve been doing over the past few months. David’s also noted some current issues with the updated Exchange UI – be sure to visit the thread and let the web team know what you think – and of course report bugs you run into so they can be addressed downstream.

(Note: comments are closed in this post, as discussion is being centralized in David’s forum thread instead.)

PVII’s newest commercial extension – Slide Show Magic – is a great example of their problem-specific focus, enabling an automated Dreamweaver interface to create rich, interactive image galleries and slide shows. Sure, you could build out a slideshow’s markup by hand, and code in the fades and dynamic loads by hand, but where Project Seven always excels is coming up with an elegant, accessible, well-structured and automated solution that covers all the bases eloquently.

Not only is Slide Show Magic accessible and indexable, but it gracefully degrades in older browsers, or when JavaScript is disabled. The markup generated by Slide Show Magic isn’t littered with event handlers and extraneous code, and the JavaScript is unobtrusively-written and lean. Their technical solution is as eloquent as the rich visual front end.

If you find yourself building image galleries or slideshows regularly, I can say that I’m very impressed with not just the elegant user interface, but the plumbing beneath the hood of Slide Show Magic- it’s a great automated solution that generates excellent code even the purists can be proud of.

Check out a quick screencast of Slide Show Magic at the Project Seven site (which really highlights the Dreamweaver interface and workflow), or better yet- live demos of the extension in action. Dreamweaver MX and greater are supported, as well as Fireworks MX or greater for image processing (which is optional). Dreamweaver CS3 is supported of course (as are the rest of PVII’s products). Great extension!

Back during Eric’s tenure as product manager for Dreamweaver, a huge feature request was an integrated shopping cart solution that made commerce enablement a snap, a call taken up quite admirably by the third-party Dreamweaver developer ecosystem. And from what I can tell, the engineers at WebAssist did a bang-up job of building a very complex but easy-to-use Dreamweaver extension by way of eCart 4 to enable exactly that- rich shopping and commerce functionality in a very user-friendly package. You can see some examples of third-party eCart implementations at the eCart showcase.

Sporting freshly redesigned, standards-based CSS layouts (reviewed and approved by CSS guru Eric Meyer, no less), support for a veritable plethora of back-end payment processing services and frameworks (including all of PayPal’s options), and a very configurable design and layout engine.

The eCart interface itself has undergone a major face-lift as well, with a clean, fresh new look and very well thought-out workflow. Although the options for an ecommerce solution can be vast and overwhelming, WebAssist has done a great job of streamlining the configuration process. Read more about this in the feature breakdown/tour, of course.

This looks like a fantastic upgrade to eCart- an incredibly valuable extension for Dreamweaver overall. Check out the eCart 4.0 website for more details, including a very nicely-done product walkthru by Mark Fletcher. Great job and a powerful new upgrade!

Note: I’ll be looking at some other new offerings from the Dreamweaver extension community over the next few weeks, so keep posted for more soon.