I should start off by noting that I've been using GoLive CyberStudio since version 1.0. I also tried the Dreamweaver 1.0 beta when it first came out, but was a bit turned off by the fact that it installed 17 extensions in my system folder. Fortunately, this is no longer the case in Dreamweaver 2. I've been using GoLive CyberStudio 3 for a good while now, and in preparation for this review, I've gone out of my way to use Dreamweaver 2 for all my day-to-day web work over the past three weeks. Both packages retail for close to the same price, and both are aimed at the professional web site designer/developer. While CyberStudio is Mac-only, Dreamweaver is also availible for Windows, and it¹s clear in many cases that the Mac version is, for the large part, a direct port.
Page Layout Tools
Both Dreamweaver and CyberStudio are, first and foremost, WYSIWYG editors, though both have facilities to edit the HTML directly. Both applications use the "palette" metaphor to allow you to place new objects on the page. Just drag an icon from the appropriate palette and drop it onto the blank canvas. Dreamweaver is a bit smarter in this respect, however. As soon as you drop a table icon onto the document window, for example, Dreamweaver will prompt you for the table parameters -- number of rows, columns, and so on -- whereas CyberStudio will just plop it down. CyberStudio's palettes are a bit more intuitive, as each section is marked with an icon, and the icons themselves are a bit bigger.
When it comes to table manipulation, Dreamweaver wins hands down. It offers far better tools to select and edit cells, rows, columns and whole tables -- though there is still room for improvement. Contextual menus are also utilitized well by Dreamweaver within table editing. In addition, Dreamweaver goes above and beyond the call of duty by allowing the user to actually sort the contents of a table, just like a spreadsheet; an invaluable feature. Dreamweaver even breaks new ground by supplying a "Format Table" command, which allows you to do things such as set alternating colors for each row to increase readability.
In contrast, CyberStudio¹s table editing tools are unintuitive and difficult to use. It can be a very trying experience to select the cell you want, and the only way to select multiple cells is to shift-click them one at a time.
Dreamweaver has a unique feature in the layout department. It enables you to import an image as the "tracing image", which is placed in the background of the page. The idea here is that you can design your page or site in Photoshop, then reproduce it accurately in Dreamweaver. There is even a slider available to set the opacity of the tracing image.
Advantage: Dreamweaver
Site Management
GoLive spent a lot of time on CyberStudio's site management features, and it shows. Going beyond just simple page and link managment, CyberStudio will also keep track of font sets, color sets, external site links, email addresses -- all on a per-project basis. GoLive pioneered the "point-and-shoot" user interface metaphor which allows you to point links at their target pages in the site heirarchy. The folks at Macromedia liked this feature so much that they ³borrowed² it for Dreamweaver 2.
CyberStudio's site management also includes strong Mac OS Finder integration, a department that Dreamweaver is virtually a no-show in. CyberStudio lets you do all sorts of file and folder manipulation right from the site window -- duplicate folders and files, Get Info, etc. Double-clicking non-HTML files (such as layered Photoshop images) launches the associated application, just like in the Finder. Dreamweaver does let you select an external image editor, but CyberStudio uses the same file-to-application mapping as the Finder.
Advantage: GoLive CyberStudio
User Interface and Ease of Use
GoLive CyberStudio is the clear winner here. In CyberStudio, you are never forced to manually edit text files to set preferences. Unfortunately, that is not the case with Dreamweaver. For example, to add ".phtml" as a valid HTML file type in Dreamweaver, you must locate the configuration file (specified in the online help), open it in a text editor, make your changes, and relaunch Dreamweaver. That's about as unintuitive as it gets, and conjurs up images of editing crucial DOS files by hand.
In terms of looks, CyberStudio's appearance is much more appealing than that of Dreamweaver's. The icons are more professional, the widgets are more polished, and you don't see yellow Windows folders anywhere in CyberStudio.
CyberStudio¹s keyboard shortcuts are in line with other Mac apps. Command-Arrow takes you to the end/beginning of a line or document. Option-Arrow moves you forward or backwards one word. As far as arrow key navigation is concerned, Option-Arrow doesn¹t do anything in Dreamweaver and Command-Arrow moves you forward or backwards one word, instead of to the beginning or or end. You will have to use the wintel-centric "Home" and "End" keys to get to the beginning or end of a line quickly. While this may not seem like that big of a drawback, polished Mac users who are used to their keyboard shortcuts will be apalled with Dreamweaver¹s keyboard navigation.
CyberStudio also works great with Mac OS 8.5 Themes (if you have any) and Kaleidoscope, adopting the look of the selected scheme. Dreamweaver doesn't seem to do this properly, and even seems to have some menu-related conflicts with Kaleidscope 2.1.1. CyberStudio supports Mac OS 8.5's Navigation Services while Dreamweaver does not. CyberStudio allows you to "dock" windows at the side of the monitor, just like Mac OS 8's folder tabs can stick at the bottom of the desktop. You can even dock the palettes themselves.
Dreamweaver, on the other hand, does use screen space more efficiently. The palettes are thin and minimalist, whereas CyberStudio seems to go for the bulkier, more expressive look. Dreamweaver correctly binds Command-B to "Bold", and Command-I to "Italic", whereas you¹ll have to press Shift-Command-B and Shift-Command-I with GoLive.
But these are minor complaints. GoLive's human interface ethic is generally more natural than Macromedia's.
Advantage: GoLive CyberStudio
Text Editing
Dreamweaver relies heavily on BBEdit to compensate for the lack of a decent text editing engine. The full version of BBEdit comes bundled with the shrinkwrapped version of the product, which is without a doubt the premier text editing application on the Macintosh. Although the internal engine shares syntax coloring with BBEdit, that's about all it shares. Expect to be switching back and forth between BBEdit and Dreamweaver reguarly if you want to edit any HTML by hand, and you can expect this to get a bit tiresome after a while. Dreamweaver does sport one major innovation in this area, however: individual tag syntax coloring. You can make all of your tags fuscia, and all your tags teal if you want, which is sure to be a much appreciated feature for users who frequently edit HTML by hand.
CyberStudio has a full-blown built-in text editor. You have all the features of an HTML text editor and all kinds of coloring options (though not for inividual tags). While CyberStudio¹s text editor doesn¹t rival BBEdit, the convenience of integration cannot be overlooked.
Advantage: GoLive CyberStudio
Customization and Extensibility
This category could be considered the heart and soul of Dreamweaver. This is due to the fact that much of Dreamweaver's interface is built in HTML and JavaScript. This makes it very easy to write extensions to Dreamweaver to dramatically enhance its functionality. Even if you're not at that level of JavaScript expertise, you can rearrange dialog boxes, hide options to simplify the interface, add little memos in windows -- all with simple HTML editing. Like CyberStudio, Dreamweaver allows you to customize HTML generation through the use of a tag database. Here's the catch, though... all of the HTML generation options are buried in a long and complex text file called SourceFormat.profile within Dreamweaver's "Configuration" folder. Enter at your own risk.
CyberStudio pioneered customization of HTML generation with its Web Database concept, which can be modified via a fairly straightfoward GUI. CyberStudio also allows you to select which "Modules" should be loaded at launch time. So if you have no use for the site management features, for example, you can deselect that module and, in theory, reduce CyberStudio's resource consumption. Aside from a few DHTML/JavaScript Actions plug-ins (and associated SDK), CyberStudio's advanced customization essentially ends there. Dreamweaver's extensibility is incredibly vast by comparison.
Advantage: Dreamweaver
Who's More In Touch With the Professional Webmaster?
Macromedia has made a strong effort with Dreamweaver 2 to cater to the needs of the adept webmaster. Macromedia has included a Server Side Include (SSI) parser to preview what the final product will look like. Anyone with a mid-to-large-sized site knows that SSIs are a Godsend. Dreamweaver also understands root-relative paths, so that you can use "src=/images/logo.gif" instead of "src=../../images/logo.gif". Finally, and perhaps most importantly in this category, Dreamweaver understands that "/folder/" is the equivalent of "/folder/index.html", and checks links accordingly. This seems like such a simple thing to incoporate into a web development package, but it's suprisingly rare.
Sadly, CyberStudio supports not a single one of the three features listed above. CyberStudio does attempt to compensate by implementing a proprietary HTML object called a "component", but that won't quite fit the bill in evironment where not every uses CyberStudio.
Advantage: Dreamweaver
Stability and Performance
While CyberStudio is looking for 20MB of application RAM out of the box, Dreamweaver wants a cool 32MB (add another 1.7MB for BBEdit). This is the amount of RAM that needs to be devoted to the application, not just your total system memory. I'd be willing to bet that the extra 12MB that Dreaweaver eats up is some sort of Win32 emulator, since Dreamweaver is clearly a port of the Windows version. By contrast, GoLive engineered CyberStudio from the ground up as a Mac-first, Mac-only app. Despite this fact, Dreamweaver's palette redraws seem much snappier, and the application itself is far more stable than CyberStudio.
If you have the extra RAM, Dreamweaver will outperform CyberStudio. Plus, it doesn't crash. CyberStudio does; a bit too often, in fact.
Advantage: Dreamweaver
HTML Generation
As mentioned above, both applications allow you to customize the HTML output from their respective code generation engines. However, CyberStudio gives you a GUI front-end to do this, Dreamweaver does not.
Dreamweaver's HTML output can be quirky at times, but it at least endeavors to only edit the parts of the HTML that the user requests. For example, if you specify new dimensions for an image, it seems to be pretty good about only changing that particular image tag. Dreamweaver also includes some built in commands for cleaning up HTML residue. "Clean up HTML" attempts to remove extraneous tags and include necessary ones. Another command, "Apply Source Formatting", reformats the source code itself based on the contents of the "SourceFormat.profile" configuration file.
CyberStudio has a different approach. Changing any object on a page in WYSIWYG mode will completely rewrite all the HTML, based on the settings in the Web Database. While this isn't the most desireable approach in many circumstances, you at least have to give credit to CyberStudio for consistency. The HTML is always written exactly the same way, which does not always seem to be the case with Dreamweaver.
Advantage: GoLive CyberStudio
The Verdict
Dreamweaver 2.0 is a tighter overall package than GoLive CyberStudio 3.1.1. Dreamweaver offers more in terms of extensibility, stability, and most importantly, addressing real-world webmastering needs. However, my heart really lies with GoLive since they are quicker to jump on new Mac technologies and produce better human interface. I'd love to see CyberStudio go through an overhaul, but I fear GoLive is spending too much of their engineering resources on the up and coming GoLive Web Publishing System, rather than keeping CyberStudio competitive.
So for now, Dreamweaver is the better investment.
