Adobe Dreamweaver 2019 and Beyond

This year, with Adobe Dreamweaver 2019.1 and 2019.2 updates we added the latest Bootstrap versions 3.4.1 and 4.3.1, an improved code formatting experience for PHP/CSS/JS files, support for extensions with locales like en_GB, fr_MA, da_DK, and a security fix for traversing protocol relative paths in a document.

We are committed to enabling you to design and code state-of-the-art websites by providing all the required tooling. At the core, Dreamweaver is powered by a modern code editor and visual editing aids based on CEF. Through the rest of this year and next, we are focused on further improving both the code editor and visual editor surfaces. More specifically, below are some key areas where you will begin to notice improvements in future Dreamweaver updates.

Improved Live View editing experience

As shared in our previous post, we are working on improving the Live View editing experience. In Live View, editing will soon be a single-click experience. You can edit text for elements hidden behind a mouse click or on hover events, tab across table cells and edit the content, click and edit blank HTML tags, and much more.

With the new always editable Live View, you can start with a blank document and build a page with minimal dependency on Code View or Design View for adding/editing HTML elements or applying styles.

Navigation and editing experience across editable and non-editable regions will be further improved with visual cues for all HTML elements in the page and support, find & replace, and spell check within Live View.

Modern code editor

Code hints play a major role in coding a web page efficiently and quickly. Code hints coverage will be further increased to cover all the latest changes in HTML5, CSS3, and JS, and also improve the filtering logic for code hints to provide better context-sensitive matching hints.

Today, Dreamweaver supports code coloring for a wide range of file types. However, we have heard your feedback on the need for a simplified experience to customize code coloring. Editing code view themes, the ability to add custom colors for specific HTML tags, and the ability to toggle or change colors for tag highlighting and active line highlighting will be supported with a UI interface.

Renaming variables/functions and jumping across class/function definitions and references in PHP code would be cumbersome as it often involves switching between documents, scrolling and keeping track of line numbers, and is further tricky while trying to rename a function or variable across the project. This will be addressed with PHP refactoring which will help you overcome this overhead, and you can jump to a function or a class definition or to a variable declaration from references in the entire project, and rename variables/functions across the project. The enhanced Quick Edit will let you quickly view and edit the definition of a class/function without having to leave the current document. Further icing on the cake will be the added support for the upcoming PHP version 7.4 once it is released by the end of this year. Error reporting and PHP 7.4 code hints should help you with the transition to PHP 7.4 for your current sites.

While editing similar text elements or a column of text in Dreamweaver, multiple cursors has been an efficient tool for simultaneous editing of text. This feature will be further enhanced to support IME and operations like insert/cut/paste. You would no longer be required to type the text using IME and copy-paste it manually across multiple lines in the document. You can just add multiple cursors with Ctrl/Cmd+Click and type text using IME and the text will be added across all the selected cursors. Also, with the refreshed default Japanese fonts for code view, you can now enjoy a better code and Japanese text readability.

Secure, reliable and stable Dreamweaver

One of the major items of feedback has been w.r.t., Code View performance. We understand that performance is the key building block for any successful application, so we are working on optimizing and extracting every bit of performance.

Also, a reliable and stable find and replace is very important as sites grow larger. Find and replace will be further improved to provide results without fail for large websites containing thousands of files.

Security is a non-negotiable aspect of any software. This is a year-long running story. We will keep track of any security vulnerabilities reported and update Dreamweaver and its dependencies to make sure you always have a secure and dependable software for use.

Compatible with latest OS versions

Operating systems are getting updated more frequently than ever to support and bring you the latest technologies and improvements like Apple File System and the Chromium-based MS Edge browser. Dreamweaver will be updated to support the latest changes, thereby ensuring you can upgrade to the latest OS versions without having to worry on Dreamweaver compatibility.

We value your feedback. We are also continuously striving to address the pain points or concerns you have shared with us. You can subscribe to our pre-release program here to get your hands on early Dreamweaver builds with these changes as we make progress.