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dreamweaver ultradev adds dynamic content to the professional's favourite web authoring tool. This is not just animation and effects, but links to scripts and database connections running on the web server. To achieve this, ultradev adds several new features to dreamweaver. The data bindings inspector lets you define recordsets, which are the results of database queries executed at runtime. You can then replace static text in a web page with fields from the recordset. In addition, server behaviours are pre-defined scripts that handle common functions such as navigating and updating data. There is also access to http request information, form variables, cookies and the other essential ingredients of web applications. To work with ultradev you need an application server and a database manager. It supports microsoft's active server pages, sun's java server pages and allaire's coldfusion. Active server pages are a feature of microsoft's web servers, which bundled with windows. The package includes trial versions of ibm's websphere, for jsp, and allaire's coldfusion. Sadly php is not yet supported. ultradev does a great job of bringing together design tools and scripted dynamic content. A strong feature is the ability to display live data during page design. Before getting too carried way though, it is only fair to point out the limitations. ultradev's predefined scripts are adequate for simple database content, but for more advanced applications you will need to create your own scripts, which is a job for programmers. ultradev's skimpy documentation will not help much either. To compensate, ultradev is extensible, and many additional scripts are available from third parties. Finally, the beauty of both dreamweaver and ultradev is that you can easily get at the generated code to make your own customisations. --tim anderson |
