Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 is a proprietary web development tool developed by Adobe Systems. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 is a solid Web development tool that includes a code editor, a visual design mode, sophisticated Cascading Style Sheet tools for creating, editing, and managing CSS, and site management features such as a built-in FTP client for transferring files from your computer to your Web server. In Dreamweaver CS6, Adobe adds tools to work with new CSS properties, to build mobile-ready Websites, and to take advantage of Adobe’s related services Business Catalyst, a commerical web hosting platform and PhoneGap Build, a cloud-based service for compiling apps for mobile platforms.
For most of the history of the Web, designers have been forced to resort to a handful of fonts—those already installed on the majority of computers worldwide. Because traditional Web typography relies on fonts already existing on a visitor’s computer, designers couldn’t simply select among the thousands of beautiful fonts available.
While Web fonts and CSS transitions are a good first step into CSS3, Dreamweaver doesn’t provide nearly the same support for other popular CSS3 properties like box-shadow, text-shadow, border-radius, and gradients. That’s not to say Dreamweaver doesn’t provide some tools for these, but that’s an area of confusion.
Dreamweaver CS6 provides three ways of creating and editing CSS: code view, where you write your own CSS; the CSS Rule Definition window, a friendly, easy-to-use window for selecting CSS properties and values; and the Properties pane of the CSS Styles panel. The Rule Definition window is by far the easiest way to create CSS, and the one commonly used by beginners and intermediate users. Unfortunately, Adobe hasn’t updated this window for several versions of the program, so it’s missing many common CSS properties (even properties that have been around since CSS 2.1).
