A brief description of the latest features of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

Ajax-Spry Framework

With ADOBE®DREAMWEAVER®CS3, you can use the Ajax Spry framework for visual design, development, and deployment of dynamic user interfaces. Ajax's Spry framework is a web designer's JavaScript Library for building Web pages that provide a richer experience to users. Unlike other Ajax frameworks, Spry can be used by both designers and developers because it is actually 99% HTML. See Building a Spry page visually.

Spry Widget

A Spry widget is a out-of-the-box user interface component that you can customize by using CSS and then add it to a Web page. With Dreamweaver, you can add multiple Spry artifacts to your own pages, which include XML-driven lists and tables, accordion artifacts, tabbed interfaces, and form elements with validation features. See Add a Spry widget.

Spry effect

Spry effects are a neat way to improve the attractiveness of your site's appearance. This effect can be applied to almost all elements on an HTML page. You can add Spry effects to magnify, shrink, fade, and highlight elements, visually change page elements over time, and do more. See Add a Spry effect.

Advanced Photoshop CS3 Integration

Dreamweaver includes enhanced integration features with Photoshop CS3. Now, the designer can select any part of the design in Photoshop (or even across multiple tiers) and paste it directly into the Dreamweaver page. Dreamweaver displays a dialog box where you can specify optimization options for the image. If you need to edit an image, simply double-click the image to open the original with a layer PSD file for editing in Photoshop. See Using Photoshop.

Browser compatibility check

The new browser compatibility check feature in Dreamweaver generates reports that indicate CSS-related rendering issues in various browsers. In code view, these issues are marked with a green underline, so you can know exactly where the code is generating the problem. After you identify the problem, you can quickly resolve the problem if you know the solution, and you can access Adobe CSS Advisor If you need more information. See check for problems with rendering CSS across browsers.

Adobe CSS Advisor

The Adobe CSS Advisor Web site contains information about the latest CSS issues and can be accessed directly through the Dreamweaver user interface during browser compatibility checking. CSS Advisor is more than just a forum, a wiki page, or a discussion group that makes it easy for you to make suggestions and improvements to existing content, or to easily add new issues that benefit the entire community. See check for problems with rendering CSS across browsers.

CSS layout

Dreamweaver provides a set of predesigned css layouts that can help you quickly design your pages and start running, and provide rich inline comments in your code to help you understand CSS page layouts. Most site designs on the Web can be categorized as one-column, two-column, or three-column layout, and each layout contains many additional elements, such as headings and footnotes. Dreamweaver provides a comprehensive list of basic layout designs that you can customize to suit your needs. See Create a page by using a CSS layout.