An update on Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 on Apple computers. I just tried to run Dreamweaver 11.0.0.4909 on my MacBook Pro 1 gig ram, 2 GHz Intel Core Duo running OS x 10.6.4 and the app was utterly unusable. Like my first attempt, the app choked scanning the cache but I let i finish (took 30-60 minutes. I lost track it took so long). It finally finished however but as soon as I clicked the menu, it went back into la la land. Eventually I had to force quit to get my computer back.

This is a real bummer since the features of the product are excellent and the app is pretty well behaved on Windows Vista.

I'm very surprised and disappointed that a huge company like Adobe would put out a product with such high level flaws.  I reported the bug to Adobe but at this point the program is unusable so I'm going to have to start looking for another tool for editing php files on the Mac. 

I've used Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX2004 for years and have liked it a lot. I bought it when I was still lucky enough to be using XP. It was pretty shaky under Vista for the first year or so but Microsoft seems to have sorted out the issues since it currently runs without crashing on Vista (without any update of the app). I use it mainly for editing basic html, php and css files using the FTP capability to move files to/from my server.  I never tried Dreamweaver 2004 on the Mac.

I do a lot of php work and have not found a stable application that handles php classes so I figured I'd check out the latest Dreamweaver. They've added A LOT of great features including multi-browser and multi-browser-version(!!) testing but Dreamweaver also now supports php classes.  It doesn't recognize "extends" (inheritance) but works pretty well with the local class. Also doesn't support "click-the-method-to-go-to-the-implementation" that XCode provides.

I've only scratched the surface of what the app does but I've managed to crash V11.0 Build 4909 three times in about a week.  Twice the app just blinked out of existence when trying to open a file (I had a similar problem with early versions of Vista with MX 2004). The third crash was during a Folder wide search. I'm pretty sure the app got hung trying to search an sql backup file but it could not be stopped (hmm, how many times do I need to click the Stop button? Once should do it but 10 didn't either).  They moved the searching to dedicated thread so the main app didn't hang but searching was not available. I had to kill the process to get search working again.

On the Mac was whole other story (still ongoing). On initial site creation, the app started scanning files before I had a chance to set the server and pretty much hung and took the whole computer with it. Stop button did nothing. Even getting it to Force Close took several attempts.  Even a second attempt after restarting the app with the correct folder defined hung the system. I have not yet retried to scan but the app seems to be functional. Very bad first impression but I'm hoping it proves to be more stable than on Vista.

Aside from the crashes, I like the new version of the app. They've added a lot but haven't moved/changed some of the basic stuff so the learning curve has been almost nil for basic meat and potatoes work.