I've got DW MX. Is there any compelling reason to upgrade to the MX 2004?

MX 2004 is garbage, that's my personal opinion. The program is full of bugs and much slower. Stick with regular MX

What bugs are you talkign about?

Rampage, it's interesting that you find it that way. For me, MX is full of bugs and unusable and MX 2004 is the one that is working very well.

serialbeggar: I've heard a lot about inconsistency with Macromedia products. Get a demo and really work with it before you upgrade. If MX is stable for you, there is no point to upgrade - the new features aren't very useful, most importantly, you can live without them.

Originally posted by serialbeggar
I've got DW MX. Is there any compelling reason to upgrade to the MX 2004?

It depends, how much is the upgrade?

I have used both versions, and quite frankly I don't see any major improvements over MX.

I think VS.net will do. Dreamweaver is not steady yet IMO.

Dreamweaver is still by far and away the standard web design tool. VS.net for web development is no where near as popular (or as good in my opinion). Although I suppose for ASPX it is probably better, but I IMO that's it.

I use Dreamweaver often (just because it's quick for small changes)... well infact I am Macromedia certified in it (the exam was one heck of a lot harder than I thought it would be).

I've found both versions crash just as happily, but that said, MX2004 has behaved slightly better so far.

I wouldn't bother upgrading unless you have a compelling reason to.

Yeah, MX2004 is a big rip off, it was supposed to make css much better to handle but that doesn't work either. CSS will never work on DW until it can read other positions than absolute on the design view. When they launched MX2004 there were a lot of bugs and the timer was left off; the upgrades did fix these issues. If you are using extensions, some of these extensions will not work with MX2004. So check first.

Frankly I don't know why DW is so popular. It's really a poor app. Don't know about Vnet, will check it out.

Bugs such as: inconsistent colour coding of files and sometimes it won't colour code them at all.... mainly problems when opening a new file and trying to save it as ASP or PHP.

Extremely slow slow slow! It's 10x slower than regular MX

Big deal, it has "ehanced" css support that doesn't make a different at the end of the day for me.

The layout toolbars at the top are harder to use, takes longer to "insert image" for example.

I personally do not like it at all and I feel they rushed the entire MX 2k4 product line and marketed it as an entire new product when they add like 3 useless features.

Dreamweaver UltraDev is my best non-human design/publishing friend. :)

I say get the demo and try for yourself. I think MX is enough though.

What other tools are people using?

Mulder

I have been using MX and still don't feel a need to upgrade.

2004 crashed on my quite often. My school recently upgraded a few of their labs to 2004, and are having no problems. These are macs. A few of my friends were purchased licences by our employer, and we have all found it to be rather unstable on our PC's. I'm sure this is an isolated case though, not a representation of the overall community.

Thanks for all your opinions people. I paided retail for my Studio MX and didn't think I've got my money's worth in use out of it yet. Good to know that I don't have to blow more money for now.

2004 is crap, I use Mx im much happier

Sticking with MX

You know what, ditch MX and MX2004. Instead, use Windows Notepad; it's the bomb!

The 7.01 patch fixed most of the slowness for me.

And 2004 has better integration with Word and stuff. So if you do a lot of cup & past from word to DW (which I do) the fact that images can come over and hyperlinks as well is a big plus.

Other then that I havne't seen any huge improvements over MX.

I wouldn't bother upgrading. I had mx, now mx 2004. As far as I'm concerned they're pretty much the same. I wish Macromedia would sort out Dreamweaver so it actually properly previewed all pages. When viewing in ie they almost always look different, although some are subtle....

The only mx 2004 software i recommend is Flash. And i only like that because of little interface changes that make it slightly more user-friendly, no new NEW things to play with.

My 2 cents.

- Matt

well if you do upgrade i suggest you install the lated patch. it fixes a whole bunch of bugs and speeds it up by like 50%.

Studio MX is way better than MX 2004. MX 2004 IMHO is too flashy and I don't like the aesthetics of it. Distracting for web designers and developers I think.