December 8, 1997
Macromedia Dreamweaver 1.0 released
Macromedia shipped Dreamweaver 1.0 on December 8, 1997 — a visual web authoring tool that combined WYSIWYGWhat You See Is What You Get — editing where the screen closely matches printed output. layout with direct HTMLHyperText Markup Language — the standard markup for structuring web pages. editing.
What it was for
Dreamweaver let designers switch between Design and Code views, manage sites, and preview dynamic HTMLHyperText Markup Language — the standard markup for structuring web pages. — bundled with BBEdit on Mac and HomeSite on Windows. It dominated late-1990s and 2000s web design before WordPressA PHP CMS powering millions of sites — themes, plugins, and the block editor for publishing. and hand-coded workflows, and later lived on under Adobe after the 2005 acquisitionOne company buying another — a common path for tech giants to absorb products and talent..
Companies
- Macromedia
Why it's here
Dreamweaver defined professional visual web authoring before modern component frameworks.
Why it mattered
It proved designers wanted WYSIWYGWhat You See Is What You Get — editing where the screen closely matches printed output. and source control in one tool, not either/or.
What it solved
TeamsMicrosoft Teams — chat, video calls, and Office integration for workplace collaboration. building table-layout sites needed visual tools without giving up HTMLHyperText Markup Language — the standard markup for structuring web pages. access.
Media
- ImageAdobe Dreamweaver
™/®Adobe Inc., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Related
- HTML invented1991
- JavaScript name announced by Netscape and SunDecember 4, 1995