WebBuilding

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Macromedia Dreamweaver

Summary

Macromedia Dreamweaver, now Adobe Dreamweaver, is desktop software for designing and coding websites that pairs a visual page editor with a code editor. Macromedia shipped version 1.0 on December 8, 1997, and Adobe took it over when it bought Macromedia in December 2005. Since 2013 it has been sold through Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription, and as of October 2026 the newest version is 21.8.1, from July 2026.

Web Building Encyclopedia · Software and platforms · Last reviewed October 22, 2026 · 9 min read

What Dreamweaver is

Dreamweaver is desktop software for designing, coding and publishing websites. Macromedia released it on December 8, 1997, for Windows and the Macintosh, and called it a visual web authoring tool for professional web developers.1 Adobe has owned and developed it since it bought Macromedia in December 2005, and it is now sold as Adobe Dreamweaver.2

A visual editor lets you lay out a page much as you would in a word processor, while the program writes the HTML code underneath. Editors that work this way are often called WYSIWYG, short for “what you see is what you get.” Macromedia’s pitch for the first version was that it joined visual page layout to the control of an HTML text editor.1

Adobe’s current documentation describes four ways to look at a page in the document window:3

  • Code view. A hand-coding environment for HTML, JavaScript and other code.
  • Design view. An environment for visual page layout and editing.
  • Live View. A realistic preview of how the page will look in a browser. Adobe says it uses a Chromium-based rendering engine so that pages look the same as in common web browsers.4
  • Split view. The window divided between the code and one of the visual views.

Dreamweaver is not a website builder in the hosted sense. It edits files on your own computer, which are then uploaded to a web server. The April 2026 release, for example, updated the libraries Dreamweaver uses for FTP, FTPS and WebDAV, the protocols that move files between a computer and a server.5

As of October 2026, the newest version is 21.8.1, released in July 2026.6 Adobe sells it through its Creative Cloud subscription, at US$22.99 a month for the single app on an annual plan billed monthly.7

Macromedia and the first version (1997 to 1998)

Macromedia was a software company headquartered in San Francisco. It was incorporated in Delaware on February 25, 1992.8 Its annual report for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1998 lists Dreamweaver among several new products introduced that year, alongside Flash and Pathware.8 Older products still earned most of the money: Director, FreeHand and Authorware made up 84% of revenue that year.8

A public beta of Dreamweaver began in October 1997 and was downloaded more than 80,000 times before launch.1 Version 1.0 ran on Windows 95 and NT and on PowerPC Macintosh computers. It had an estimated street price of US$499 in North America, or US$299 during a promotion that ran until February 28, 1998.1

Its main feature was what Macromedia called Roundtrip HTML. A developer could move back and forth between Dreamweaver and a separate code editor, and Dreamweaver would not change the original HTML.1 The box included two such editors, BBEdit 4.5 for the Mac and HomeSite 3.0 for Windows 95.1 Macromedia also claimed it was the first HTML editor with in-depth support for cross-browser dynamic HTML, meaning pages whose parts could move or change after loading.1

Early users named in the launch release included HotWired, Merrill Lynch and Discovery Channel Online.1 Version 1.2, announced on April 21, 1998, arrived during the browser wars. It added a command that converted pages built with layers and style sheets for “4.0 browsers” into versions that worked in older 3.0 browsers.9 By then Macromedia counted more than 200,000 downloads since the beta, and Dreamweaver had won Best of Show for web development software at Fall Internet World in December 1997.9

Templates, server code and UltraDev (1998 to 2000)

Dreamweaver 2 was announced on November 9, 1998, to go on sale that December at an estimated US$299.10 It introduced Dream Templates, which let a designer choose which parts of a page content writers could edit, so the design stayed the same across a site.10 It also added site-wide search and replace, a site map, Roundtrip XML, and playback of Flash and Shockwave content inside the editor.10

Templates are still part of the program. Adobe’s help describes a template as a document with a “fixed” page layout. Most of it is locked, the author marks the regions others may edit, and changing the template updates every page based on it.11

Dreamweaver 3 was announced on November 8, 1999 and expected to ship that December. It carried the roundtrip idea over to server code: its Roundtrip Server Markup kept intact code written for ASP, JSP, ColdFusion (CFML) and PHP, languages that run on the server to build pages on demand.12 It also added a Quick Tag Editor and imports from Microsoft Word, Excel and Access.12 Citing the research firm PC Data, Macromedia said Dreamweaver outsold its closest competitor in professional visual web design by nearly 70 percent.12

On June 7, 2000, Macromedia shipped Dreamweaver UltraDev, a separate edition for building data-driven web applications visually. It worked with three server technologies: JavaServer Pages from Sun Microsystems, Microsoft’s Active Server Pages and Allaire’s ColdFusion. Its estimated price was US$599.13

Dreamweaver 4 was announced on November 13, 2000 for release in December, at US$299. It added a tool for debugging JavaScript, and UltraDev 4, announced the same day, added a split view that showed the code and the visual design at the same time.14

Web standards and the MX years (2001 to 2005)

In 2001 the Web Standards Project (WaSP) set up a Dreamweaver Task Force to work with Macromedia, led by Rachel Andrew and Drew McLellan. Its main goals were that Dreamweaver should produce valid markup “out of the box,” render CSS2 accurately and stop adding inline styles to valid layouts without the user’s consent.15

Dreamweaver MX began shipping on May 29, 2002, at US$399.16 It was also sold in Studio MX, a US$799 bundle with Flash MX, Fireworks MX, FreeHand 10 and a developer edition of the ColdFusion MX server.1617 Dreamweaver UltraDev and ColdFusion Studio were no longer sold as separate products, while the HomeSite 5 code editor stayed on sale.17 The WaSP task force said MX offered “vastly improved standards compliance and accessibility,” and that its mission had been largely fulfilled with that release.15

The MX family was central to Macromedia’s business. Its annual report for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2004 said Studio MX had made up about 31% of net revenue in the previous fiscal year, which ended March 31, 2003.18 The same report described Macromedia as a leader in professional web development tools with Dreamweaver MX, and named Adobe GoLive and Microsoft FrontPage among its competitors.18 Macromedia also sold Contribute, a simpler program that let non-technical staff update pages on sites built by professionals.18

Dreamweaver MX 2004, announced on August 25, 2003, built its design environment around CSS, which the press release called a standard that had been “previously difficult to implement.” It checked tags and CSS rules against the leading browsers, supported ColdFusion, ASP.NET, JSP and PHP, and cost US$399.19 Macromedia announced that Studio MX 2004, including the new Dreamweaver, was available on September 10, 2003.20

Dreamweaver 8 was announced on August 8, 2005 for September. It added a unified CSS panel, drag-and-drop tools for XML content such as RSS feeds, support for PHP 5, and a five-click way to put Flash Video on a page.21 It was the last version before Adobe took over: in Adobe’s list of past release notes, the next full version after Dreamweaver 8 is Dreamweaver CS3.22

Adobe and Creative Suite (2005 to 2013)

On April 18, 2005, Adobe announced that it would buy Macromedia in an all-stock deal worth about US$3.4 billion. The announcement focused on combining Adobe’s PDF with Macromedia’s Flash.23 The purchase closed on December 3, 2005.2

Under Adobe, Dreamweaver became part of the Creative Suite bundles. Dreamweaver CS3 went on sale on April 16, 2007. The Web editions of Creative Suite 3 included Spry, a library of ready-made widgets and effects for Ajax, the technique of updating part of a page without reloading it. Design Premium users could also export InDesign CS3 documents as XHTML and finish them in Dreamweaver with CSS.24

Dreamweaver CS5 shipped on April 30, 2010. It added support for three content management systems, Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, so designers could view their dynamic content inside the program.25 A month later, on May 25, 2010, Ethan Marcotte published “Responsive Web Design,” which described layouts built from fluid grids, flexible images and CSS media queries so that one page could adapt to screens of any size.26

On May 6, 2013, Adobe said it had no plans for future releases of Creative Suite. New desktop versions, including Dreamweaver CC, would come through the Creative Cloud subscription, although Adobe would keep selling CS6 licenses by download.27 Dreamweaver CC, version 13.0, followed in June 2013.22

Dreamweaver under Creative Cloud (2013 to today)

Dreamweaver CC also removed features. Adobe said it was “removing support for technologies that are not widely used by our customers.” The list included the Server Behaviors, Bindings and Components panels, the database features, ASP, ASP.NET and JSP support, Spry and ColdFusion support, along with 10 panels, 14 dialog boxes and 62 menu items.28 One extension could restore the server features, and Adobe pointed Spry users to jQuery UI and to an extension that replaced Spry datasets with jQuery ones.28

Later releases added tools that developers were using elsewhere. Git support arrived in June 2017, with a Git panel for committing, pulling and pushing code and colored markers in Code view for changed lines.29 Git is a version control system: it records every change to a project’s files so that a team can work on them together. The October 2017 release added support for HiDPI displays and multiple monitors on Windows.30 Version 21.0 arrived in October 2020, and every release since has kept the 21 version number.316

Current help pages list three versions of Bootstrap: 5.3.8, the default for new sites, plus 4.4.1 and 3.4.1. Adobe describes Bootstrap as a free HTML, CSS and JavaScript framework for “responsive, mobile-first websites.”32

Recent updates have been small. Adobe lists six releases from May 2024 (version 21.4) to July 2026 (version 21.8.1).6 Its release notes describe most of them as third-party library upgrades, bug fixes and security fixes.33 The April 2026 release, version 21.8, updated components including OpenSSL 3.6.1, Node.js 24.14.1 and jQuery 3.7.1.5 It also brought back server behaviors and database bindings as built-in features, so data-driven pages no longer need extra extensions.5 Adobe’s own pages disagree on the version: the feature summary places this change in 21.8 (April 2026), while the release notes page lists it under 21.8.1 (July 2026).533

As of July 2026, Adobe’s minimum requirements were 64-bit Windows 10 (version 1903 or later) or Windows 11, or macOS 13 through macOS 26 on Apple silicon or Intel processors, with at least 2 GB of RAM and 4 GB recommended.34

Timeline

  1. Dreamweaver 21.8.1 is released with bug fixes6
  2. Version 21.8 makes server behaviors and database bindings built in again5
  3. Dreamweaver version 21.0 is released31
  4. Adobe announces Git support in Dreamweaver CC29
  5. Adobe details features removed from Dreamweaver CC, including Spry and ASP support28
  6. Adobe ends Creative Suite releases and moves to Creative Cloud27
  7. Dreamweaver CS5 ships with support for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal25
  8. Dreamweaver CS3, the first Adobe version, goes on sale24
  9. Adobe completes its purchase of Macromedia2
  10. Adobe announces a deal to buy Macromedia for about $3.4 billion23
  11. Macromedia announces Dreamweaver MX 2004, built around CSS19
  12. Dreamweaver MX begins shipping and replaces UltraDev16
  13. Macromedia ships Dreamweaver UltraDev for database-driven sites13
  14. Macromedia announces Dreamweaver 2 with Dream Templates10
  15. Macromedia ships Dreamweaver 1.0 for Windows and Macintosh1

What it means for your website

Dreamweaver matters most if you have inherited a site built with it, or if you want to write your own code with a visual preview beside it.

  • Know what you have. Dreamweaver makes ordinary HTML, CSS and image files that you upload to a host, often as a static site. Because Dreamweaver was designed not to rewrite code it did not create, those files can be opened in other code editors too.1
  • Check for templates. If pages were built from a Dreamweaver template, changing the template updates every page based on it.11 If you edit the site in another tool, plan to change shared sections such as menus and footers on each page.
  • Look for features that no longer work. Adobe stopped supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020 and blocked Flash content from running from January 12, 2021, so any Flash on an old page needs replacing (see the end of Adobe Flash).35 Spry widgets were dropped from Dreamweaver CC in 2013.28
  • Test on a phone. Pages designed before responsive design may not fit small screens. Current Dreamweaver includes Bootstrap for building responsive layouts.32
  • Count the cost. As of October 2026, the single-app plan is US$22.99 a month on an annual plan.7 Hosting is extra. Our website cost guide compares that with hosted builders.
  • Decide whether to keep it. If nobody on your team edits code, a content management system may be easier to update. We build on WordPress every week, and our redesign decision guide covers when to update an old site and when to rebuild it.

See also

References

  1. Macromedia Ships Dreamweaver (press release). Macromedia, via MacTech. 1997-12-08. accessed October 22, 2026.
  2. Adobe Completes Acquisition of Macromedia. CreativePro. 2005-12-05. accessed October 22, 2026.
  3. The Dreamweaver workspace. Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. accessed October 22, 2026.
  4. Edit in Live View. Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. accessed October 22, 2026.
  5. Feature summary: April 2026 release of Dreamweaver (version 21.8). Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. 2026-04-30. accessed October 22, 2026.
  6. What's new in Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. 2026-07-24. accessed October 22, 2026.
  7. Adobe Dreamweaver. Adobe. accessed October 22, 2026.
  8. Macromedia, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1998. Macromedia, Inc., US Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR). 1998-06-30. accessed October 22, 2026.
  9. Macromedia Dreamweaver 1.2 (press release). Macromedia, via MacTech. 1998-04-21. accessed October 22, 2026.
  10. Macromedia Dreamweaver 2 (press release). Macromedia, via MacTech. 1998-11-09. accessed October 22, 2026.
  11. Dreamweaver templates. Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. accessed October 22, 2026.
  12. Macromedia Announces the Dreamweaver 3 Fireworks 3 Studio (press release). Macromedia, via MacTech. 1999-11-08. accessed October 22, 2026.
  13. Macromedia Ships Dreamweaver UltraDev (press release). Macromedia, via MacTech. 2000-06-07. accessed October 22, 2026.
  14. Macromedia Unveils Latest Version of Dreamweaver Platform. InternetNews. 2000-11-13. accessed October 22, 2026.
  15. Dreamweaver Task Force. The Web Standards Project. accessed October 22, 2026.
  16. Macromedia ships MX line of products. MacTech. 2002-05-29. accessed October 22, 2026.
  17. Macromedia MX Family Ships. ServerWatch. 2002. accessed October 22, 2026.
  18. Macromedia, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2004. Macromedia, Inc., US Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR). 2004-06-14. accessed October 22, 2026.
  19. Macromedia Announces Dreamweaver MX 2004 (press release). Macromedia, via The Cover Pages. 2003-08-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
  20. Macromedia ships Studio MX 2004 lineup. MacTech. 2003-09-10. accessed October 22, 2026.
  21. Macromedia announces Dreamweaver 8. MacDailyNews. 2005-08-08. accessed October 22, 2026.
  22. Dreamweaver release notes (previous releases). Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. 2022-06-30. accessed October 22, 2026.
  23. Adobe to Acquire Macromedia (press release, Exhibit 99.1). Adobe Systems Incorporated, US Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR). 2005-04-18. accessed October 22, 2026.
  24. Adobe ships Creative Suite 3.0 Design and Web bundles, apps. AppleInsider. 2007-04-16. accessed October 22, 2026.
  25. Adobe Ships Creative Suite 5. iClarified. 2010-04-30. accessed October 22, 2026.
  26. Responsive Web Design. Ethan Marcotte, A List Apart. 2010-05-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
  27. Adobe Accelerates Shift to the Cloud (press release). Adobe, via DV Info Net. 2013-05-06. accessed October 22, 2026.
  28. A Look at the Modernized Dreamweaver CC. Tareq Aljaber, Adobe Blog. 2013-06-27. accessed October 22, 2026.
  29. Git, Set, Go with Dreamweaver CC. Suhas Yogin, Adobe Blog. 2017-06-13. accessed October 22, 2026.
  30. Dreamweaver CC: HiDPI and Dual Monitor Support on Windows. Suhas Yogin, Adobe Blog. 2017-10-18. accessed October 22, 2026.
  31. Feature summary: January 2021 release (version 21.1) and October 2020 release (version 21.0). Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. accessed October 22, 2026.
  32. Design responsive websites using Bootstrap. Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. accessed October 22, 2026.
  33. Dreamweaver release notes. Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. 2026-07-24. accessed October 22, 2026.
  34. Dreamweaver system requirements. Dreamweaver User Guide, Adobe. 2026-07-24. accessed October 22, 2026.
  35. Adobe Flash Player End of Life. Adobe. accessed October 22, 2026.

Web Building Encyclopedia. First published October 22, 2026. Last reviewed October 22, 2026. Every fact on this page is linked to a source we opened. Spotted an error? Write to [email protected].