| by Donald Herion Have you ever
wished your Web editor had that one extra feature or time saving capability? Of
course you could always contact the software company requesting that important
feature be added in their next release, but then you might have to wait months
for the feature to be added. That is, if they even remember your plea among the
thousands of requests that software companies receive. Realizing that there was
no way of incorporating every user request into a new software release, programmers
have addressed the problem in a very creative and powerful way. They have opened
up their software to outside developers. Now any software user (with some programming
skills) can add new features to a program. The concept has been a huge success
in the 3D animation world. This is best exemplified by 3D Studio where outside
programmers have added new functionality in almost every aspect of the program,
from new modeling capabilities to raydiosity rendering engines. This software
extensibility has spread into the Web editing world with Dreamweaver Extensions. Dreamweaver
Extensions are the Rage
Dreamweaver Extensions are an incredible
innovation that gives users the power to add dozens of new capabilities without
waiting months or a year for future software releases. Already over a hundred
new extensions are available at the Dreamweaver
Exchange. Although some are commercial extensions, most are available for
free. Here are only a few of the categories within the exchange: Browser
compatibility - improve browser detection and redirection
E-Commerce - allow
catalog creation and transactional processing
Style and Format - add more
custom style and formatting of content
DHTML - more DHTML objects and behaviors
RICH Media - more support for third party audio, video and animation plug-ins
Tables - improved table creating, editing and formatting
Fireworks - better
integration of Dreamweaver and Fireworks To download extensions you must
have the 'Extension Manager' installed (current ver. 1.1) and you must be a member
of Macromedia.com. Membership is free. Once the 'Extension Manager' is installed
adding extensions is easy.  |
Go to: Commands > Manage Extensions ... the Extensions Manager appears. |
 |
| Extensions Manager | |
| 
