Companies tend to lose the plot whenever their greed outpaces my need.

I’ve used Macromedia Dreamweaver for WYSIWYG site design since version 2; nothing could build tables like version 4. Then, last year, Macromedia introduced a rebranded Dreamweaver MX, the first native Mac OS X version. It was such a disappointment: Cascading stylesheet (CSS) support was incomplete and rendered haphazardly, the windows and palettes didn’t play nice with the finder, and it was painfully slow on my tricked-out PowerBook G4. Insultingly, the Windows version showed a lot more polish. I waited for patches, but instead was tossed Dreamweaver MX 2004, their new paid upgrade ($199, $400 new), released last month.

Meanwhile, the web has moved on. The wide acceptance of CSS has made site design much simpler, and fancy table skills are now a bit passé. Plenty of code libraries on the web offer plug and play Javascript, just like Dreamweaver does.

A migration from Dreamweaver was in order. By last week, all the required pieces had fallen into place:

Barebones released a point update for BBEdit 7, the Rolls Royce of text editors. Version 7.1 does live previewing in Safari, as you type. This is even better than WYSIWIG, which in Dreamweaver’s case was more WYSIsomething-similar-toWYG. And it was made possible by a deft application of Apple’s own Safari Web Kit. In any case, I’ve always had several browsers open in OS X and a few open in Virtual PC, to make sure the different rendering engines produced something palatable. I will still do that, but now with Safari giving me instant feedback. (Free demo, $179 new, $49 upgrade, or get BBEdit Lite free, but minus the bells and whistles.)

Macrabbit released CSSEdit 1.5 last month. It’s a shareware application that works perfectly as an adjunct to BBEdit, giving pixel-level control over CSS websites. Every CSS property is editable using palettes. It’s what Dreamweaver promised me but didn’t deliver in MX. Maybe MX 2004 approaches the thoroughness of CSSEdit, but definitely not at this price: $24.99 (free demo). Did I mention it’s written by a one-person outfit in Belgium? Those plucky Europeans!

For getting files to and from my server, I rely on Fetch 4.0.3, by Fetchworks. This shareware has built-in support for BBEdit, allowing me to edit files directly from the server. There are other FTP clients that do the job, some perhaps even better, but I’m also conditioned to listen for the dog bark when Fetch is done. Fetch is due for an update, and I expect it to incorporate the latest sFTP security enhancements. If it doesn’t, I’ll be eyeing other FTP clients. ($25, free demo).

This medley of tools means MX 2004 is an expensive redundancy. Most of its new features are aimed at corporate environments, so Dreamweaver becomes less of a pure design tool and more of a front-end builder for server-based applications. In the process, Macromedia tries to upsell to other products from its stable, like Flash and ColdFusion, their proprietary server application.

MX 2004 is bloatware, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Macromedia had to issue an earnings warning on Oct 23, a few weeks after MX 2004 launched, that sent the stock plunging by a third. As the CEO put it, “The uptake rate for MX 2004 has been a lot slower in the first few weeks than we expected and certainly than we’ve experienced in the past.” They blamed the economy. I blame the product.