Will Adobe fully update Dreamweaver, commit to developing it, sell it, or let it die a slow death?

[bill_teale]

I've been using Dreamweaver since it was a Macromedia product and, despite Adobe's best efforts, it is still the most fully featured and useable tool ina web designer/developer's toolbox. 

So why is Adobe behind with updating the software? All we get is minimal updates for security patches only, and no real innovation from Adobe since CS6 around a decade ago!

Adobe likes to ignore the web design/developer comunity, a fact that is shown that Adobe Max hasn't mentioned the software at all for five years.

Let's face it, you are milking the product whilst trying to kill it. And now your latest update (May 2025) causes so much frustration with sudden crashes for no reason makes me think you are trying even harder to force people away.

So time to step up Adobe.  Are you killing it,  saving it, or going to commit to developing the top tool in web design/development (an area that is growing four times more over than Graphic Design according th the BoLS)?

Time for answers... 

[Nancy OShea]

Dreamweaver was moved to minimal maintenance status in late 2021. Apart from essential security & compatibility updates, no new features are planned. 

I use DW alongside other coding tools that are in active development. 

That's all I can tell you. 

[bill_teale]

Thank you for the reply Nancy, I appreciate it. Would you mind sharing what other tools you use that are in active development and how they complement for DW's shortcomings? 

[BenPleysier]

I moved to Wappler about eight years ago and haven’t needed another tool since. It’s actively developed, embraces modern web standards, and gives me full control over both front-end and back-end workflows—without relying on patchwork extensions or waiting for updates that never come.

Dreamweaver had its place, but Wappler’s integrated approach and rapid evolution make it a far better fit for today’s development needs.

That said, I just saw this update from Adobe:

“We discussed the future of DW and we are continuing to actively support DW in future and will consider taking up new feature sets as we have discussions with DW ACP folks.”

If Adobe is serious about revitalizing Dreamweaver, I’d love to see meaningful action—not just vague promises. The web dev space is moving fast, and tools need to keep pace.

[bill_teale]

Thanks Ben! I remember the early days of Wappler, back to even when they just sold snippets to use in Dreanweaver 🙂

that is a very interesting update, do you remember the source of it? I'd love to hear more. 

[BenPleysier]

Apologies for the confusion, this was not a publicly announced update, it was conveyed to me via a PM from @Nayan_Kankariya 

[Nayan_Kankariya]

Hi @bill_teale,

Thanks for writing to us and conveying your kind thoughts. Please be assured that we are continuing to update Dreamweaver and are not keeping it in maintenance mode. Yes, there is no mention about Dw in Adobe Max in the last 4-5 years, but we continue to hear user feedback over this community forum and customer support. 

On the crash issue on your machine, we have a dependency of Rosetta on Mac ARM and hence, without the Rosetta environment, we are seeing stability issues with Dw product on Mac ARM machines. We are actively investigating the issue and will provide an update. As a workaround, please try installing Rosetta on Mac ARM machine, which is a one-time setup.

Please invoke Terminal and run the following command to install Rosetta: 

softwareupdate --install-rosetta

Please confirm if the behavior gets resolved after installing the Rosetta environment provided by Apple on your machine, and revert in case the issue persists. Please feel free to write back to us on this thread.

We sincerely apologize for the issue you are facing and appreciate your kind support.

Have a pleasant day!

Thanks,

Nayan

Adobe Dreamweaver Team

[Nayan_Kankariya]

Hi @bill_teale,

Thanks for writing to us and conveying your kind thoughts. Please be assured that we are continuing to update Dreamweaver and are not keeping it in maintenance mode. Yes, there is no mention about Dw in Adobe Max in the last 4-5 years, but we continue to hear user feedback over this community forum and customer support. 

On the crash issue on your machine, we have a dependency of Rosetta on Mac ARM and hence, without the Rosetta environment, we are seeing stability issues with Dw product on Mac ARM machines. We are actively investigating the issue and will provide an update. As a workaround, please try installing Rosetta on Mac ARM machine, which is a one-time setup.

Please invoke Terminal and run the following command to install Rosetta: 

softwareupdate --install-rosetta

Please confirm if the behavior gets resolved after installing the Rosetta environment provided by Apple on your machine, and revert in case the issue persists. Please feel free to write back to us on this thread.

We sincerely apologize for the issue you are facing and appreciate your kind support.

Have a pleasant day!

Thanks,

Nayan

Adobe Dreamweaver Team

[Kajrov]

Not all use Apple products, is there a temporary fix for Windows also?

[Nayan_Kankariya]

Hi @Kajrov,

Thanks for writing to us and inquiring about the Windows platform, too. Unfortunately, we haven't found the 100% consistent workflow steps on Windows, and hence, in case you are observing the stability issue consistently on a Windows machine, we request that we have a remote connect session for troubleshooting the behavior. We are also actively investigating the behavior on Windows with Dw 21.5 and will release the fix soon.

Have a pleasant day!

Regards,

Nayan

Adobe Dreamweaver Team

[bill_teale]

Hi Nayan, that is good to hear. I am on a Windows 11 machine so unfortunately I cannot give feedback on the Rosetta installation.

I am an instructor at a community college teaching ten different courses within the IT Web Technologies program. We use Adobe products throughout our school, and (with the exception of teaching Python and Flutter) I am teching the next generation that Dreamweaver is the best product to use, because I believe that nothing comes close to it as the most flexible and useful IDE for html, php, sql, css, and js development and more. 

I was beginning to think I was leading my students up the wrong path if Dreamweaver is only hobbling along while the needs of their chosen industry keeps evolving at breakneck speed.  This support community is a great way to express concern, and feel heard, and I truly appreciate that, altough it really is time for action after five years.

Dreamweaver, despite being mothballed for several years, still remains by far the best IDE for web design and development, and for a lot of years Dreamweaver was the market leader.  Here is the kicker though... despite the lack of upgrades in this decade Dreamweaver is still the market leader.

As an admin for the school's licensing agreement with Adobe, I get a lot of emails about the way Adobe is leading the way in education, but all of those emails talk about Canva, XD, Photoshop etc.  I know that this is moslty because they are targeting non-IT educators, but it would be nice if the DW marketing team (if there is one) saw a future for the product and expressed it publicy.

In monetary terms, there is a massive market out there for Dreamweaver in education, and beyond into the workplace. Dreamweaver just has to polish up, stand up, and retake the throne it never really left, but was kind of curtained off.

One last thing, I can in one way understand the reasoning for Adobe to turn to different markets back in 2019-2020. At that time it was more difficult for a designer/developer to become a "full-stack" developer/designer, and rather than having a grasp of all aspects of the industry the trend was to specialize in one area. It may have been the case that Adobe decieded that there would be spcific IDEs developed for certain areas within the web technologies industry that would be strong competitors, and the outlay to keep competing may have not given the ROI they wanted.  Whether that is what actually happened I do not know, and althrough I disagree I can at least understand the thinking if that was the case. But in 2025 this is no longer the case, with the rapid (and ongoing) development of AI a web designer/developer with a basic knowledge can be as "full-stack" as we were back in the early 2000s, and Dreamweaver meets the needs of that rising market of people - I know, I'm teaching them!  In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is the Graphic Design elements of the Creative Cloud package that are now under threat of being squeezed, and adding a robust Dreamweaver to the portfolio makes very good business sense.

[Nayan_Kankariya]

Hi @bill_teale,

Thanks for the kind response. On Windows, can you please confirm if the stability issue is consistently observed with any specific workflow. We would love to have a remote connect session for troubleshooting on your machine and investigating the issue. We are actively investigating internally the stability issue occurring in Dw 21.5 and will release an update to fix the behavior on Windows soon. 

Yes, we agree with your kind thought on the market aspect for Dw where Dw can bring in good business with the strong value addition into the Creative Cloud package, which we are having currently, but yes, a little marketing and AI additions will do wonders for the product. We appreciate for sharing your kind thoughts.

We are hearing all our users and will continue to do the best for all our loyal Dw users.

Have a pleasant day!

Regards,

Nayan

Adobe Dreamweaver Team

[bill_teale]

Hi Nayan, 
Absolutely! I have three Windows 11 machines, and older one they make me use on campus, and two more modern ones I use in my home office. They are all Windows 11.

The only real pattern I thought I spotted was that it seems to happen if I am working on a file that is techically open in two spots within DW, for example if I have a page that uses style.css, and I open thay css file in a new window, that can cause DW to pause, get confused, and crash.  But to be honest I think it is anything that DW has to think about a ittle bit. I was saving a file this morning (a simple html fgile) to a different location and the same thing hjappened again. I think there is a process it is waiting for that it can't find? Or it gets stuck in a loop in the process. It doesn't just happen on saving a file either.  It seems like it happens when it hits a certain routine that it cannot complete. I know they are teh hardest to debug, and I hope this proves even a little helpful

[rayek.elfin]

Dreamweaver, despite being mothballed for several years, still remains by far the best IDE for web design and development, and for a lot of years Dreamweaver was the market leader.  Here is the kicker though... despite the lack of upgrades in this decade Dreamweaver is still the market leader.

By @bill_teale

I teach and taught at various technical colleges. Dreamweaver isn't even on the same planet anymore in the industry, let alone a "market leader". 

Students have no idea that Dreamweaver still exists or when they notice that it is part of CC no clue what it does. No-one I am aware of that works and/or teaches as a full stack developer works with DW at this point in time. Let's face it: Dreamweaver was mothballed years ago, and is far behind the curve. You'd be (sorry) only inconveniencing students to use DW in any web programming or full stack dev course. I have no idea why anyone would put their students in that situation, because it just doesn't reflect the real world.

Other than one's own current work experience, a developer merely has to check out surveys such as the yearly one by Stackoverflow to understand that Dreamweaver isn't even considered by 99.99% of full stack developers as a valid coding tool anymore. Despite @Nayan_Kankariya spinning fairy tales about the current stage of development of DW and imaginary future magical updates and new features, the reality is that in the past decade only marginal feature and maintenance updates have been released. Besides, if historic behaviour of Adobe taught us one thing, it is that Adobe hates competing in a market with many competitors that are plainly superior to them. If Adobe is unable to outright buy out the competing market leader, they simply stop competing in that software segment. Nor have they historically been able to operate well in web design/dev software markets. XD and Muse are but two examples.

Nah, there is zero opportunity for Dreamweaver to retake its throne. That ship has sailed 20 years ago.

And I'd like to add that anyone thinking that "vibe coding" is a good idea to teach beginner full stack devs is (sorry) out of touch with reality (for obvious reasons).

Just my two cents.

I might sound harsh. I loved DW during its heyday time, but pretending that DW is still a so-called market leader and a valid option to teach the young generation of coders, is... a tad delusional. 

[bill_teale]

I respect your opinion, but totally disagree.  I am not pretending. I have truly tried to find a product that is a as feature-full as DW even if in its outdated and unsupported state. It takes several programs to match the functionality.

I don't read 'statistics' because the only thing that is 99.99% positive about them is that there is either a bias or agenda behind them.

I teach using VS Code, Android Studio, and Netbeans for other coding classes, and I make my students learn HTML using VS Code for their beginner class (what is <HTML> through to simple page bulding). THEN I progress them through CSS, JS, PHP, Bootstrap, and database-driven website design... all hands on, and all in Dreamweaver. Not a single one has asked not to use DW, and the comments I have had back from them (unsolicited) are "Why did you make us use VS Code?".

Like I said, I appreciate your opinion, but my own experiences don't match up with yours, or apparently 99.99% of the developer world 😁