Dreamweaver Sales
- Get your own copy of Dreamweaver, at least for the last month of class. Adobe offers a free 30-day trial of all of its products (including Photoshop), as well as a large education discount for student purchases.
- If you download a trial copy, I recommend going to a lab or library where you can plug-in your laptop with an Ethernet cable, for higher speed than Wifi.
- Prices: As of Fall 2011, Dreamweaver was $149 with the education discount, while the bundled Creative Suite 5.5 Web Edition, with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Fireworks, Acrobat and several Flash tools, was $449. Both are available at JourneyEd.com via Radford's bookstore. There was also a $50 discount for Cyber Monday through Dec. 3.
- Virginia Tech and some other universities have special sales programs through JourneyEd or Adobe. You could ask whether they honor a Radford I.D., or you could have a VT friend check to find out whether it's legal to buy you a copy.
- CS 5.5 Web Premium includes
- Dreamweaver® CS5.5
- Flash® Catalyst®
- Flash Professional
- Flash Builder™
- Photoshop® CS5 Extended
- Illustrator®
- Acrobat® X Pro
- Fireworks®
- Contribute®
- Bridge
- Device Central
- Media Encoder
- Other ways to save on software: A simpler version of Photoshop, not included in the Creative Suite bundles, is available: Photoshop Elements, only $50 from discounters like Amazon. Combine that with the $149 education-priced Dreamweaver and you may have all the tools you need. Note: No free program has all the functions of Dreamweaver, but you can do a lot with KompoZer. See its features list. You also might want to explore the free GNU Image Manipulation Program, GIMP, which has many of the features of Photoshop. Both of these programs are maintained by volunteers and supported by donations, so you don't get as fancy or well-documented a system as you do from commercial programs. But if you are on a budget, they are worth a try!