Editing Macromedia (section)

===Dreamweaver===
In March 1996, Macromedia acquired iBand Inc., developer of the Backstage family of dynamic web development tools, for $32 million.<ref>{{Cite news |last= |date=1996-03-15 |title=Macromedia in Deal To Acquire Iband |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/15/business/macromedia-in-deal-to-acquire-iband.html |access-date=2025-01-03 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Macromedia developed a new [[HTML]]-authoring tool, [[Macromedia Dreamweaver|Dreamweaver]], around portions of the Backstage codebase and released the first version in December 1997.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Johnson |first=Joshua |date=August 18, 2011 |title=Why Adobe Doesn’t Understand Web Designers |url=https://designshack.net/articles/software/why-adobe-doesnt-understand-web-designers/ |access-date=2025-01-03 |website=Design Shack |language=en-US}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Lowery |first=Joseph W. |url=https://archive.org/details/dreamweaverbible00lowe/mode/1up?q=1997 |title=Dreamweaver bible |date=1998 |publisher=IDG Books Worldwide |others= |isbn=978-0-7645-3225-2 |location=Foster City, CA |pages=X |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> 

At the time, most professional web authors preferred to code HTML by hand using text editors because they wanted full control over the source. Dreamweaver addressed this with its "Roundtrip HTML" feature, which attempted to preserve the fidelity of hand-edited source code during visual edits, allowing users to work back and forth between visual and code editing.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Darnell |first=Rick |url=https://archive.org/details/usingmacromediad00darn/mode/1up?q=Backstage+ |title=Using Macromedia Dreamweaver 1.2 |last2=Webster |first2=Timothy |date=May 1998 |publisher=Que |others= |isbn=978-0-7897-1626-2 |location=Indianapolis, Indiana |pages=43 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> 

Over the next few years Dreamweaver became widely adopted among professional web authors, though many still preferred to hand-code, and [[Microsoft FrontPage]] remained a strong competitor among amateur and business users. By October 1999, Nearly 66% of professional web site developers used Dreamweaver.<ref name=":4" />