Integration between the individual products is generally very good. It begins with the interface, which uses common elements such as dockable, collapsible panels and a dynamic property inspector, so that you can switch comfortably between products. On a technical level, the key feature is round-trip support. You can embed Fireworks graphics and Flash movies in Dreamweaver pages without losing any information, so that you can later reopen an element in its original application with all its features intact.

The MX range differs from earlier Macromedia products by targeting application development as well as design. For this you need to build on a Web application server, such as the bundled ColdFusion MX, or one of the other supported platforms including ASP, ASP .Net, PHP or any Java Enterprise Edition server. You can connect to databases through JDBC, OLEDB, or .Net data providers, depending on the server platform being used. Dreamweaver MX is more developer-friendly than previous versions, with an enhanced code editor incorporating many of the features of HomeSite, Macromedia's code-centric Web page designer. Although ColdFusion MX has its own tag language, called ColdFusion Markup Language, it generates Java code that can be deployed on any of the leading Java application servers. This also enables Java developers to extend ColdFusion with custom tags and components. In effect, the combination of Dreamweaver and ColdFusion provides an easy way into dynamic, Java-based Web development. As an alternative to ColdFusion, support for Microsoft .Net is a little less comprehensive, but still good, and includes visual designers for the key ASP .Net server-side controls.