Visually define your entire Web application. Drumbeat gives you a sophisticated WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop environment that shows how the application will appear in the browser to the end user. With other Web tools, the developer usually sees HTML or ASP code. In Drumbeat, design tools such as grids, guides, and alignment tools help you create visually engaging, user-friendly pages and frame sets, without writing code. And, at any point in the development, you can preview how the application will appear and operate in any browser.

Create instant ASP. Drumbeat generates all the code for server-side interactivity, building fully customizable Active Server Pages, including all logic, queries, UI elements, and code. It even allows you full control of database and server transactions by taking advantage of Microsoft Transaction Server. Drumbeat includes more than 100 reusable components, ranging from COM objects and stored procedures to standard HTML tags. Users can also easily register new components with little effort. Once components are registered into Drumbeat, you can use them in applications--just drag and drop them onto the page.

Engage your users. Create an engaging, consistent, and clear interface for users. You can quickly create rollover buttons, pop-ups, drop-down lists, data-entry validation, media controllers, and more. Drumbeat point-and-click interactions let you choose from plain-English phrases to determine how page elements respond to users and interact with each other. Drumbeat interface and design tools take full advantage of the latest Web technologies, including DHTML, JavaScript, VB Script, CSS positioning, and CSS styles.

Bring peace to the browser wars. Take advantage of the latest browser features without abandoning users with older browsers. By publishing browser-sensitive SmartPages, Drumbeat allows Web applications to automatically sense which browser a visitor is using and display a version of the page with code, features, and appearance all optimized to that browser. Stop using precious development time struggling with the idiosyncrasies of browsers from different vendors and the complex coding necessary to make cross-browser sites work. Drumbeat is the only tool that handles cross-browser publishing automatically.

Manage all content from one convenient location. Building powerful Web applications requires integrating a variety of materials created by various contributors. Only Drumbeat lets you view and manage all these assets, such as media files, links, queries, styles, and application components in one area, the Drumbeat Asset Center. The Asset Center makes it easy to manage all aspects of an application.

Customize and extend functionality. Drumbeat redefines extensibility. No other Web-application development platform makes it so easy to import and define interactions among reusable Drumbeat and third-party components, including Design Time Controls, ActiveX objects, Scriptlets, COM objects, plug-ins, and Java applets. In addition, you can exchange these components, called SmartElements, with other users on the Macromedia Web site.