Why is Dreamweaver 8 so S L O O O W?

March 9, 2006 1:43 PM

Why is my Dreamweaver 8 sometimes (but not always) infuriatingly slow with file operations? It can take 30 seconds to refresh a directory view or save a file, during which the app is immobile. Is it doing something ridiculously intense for simple file operations that I could disable somehow? I've searched and found similar complaints but no solutions yet. [Windows 2000, Pentium III, files on network.]
posted by Tubes to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Do you happen to have any files open over network or ftp? I noticed that my UltraEdit chugged for the first time ever when I had some files open via over the WiFi lan and it was checking their state whenever I switched focus back to UltraEdit.
posted by furtive at 1:45 PM on March 9, 2006

Yes, I'm working on files on a network drive -- but that's always the case, and the performance issue isn't contant.
posted by Tubes at 1:53 PM on March 9, 2006

Are all of your network drives stable? I will have this problem in Windows itself sometimes if they aren't. Windows will poll all network drives, even disconnected ones, when trying to save or browse a directory sometimes.
posted by mikeh at 2:46 PM on March 9, 2006

Macromedia/Adobe totally blew the file operations with Dreamweaver 8. It was bad with MX, but it's absolutely AWFUL with 8. I've actually switched back to using MX.

Another thing is that when 8 bombs out it gives bad error messages -- I was cursing at it the other day, because I couldn't save a file to the remote server. Turns out the privs were wrong on the server -- of course, i had to open up MX before i figured that out.

I do all my work on remote sites via the dreamweaver FTP, and it's just like this. I've just learned to get used to it. Maybe when 9 comes out they'll fix it.

(FWIW Zend Studio doesn't have the greatest file operations in the world either. my guess is it has to do with trying to pretend you're working on a local file system when really, you're using FTP.)
posted by fishfucker at 2:53 PM on March 9, 2006

Are you using the sites manager? If you are, and you have site caching enabled, Dreamweaver can be really slow updating the cache for large sites.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 2:54 PM on March 9, 2006

The network drives have always seemed stable, and I've had no slowdowns accessing files with other applications.

I dunno if going back to MX is an option. I made them buy me DW8 just a few months ago.

I am using the site manager -- which, come to think of it, may not be required anymore. I had been using it to sync the project with VSS, but VSS was acting up and spontaneously overwriting files all over the place, plus I was fed up with its byzantine configuration anyway, so I quit using it.
posted by Tubes at 4:23 PM on March 9, 2006

Dipsomaniac has it. If the site is quite large, refreshing the cache takes for-bleeping-ever. There's a checkbox under manage sites to disable this.

And my first-ever threadjack: Why does the Dreamweaver 'insert image' dialog auto-fill file names, but then only put into the code the actual letters you typed instead of the autofill you chose? That's annoying.
posted by CaptApollo at 4:35 PM on March 9, 2006

Welp, DW still blows. I've tried everything suggested here. It still often takes 30 seconds to save a gorram text file. This program is slowly but singlehandedly turning me off of ColdFusion work. Nice job Macromedia.
posted by Tubes at 7:05 PM on March 16, 2006