Macromedia HomeSite

April 18, 2004 6:12 AM

Macromedia HomeSite, the resource hog. Why does it consume so much system resources and what to do about it?

Whenever I use HomeSite together with one or two other programs, it quickly complains that my system resources are critically low and my computer starts to slow down, heading for a crash. Why does HomeSite need so much system resources? It doesn't look resource heavy to me, but I admit I don't know much about these things. No other program behaves like this, including my image editing program, which handles much larger files than HomeSite.

If I understand this correctly, buying more memory won't give me more system resources – is there anything else I can do? Would uninstalling some fonts be a good idea?

posted by Termite to computers & internet (10 comments total)

At work, our standard development setup for web dev folks requires that Homesite run alongside 8 or 10 other applications, some of which are far hoggier. It does so.

Assuming you're using Windows, are you running Homesite on a Windows 9x machine? Single-user Windows (95, 98, SE, and ME) is exceedingly bad about managing these "system resources" -- which are, actually, just the USER and GDI heaps -- and are more vulnerable to leaking. It's just plain not very good for running more than a couple of pieces of software at a time and you're probably screwed until you upgrade.

Or is the system that has this problem infested head to toe with crapware, adware, or spyware? This stuff is often cleverly installed but really poorly made; its likely any such software is consuming quite a lot of those two heaps, and possibly leaking as well. It should be removed.
posted by majick at 6:47 AM on April 18, 2004

Yeah, I run HomeSite on 3 computers, typically with Outlook, PhotoShop, Winamp and Firefox (with a bunch of tabs open) without problems. I do have 768 meg of memory at home, but only 256 at work. You could try alloting more virtual memory to at least get by, but majick's advice is better: HomeSite's complaints are (probably) the symptom of some other problem.
posted by yerfatma at 7:17 AM on April 18, 2004

Dude... I was just asking myself the same friggin' question this morning as I was working on a project. I'm like an abused woman -- I keep coming back to the IDE that crashes on me.

Really, the only thing I really like about it is the integrated ftp. I'm thinking about ditching it completely and going with pspad, though.

I've got homesite v5.2... I've been wondering if it'd be worth it to upgrade to the latest one or if I should just forget it and move on.
posted by ph00dz at 7:54 AM on April 18, 2004

That’s right, I’m using WindowsME! I still remember the ”fuck it in its faggot ass” comment about it in an earlier thread. :o)

And I’d like to repeat that all other programs work fine, it’s only HomeSite that behaves like this.

I ran a spyware/adware check a while ago (Ad-aware + Spybot Search & Destroy) and nothing turned up.
posted by Termite at 8:15 AM on April 18, 2004

I've used Homesite for years. I used to have this problem, but no more. Getting more memory on Win2K, and moving from Win95/ME to WinXP solved the problem 100% on all my boxes.
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:40 AM on April 18, 2004

Thanks for the tip about Pspad. This looks good. And, of course, if the next version of 1st Page will ever show up...
posted by Termite at 9:02 AM on April 18, 2004

I used Homesite for years but decided to switch to TopStyle Pro because of this reason.

Of course it was built by the same guy but the problems seem to have been fixed in this release.
posted by Mick at 9:57 AM on April 18, 2004

Look at TSW WebCoder. It has served me well as a Homesite and 1st Page 2000 replacement.
Freeware for personal / private use.
posted by sardonista at 11:19 AM on April 18, 2004

If it's like dreamweaver, a fair chunk of the application appears to be written in Javascript. I would flag this as a pretty good candidate for hoggishness.
posted by plinth at 7:27 PM on April 18, 2004

I too had the same chronic low-resource problem with Homesite (and sister app ColdFusion Studio) and I remember message boards at the time being full of similar complaints. However, as people (including me) switched from Windows 9x to Windows 2000, these issues vanished.
posted by Tubes at 9:01 PM on April 18, 2004