Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Dreamweaver

Which HTML/CSS/JS IDE do I want?

drjimmy11 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:31:52 -0800

Which HTML/CSS/JS IDE do I want? So I've been doing AS3 development for the last few years, using Flex Builder, but am now moving back into HTML/CSS/JS. I've gotten used to having a fairly intelligent IDE and I'd like to not go back to the bad old days of having to type every single param and property from scratch every time. (I'm looking for code help, not just highlighting.)

I have tried a few but none seems to have everything I want:

1. Dreamweaver:
Pluses: When you link to a stylesheet, you can CTRL+space and get a list of styles to choose from.
Minuses: Weak support for JS. (no auto-complete at all)

2. Aptana:
Pluses: Seems to have excellent JS support, including major AJAX libraries.
Minuses: Unless I am missing something, I can't choose Css styles off a list, and that is a major major timesaver for the work I'll be doing.

3. HTMLPad 2010:
Plusses and minuses seem about the same as Aptana, plus it costs money. (DW CS3 is already installed on my work machine so no cost there.)

So, am i doing something wrong with Aptana? Is there another piece of software I'm not aware of? Or should I settle for DW for html/css and Aptana for JS? (The work will probably be 80% or more on the html/css side.)

thanks!

I just want to add a dash!

royalsong — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:33:24 -0800

I'm using the find and replace tool in dreamweaver, ultilizing Regular Expressions to find four numbers and a space and then 'replace' that expression with itself but add a dash. I have a series of years and descriptions, it looks something like this:

1991 Event Number 1
1992 Event Number 2
1994 Event Number 3
1997 Event Number 4

I want to turn that into:

1991
- Event Number 1

1992
- Event Number 2

1994
- Event Number 3

1997
- Event Number 4

I don't want to do it manually, because there's something like 200 some-odd dates. I've managed to deceiver a regular expression to find the year and space ([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] ) but I can't seem to get dreamweaver to replace the found expression with itself.

Is that possible? if not, is there any method I can use to find the 5th character in a line, or the first space in a line?

Any suggestions?

(fyi: the end document will be a html page.)

Dreamweav - err

sandra_s — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:10:03 -0800

I need to break out my toolbars in Dreamwever CS3 so I can have them on monitor #1 of my dual monitor setup and the working window on monitor #2 My old versions of Dreamweaver always asked me on install which way I would like. All-in-one window, or toolbars broken out. Darned if Ive tried all the logical places to find it, and my google-fu is lacking.

I'm sure this is an easy one :-)

Thanks in advance!

The stuff Dreamweaver's are made of

sandra_s — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:08:27 -0800

Dreamweaver CS3 on Vista slows to a halt when typing or adding text. My laptop is a Vista machine with 4gb ram. I Just replaced Dreamweaver MX, which I use for years on my XP box and on this laptop.

I was having problems with MX not assigning tables correctly and was advised that since it was older and not written for Vista, I would need to upgrade to a Vista-compatible version.

I bought CS3. That fixed the tables problem, but the inputting of text is SO SLOW. If you try to manually type it in, after the first character it just "thinks about it" and locks up the whole program for 2-10 minutes. Yes, thats 2-10 minutes.

Same thing with pasting text. ctrl+v equals a similar wait.

it will eventually do it, but to enter in 3 paragraphs is taking somewhere just under an hour.

Dreamweaver is useless to me like this, but I paid a lot of money for it, so I'd really like to find a fix.

Any thoughts?

Is it possible to create a region in a Dreamweaver template where the content repeats?

xetere — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:41:52 -0800

Is it possible to create a region in a Dreamweaver template where the *content* repeats? I have a bunch of dreamweaver templates for a new site - CS4 to be precise. While there is a div that pulls db driven data, most of the content of the pages themselves are static. Each page will a contain a headline and body content containing 3 tabbed sections. The user will be able to tab between the three sections on the page.

There is a "blurb" below each tab that is not part of the tab, a sort of subheadline. The blurb's content is the same below each tab. In Dreamweaver, I have the tab content is an editable region. What I would like to do is make the blurb an editable region but one where the content person can add the blurb's content once (say on the first tab) and then the second and third blurb regions will automatically have that first blurbs content. Repeating regions won't do it.

The Interwebs and all the Dreamweaver books mention all sorts of great optional, repeating, nested regions but not specifically this.

If there is no way, perhaps using Javascript's getElementByID? or using JSON (of which I know NOTHING!) and have the user populate the first tab?

Thanks to all.

What's a good online FTP/code editor?

mickmel — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:13:43 -0800

I need to replace Dreamweaver with something web based. I only use the file check-in/check-out and code coloring. I don't care about the WYSIWYG part of it (which is their main focus). Is anything out there? Years after starting with Dreamweaver for "design", I'm still using it for some simple functions. I like that:

A -- I can "check-in" and "check-out" files. This helps me to make sure I'm looking at the newest version of a file, whether I'm at home, work, laptop, etc.
B -- The code coloring (and auto-complete) are nice to have.

The rest of it is useless. I don't need the WYSIWYG, CSS, and all of the other fancy tools. What can I use?

I'd prefer something web based, so I'm not always having to add new site profiles to my different machines, but a simple Windows-based app would be fine too. Notepad++ comes very close with the "FTP_synchronize" plug-in, but it's a bit sloppy. Any ideas?

How can I shorten the url a user has to type?

DreamRider — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 04:11:21 -0800

Can I program something so a visitor who wants to see www.example.com/CTTourHome.htm only has to type www.example.com/ct ? I will be putting a link to this page on the homepage of my site, but I want to put something easy to type on offline ads and announcements.

I remember doing something like this with an old website I had on a different host. I think it was doteasy.com and now I'm on lunarpages.com. (I asked lunarpages and they said I couldn't do this. Hmmm... how did I do it before then?)

Is it possible to let users type in that trailing "/ct" without including a .htm extension?

This is a new subsection of the site by the way, but I haven't made a new subdirectory for it. Do I need to do that and make my desired page the default, index page for the subdirectory?

One last thing: this is an add-on domain, so it's a subdomain or folder under my main domain. I am able to access it via ftp directly with the dreamridersmovie.com address.

Tabula Nada

sandra_s — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:39:22 -0800

All of a sudden I cant insert a table in Dramweaver MX, and it is NOT the View>Table View>Standard View versus Layout View setting (as far as I can tell). I have been using my version of Dreamweaver for years, originally on XP, but on Vista the last year and a half.

Last week all of a sudden when I click the table tool, or go to Insert>Table I get nothing. The tool and menu item are not grayed out, they are live, but dont do anything. I am in standard view.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Dreamweaver. That solved the problem for 1 day. Now its doing it again.

I can add and delete cells/rows/columns from existing tables, but not create a new one. I have been getting by by copy/pasting an existing table, deleting its contents and deleting/adding rows and columns, but i NEED to be able to just create a table again. And within Dreamweaver.

This happens in new and existing files.

HELP!!

Thanks in advance!

Simple Code

Bunglegirl — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:35:44 -0800

Dreamweaver or Coda for web design & programming? I don't do a lot of web design (I'm more of a print designer) but I'm doing more and more of it nowadays. I have always hand coded websites just using a free text editor and previewing it in a browser. I'm no programmer, but can get by in HTML/CSS. Back when I first was forced to take a web design course 10 years ago we had a choice between hand coding and an editor, I took the hand coding class. I've always thought that editors (like Dreamweaver) were bloated and produced messy code.

Now that I'm doing more web design and see that Coda is on sale I'm thinking I might as well pick it up. That is, unless Dreamweaver can do everything that Coda does and allow me to get into the code. I haven't looked at the program in years and don't know if its gotten better to work with. Since I create websites in Photoshop and Illustrator it might make sense to just go with the workflow and finish them in Dreamweaver. I haven't used Dreamweaver since it first came out but I don't think it should be too much trouble to become proficient at given my current skill set.

I am currently using CS3 standard but have a copy of CS4 Design Premium (Dreamweaver + Flash included, free upgrade) ready to install when I get my new computer in a few days. My current computer is too slow to run CS4.

Is Coda worth getting or should I stick with Dreamweaver since I already own it?

Keeping Dreamweaver in sync

silsurf — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:22:13 -0800

I use Dreamweaver on my laptop and on my desktop to manage my website. I am a very light user and often find that I get things gummed up between the laptop and desktop, what should I do to maintain sync? I often go weeks without doing any work on this site and it has minimal needs, but I learned enough Dreamweaver since I have always used it for what little html I do.

The problem is that sometimes I like to work on my laptop and sometimes I like to work from my desktop. I also find that it does not take long before I have made some sort of coding error on one and it has an "oh my god I am about to ruin everything" effect on trying to get back to where I was.

I never learned the proper way to use the synchronization tools or the auto deletions functions in Dreamweaver. So right now I have incomplete versions on both my laptop and my desktop and a lot of files on both the laptop, desktop and the server that are not in use.

What I am looking for is a concise and hopefully easy to understand method to guarantee that everything stays in sync.

Thanks for your input.

Henry

stochastic hyperlink required

ddaavviidd — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:47:41 -0800

Question about linking pages in a slightly random way with Dreamweaver... I have a basic understanding of html and can make my way around dreamweaver (which I learned by myself, so I am definitely not an advanced user!), but for a multimedia project I'm working on, I'd like to create a specific type of link. I would like to create a hyperlink that points to a group of pages (that would be grouped in a folder, or perhaps there is a tagging system that could be put into place?), but that randomly picks one of these pages (not the one that's currently live). I'm not sure if this is feasible with my poor programing knowledge, but I would hope there's a straightforward way to achieve it!

My idea is that if the audience enjoy a text (or an image for that matter), they could click on it and be directed to another related page, but not in a linear or predictive way.

Additionnal infos: the project is for an installation, so everything is going to be local (ie on the computer that runs the installation, in safari with mega zoomer). I can use good old dreamweaver 8 and/or flash mx to complete this simple task. I thought for a while that a cms might be easier to deal with to achieve that effect, but I already have a lot of pages already created and know nothing about css.

Dreeeeeeamweaver... help me make it to another job

azpenguin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:30:30 -0800

Graphic designer needing web skills... but what do I need? I'm a graphic artist at a newspaper. As you may know, newspapers are not doing well, and between that and outsourcing, my job is on the endangered list. When I started training for this, everything at school was focused on print. (Which is weird, since it was 2002, and the web was already very well advanced.) But my training has served me well, at least until now. What I'm seeing pretty much everywhere is that designers need to be able to design for the web as well. I'm good at learning new stuff, so this doesn't really intimidate me. But I need to know what designers currently are expected to know. It seems that Dreamweaver (no training whatsoever) and Flash (which I do have some training on) are a given. How about coding? Scripting? Or do the designers typically design and then hand things over to the code monkeys? Other aspects of web design? Any resources you'd recommend?

Thanks!

How can I allow end users specify a query in Contribute or Dreamweaver?

xetere — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:43:15 -0800

How can I set up a Dreamweaver Template so that a user can enter a variable to get a custom recordset? I hand roll my Web pages, but there is a Dreamweaver site which has much database driven content. Many users will be updating it either in Dreamweaver or in Contribute. This is in .asp classic. There are panels that get recordset data from a table. I would like for a user to be able to add a record id into an editable region of the template so that he or she will get the correct query results without having to go to bindings, or any tasks more complicated for the average user. They know the record ids so they can copy and paste.
What I am looking for is an end user - even in contribute creating a page from a template, adding a number in the recordid editable region so that the query queries the database for the correct data.

Now of course, I *can* use the urlstring, - "page.asp?recordid=2" for example, but it is also a requirement that the .asp pages be named normal names (newyorkoffice.asp, somothercityoffice.asp) etc., etc.

I would assume this is easy, you can make a meta tag as editable, but for some reason, I am at a loss on how to do this. Nothing shows up in Google, is this possible, should I be looking for other alternatives. Keep in mind that since the site is in DW and the db is SQLServer and there is a huge .asp classic codebase, even if it isn't the most elegant solution, if there is a way to NOT re-jigger the entire site from scratch, I am all for it.

Dreamweaver noob CSS/template/float/whitespace question

momzilla — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:55:00 -0800

Dreamweaver CS3 newbie CSS/template/float/whitespace question I have created a few pages in Dreamweaver CS3 based on the "Two column hybrid, left sidebar, header and footer" template. The pages render perfectly on my computer; I tested them at every available resolution -- no problems.

When the pages were viewed by someone who really matters, they rendered funky, naturally. I wasn't present when he viewed them but what was described to me is that the main content was pushed down below the sidebar, thereby creating a ton of whitespace to the right of the sidebar. I have tried to recreate the problem on my PC but have not been able to.

I'm new to Dreamweaver/HTML/CSS, but from what I've read this sounds like a "float" issue, no? Am I barking up the right tree? I need to fix this ASAP, so any suggestions or expertise that is shared is greatly appreciated. Also, how can I make sure the issue is truly fixed when I cannot recreate the problem? Thanks in advance!

Dreamweaver is nutty

Benzle — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:55:11 -0800

Hello All, On a site I am building I have everything saved to a single file and all links are formated, /xxx.php but dreamweaver has started renaming everything file:/C|Documents%and%settings/administrator/desktop... ect. I am using PHP and using a testing server. no links work when I check it on my testing server. Everything has been working fine until today, and am unsure what may have caused the change. Thanks so much everyone.

Linking photos in Dreamweaver

fish tick — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:20:41 -0800

Dreamweaver DX help needed - simple but repetitive linking task. I have a large table into which I've dragged a few hundred thumbnails, and now need to link those to their larger counterparts all of which have the same name as their respective thumbnails but are in a separate folder. Can Dreamweaver automate this task? Can Dreamweaver rename all of the pictures numerically based on the order in which they now appear in the table to facilitate this task?
No RTFM responses, please - I've dug around a bit.

Am I stuck paying $300 for Dreamweaver if I want to edit a Dreamweaver-created site?

letahl — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:34:36 -0800

Am I stuck paying $300 for Dreamweaver? Howdy mefites.

I need to tweak an existing website that was created in Dreamweaver. I'm on a Mac. I opened the website in Seamonkey and it doesn't look so good (the Flash -ugh- ain't right, and neither are the -ugh- drop down menus). All I want to do is pop in there and do some SEO work without screwing up the flash/dropdown masterpiece. My question is three-fold.

1) Can I make the necessary changes (Title, Tags, Keywords, a little bit o' content) in Seamonkey or some other free program without jacking up the site?

If not,

2) Do I have to get Dreamweaver and am I stuck paying $300 for it? Any particular version I should get? I'm really not getting paid enough for this gig to justify a $300 expense. $100, though, maybe.

If so,

3) I opened up the site via ftp and see that what appears to be HTML pages are on the server as .asp pages. A total blind spot for me. Does that mean I can't just open up the HTML page in a text editor and make the changes I want without jacking up the aforementioned masterpiece?

Any and all advice would be GREATLY appreciated, even and especially refs to helpful old posts (I couldn't find any exactly on point).

Thanks, all!

What's the best way to learn web design?

jwfree — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:20:57 -0800

Best way for a beginner to learn web design and Dreamweaver? Several years ago I used to be into web design (back when it was basically just HTML) and I did a lot of the coding myself. It's a hobby I would like to get back into, no rush. I have noticed that things have significantly changed; CSS, Flash, XHTML, etc.

If you are a web designer in this day and age, how did you learn? I've seen the Lynda series out there, so that's an option. I would prefer to learn on my computer at home but I'm open to buy a nice book or two. I am just wondering what out there is effective and a good source of information for beginners, especially with using Dreamweaver. Like I said, I'd like ot combine the two in the same tutorial if possible.

Eye-candy graphics directly in Email

designbyme — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:33:52 -0800

Eye-candy filled e-mail without having to open an attachment - how do you create this? You know the e-mails you get from advertisers that are loaded with graphics, images and lots of color.... how do you create something like that?

Why won't CSS rollovers work for me?

reductiondesign — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:16:01 -0800

I'm trying to put CSS rollover buttons onto my website. They show up just fine in Dreamweaver, but not on any browser. This makes no sense, about to go insane, more inside, etc. Alright, I hope someone here can help me.

I'm trying to put some CSS rollover buttons on a page, as so . . .

[MeFi is stripping out my HTML code, but it's basically a link--a href--with a class tag (="artisticroll") and some style for positioning.]
Note: I'm positive that there's not an error in this code.

. . . and this links back to my .css file, part of which is thus . . .

a.artisticroll
{
display: block;
width: 200px;
height: 23px;
background-image: url('artisticROLL.jpg');
}
a.artisticroll:hover
{
background-position: 0 23px;
}

. . . but it only shows up in Dreamweaver--not in any browsers. I've tried doing a local preview as well as actually uploading all the files onto my host and viewing it online. Nothing works.

This isn't the weird part. What's stranger is that I have other CSS rollover buttons on the same page that work just fine.

Code / .css except for working buttons:

[Same issue/code as above, except the class is "contactroll".]

a.contactroll
{
display: block;
width: 130px;
height: 60px;
background-image: url('contactROLL.jpg');
}
a.contactroll:hover
{
background-position: 0 60px;
}

As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no reason for some buttons to work and some not. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for any/all help; I can provide more details if needed.

Just like the neighbor's cat in your kids' sandbox...

bonobo — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:06:04 -0800

What am I doing to my links pointing to images in a private directory that prevents me from seeing the pics in Dreamweaver CS3 Design mode? Searching Adobe's Knowlegebase and Google yields a flood of others' issues with setting up passworded sites or Dreamweaver forgetting FTP login info and I can't narrow the results to the problem I'm having.

I just started building a web site and I'm rusty in HTML and am learning CSS. After I edit the code, I do like to check it out in Design view. Currently, I'm uploading things to a private directory (passworded .htaccess on a Zeus server not managed by me) so my business partner can see pages before the site goes "live." Viewing the site through a browser, one is prompted to enter the name and password to see this directory's content. No problems there. I have no troubles with file management in DW's FTP prog or in FileZilla, either.

Suppose the page I'm working on is located at http://www.[mydumbsite].com/public_html/sandbox/mydumbpage.htm . "Sandbox" is the passworded directory. My stylesheet for CSS is located in the same directory and the page refers directly to mydumbstylesheet.css . The pics reside below "sandbox" in folders "dumbimages" and "dumbimages/dumbthumbs." The stylesheet's effects on my .html pages show up in Design mode. The images do not. When it's all said and done, the images ARE there on the site and appear in the final product. I would just like to know what I'm doing or not doing that keeps me from being able to preview.

How do I refer to the image locations the short way (vs. "http://www.[mydumbsite].com/public_html/sandbox/images/dumbpic.jpg") so DW is not blocked access? Or Is there a way to tell DW to prompt me to get into pw'd dirs in preview mode?

Any other methods/advice (other than "OMG don't use THAT program, I write code with Sith blood on tree bark") are welcome.

Thanks!

Should I bother learning Dreamweaver CS3?

camcgee — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:32:29 -0800

What workflow advantages have you found with Dreamweaver CS3? I got the Design Premium version of Adobe CS3 a while ago and in addition to the programs that I actually know and use (i.e. InDesign, Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, and Illustrator), I have been wondering whether Dreamweaver CS3 might offer some advantage over my current web workflow.

Currently, I generally do mock-ups in Photoshop then create the site code (HTML/CSS/PHP/JS) using EditPad Pro. I test sites on a dev server running on my local machine and then upload files to the actual servers using FileZilla, since I'm not fond of EPP's built-in FTP functionality.

Has anyone migrated from a similar setup to using Dreamweaver and found real advantages in time saved or ease of use?

My first impression of DW was that it seemed bloated with stuff I don't need and won't use, though I realize that's partly because I'm just not used to using anything other than a text editor.

I'm curious about integrating it with my Photoshop mock-ups as wells as replacing the need for a separate FTP program to actually transfer and manage the files.

I have no interest in the WYSIWYG editor or any of the prefab layouts. The code completion felt intrusive but I wonder if I should just be patient and once I get used to it, I will learn to appreciate it. I'm also wondering about other things that DW can do -- error checking, browser compatibility testing, etc. that might make it more useful as far as consolidating my tools.

One other potential issue is that I'm about to start working on some Perl-centric sites, for which DW doesn't seem to have much in the way of advantages -- syntax highlighting, code completion, etc.

Dreamweaver/coding help

Sophie1 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:26:41 -0800

Dreamweaver filter - I have just set up a site using Dreamweaver and i am getting one piece of the code in the finished site. HELP!!! I'm a total noob at coding. Clearly. Here is the code. The text on the finished site (in Firefox but not when I preview) is "line decor" (without the quotes). What am I missing!!!!??? FYI - in order to have this text in here, I deleted the end >

file:///I|/CAREWebsite/pdf/mm_dashed_line.gif"><img src="file:///I|/CAREWebsite/pdf/mm_dashed_line.gif" alt="line decor" width="4" height="3" border="0" /

You can see it at the website here

I'm a researcher Jim, not a designer!

Create websites from the comfort of your own home!

clh — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:07:12 -0800

What's the best way to learn Dreamweaver at home? I am a graphic designer working mostly with print, but obviously am a little behind the times. I want to learn Dreamweaver. My immediate goal is to do single html pages (e-newsletters etc.), rather than whole websites.

How? I am looking for specific tutorial book recommendations, or online tutorials, or whatever. How did you learn Dreamweaver? Why did or did you not think that method was great?

Dreamhacker

ReiToei — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:30:51 -0800

I would like to write my own HTML/CSS editor. What would be the best way to go about it? (more inside) I've been a professional web developer for the last 8 years or so. I've used Dreamweaver all the way back since the very first beta came out way back when. Without a doubt, it's the best tool for the job (for me).

Saying that, I only ever use Dreamweaver to write code. I don't use any of the visual tools, or any of the built in javascript or back end helper code. I'd say I maybe use 15% of all it's features. It got quite bloated over the years, but it's that 15% that's keeping me from ditching in altogether and going with something like Komodo edit or one of the other open source tools like Bluefish or Aptana.

These features are:

1. The awesome tab completion and code hinting for HTML/CSS
2. Code coloring
3. Color pickers when defining colors on the fly
4. File picker when defining background image files on the fly
5. Code formatting/indentation

My question is, how hard would it be to write my own standalone editor that could do these things, or could I extend another existing software package (like Eclipse) to do it? I would like to make something that would be cross-platform and free.

Apologies for the long-winded post. I throw myself at your feet, hive mind!