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meriweather50
meriweather50
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2018
Answered

Design view only showing text, no design elements

  • January 12, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 1023 views

This was not an issue prior to CS6 or CC 2015.  With these two versions I only see text in the design view and the live view.  No design elements appear. I need to access the page via a browser to see the actual design.  Using the F5 key is not helpful.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Jon Fritz

Thanks for your reply Nancy,

Point taken.  The original structure code for the site was written many years ago and clearly needs to be cleaned up and made more consistent. But would this cause design view in Dreamweaver to suddenly stop working since it worked for years in the past?  Or am I missing some setting in Dreamweaver?


Is that page you posted above from your site's main homepage? (the one at www.yoursite.com?)

If so, the link showing...

../SpryAssets/SpryCollapsiblePanel.js

...would be telling DW to go up one directory level from the site root, which DW can't do. All files must be within the directory set in your Defined Site.

If you're trying to save yourself some duplication by linking to a common file outside of the Site Defintion, DW won't know what to do with it.

4 replies

meriweather50
meriweather50Author
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2018

Yes Jon.  The style sheets, Spry assets and scripts folder had been inadvertently deleted from the local folder. Once they were restored the design view was FIXED!!

Both you and Nancy have gone above and beyond in your efforts to answer my questions.  I am very impressed and grateful.

Thanks to you both for assisting with this problem.

Drew Dowdell

meriweather50
meriweather50Author
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2018

Here's a screen shot of the main page for the site, but all the pages show up in design view like this:

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Nancy OSheaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 12, 2018

Looks un-styled to me.  The paths to your external files are very inconsistent.  Some are pointing to the root folder while others are pointing to sub-folders.  In relation to the document you're working on, where is your MainPStyle.css file?  And where are your Spry Assets?

Nancy

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
meriweather50
meriweather50Author
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2018

Thanks for your reply Nancy,

Point taken.  The original structure code for the site was written many years ago and clearly needs to be cleaned up and made more consistent. But would this cause design view in Dreamweaver to suddenly stop working since it worked for years in the past?  Or am I missing some setting in Dreamweaver?

Jon Fritz
Community Expert
Jon FritzCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 12, 2018

Usually, this type of thing (if it is technically an error at all, more on that later) is caused by a code error that DW can't reconcile, but the browsers can.

Run your page through the validator at http://validator.w3.org/nu or File > Validate > Current Document W3C and clean up any structural errors found in your html.

That will usually clear up a lot of inconsistencies between DW and the browsers, but keep in mind Design View is very, very limited. It does not run any kind of script at all, and has problems with even basic CSS styling. I've said, for many years, that Design View is mis-named. It should be called something like Framework View or NeverGoingtoMatchaBrowser View. It might almost look the same as IE 6, but even that was a better renderer of web pages than Design View.

If it looks right in the browser, and no errors come up in the validator, your page is fine and DW's Design View is just showing you its limitations.

meriweather50
meriweather50Author
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2018

Thanks Jon,

I ran the checker and sent the results to our tech support.  It found quite a few code inconsistencies and suggestions to use style sheets and a few code errors that did not look critical to me.   Since the pages still display correctly in browsers, I'm not rushing into anything yet.  And as you said, the pages all display fine in browsers, so I can always check the design there.  It was just nice to see the design changes on the split screen as I made changes to the code and it had always worked in the past.  I've been using Dreamweaver, as a novice, for many years and almost always regret new versions which never seem as easy or useful as the old ones.

M
Mejba Uddin Biplob
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2018

Please provide a screenshot

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