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MySpiderPal
MySpiderPal
Participant
June 9, 2017
Question

Dreamweaver: Do Adobe really want to provide this product?

  • June 9, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 353 views

Dreamweaver is brilliant. When it isn't frustrating the life blood from my most extreme capillaries, I love it.

But because of those frustrations, I have to ask why Adobe don't support it like it has a future, because the communication and heads up on updates and deprecation of functionality just riles its users up the wrong way every time an update comes. OK, beta versions are put out there, but the mainline users are not going to be people that download and use them regularly enough to give assessment, and you will be left with the Adobe enthusiasts who will only represent themselves as a user group rather than a broad spectrum of professional site designers or needy amateurs who wish to produce a decent experience for visitors to a site representing their hobby or small business.

My biggest bug bear of recent years was the deprecation of server behaviors. I am a web numpty, I know a little, mostly what I want to do, but I only occasionally actually sit at the computer working on my websites.  When server behaviors were deprecated, the bottom fell out of my world. What was I going to do now? What was all the world going to do now? On the forum, and on the web, many, many people were reflecting this web apocalypse. Not just those that rued the passing, but also those who made out it was no big thing, because NO ONE suggested looking at alternatives that would resolve the issue and bring users up to speed with current technology. Everyone was looking at either going back to previous versions of DW, or obtaining server behaviours from third parties.

I pleaded, to no avail, for someone to help me find the alternatives that Adobe clearly assumed users would turn to. People on the forum ONLY recommended rolling back or third parties, Adobe themselves provided no suggestions, raising the question of whether they just wanted to push their users towards premium third party products.

Yet alternatives were out there, and, having researched them and used them, I now feel far more confident and in posession of the skills I use to put my content on the web.

Problem is, in terms of Adobe, that it reduced my reliance on DW, and hacked me off at the same time.

My current primary irritation is Live View/Real time, which, between them, cannot agree how anything should be displayed, with real time being anything but that which its name implies, and live view hampered by the fact my Dreamweaver doesn't recognise a perfectly good localhost setup (working in every other sense other than Live View (no, I am not using WordPress, standard answer number 1 does not apply) - for which I have now had to setup a remote testing site, costing me time and the will to live with Adobe).

The forums, no offence to the few out there who are genuinely supportive, are just full of people who wish to communicate a sense of superiority and wisdom which quickly reveals itself as ignorance laced with umbrage when the quickest and easiest answer turns out to be not only incorrect, but also a mile off the mark because assumptions are being made rather than requests for help being read.

And if Adobe are struggling, they refer us to that community.

I use other Adobe products (I love Adobe products, including Dreamweaver when it is working), and generally the transitions between updates are intuitive, logical, and more or less seamless. With Dreamweaver however, they often appear inexplicable, devastatingly out of the blue, desperately tinkering (swapping round the yes/no buttons, WTH!!! or swapping (not improving, or upgrading) long term display defaults) and virtually always mean several days or even weeks of lost productivity during catch up. The frustrating thing is that what you need is usually there, but Adobe just seem to want to keep the secret to themselves.

If I didn't know better, and I am not sure that I do, I would think that Dreamweaver is a product that Adobe want shot of, and were trying to give themselves the right excuse to do so. I'm sensing that some may wonder why it has taken me so long to cotton on.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    pziecina
    pziecina
    Legend
    June 9, 2017

    First I am going to try and answer the question posed by the tile of this discussion -

    "Does Adobe really want to provide this product"?

    The answer is that Adobe does not now know if it want to provide this product, but originally it did not, and that is what matters, and why it has fallen so far behind what is now required by users.

    Back in the days just after Adobe acquired Macromedia, the reason given by Adobe for doing so, was summed up in one word, 'Flash', and that has not changed. If you look at many other Adobe products, you would probably not be surprised to see that many of those products are 'all in one' solutions for providing web content and building Adobe code proprietary sites.

    They even support html5, css3 and javascript much better than Dreamweaver does. Which should not come as a surprise, as many Dw users have no idea about using any of them, and are not encouraged to do so unless they can do it using point and click. Which brings me to your next point.

    https://forums.adobe.com/people/The+Morris+Man  wrote

    rather than a broad spectrum of professional site designers or needy amateurs who wish to produce a decent experience for visitors to a site representing their hobby or small business.

    Dreamweaver must be the only product ever, for which I have heard the argument, that it must support 'beginners and amateurs' stated by so many. Once a program must support such users, it looses all credibility as a serious web development tool, and even the 'professional' Dw user is in a large majority of cases not a coder, as they think that creating wordpress themes means they are 'professionals', simply because it uses php.

    You also say -

    https://forums.adobe.com/people/The+Morris+Man  wrote

    OK, beta versions are put out there, but the mainline users are not going to be people that download and use them regularly enough to give assessment, and you will be left with the Adobe enthusiasts who will only represent themselves

    If you do not have time to even look at the beta, and join in with the discussions, then can you really complain?

    After all, those that do join in the beta program, are doing what you and many others do not want to do. I am not saying that the CAB and beta programs are perfect, and personally I think they are mainly 's*^t', comprised mostly of people who have no idea what is happening in the real world of web development, but then again at least the beta group is open to every Dw user.

    (Ben, you are not included in that statement, and 3-4 other also)

    I say 'every Dw user' notice. That is because if you do join and do not use Dw as your main program, many CAB and beta members, will tell you that you should not be in the program, and 'advise' you to leave, a policy supported by the Dw team.

    Now to server -behaviours -

    The code is horrendous, most of it was written around 2000, does not lend itself to updating, and is so badly documented that finding a simple function within the code can take days, and I am speaking from experience regarding that, as I did make an attempt to update some functions to use PDO, with limited success.

    There was also the problem of which do you update it to. PDO or MySQLi, most use PDO now, but which would be the most popular was unclear even 3 years ago. To add to the confusion you cannot mix them on the same page, so can you imagine the average Dw user, with all their various extensions trying to build a php/db site. The word chaos comes to mind.

    Now for Dw's current offerings -

    It costs 3x the price of Ps, if Ps is subscribed to using the 'Photographer' package. It offers an open source code editor, that feels like an open source code editor to use. Unless you use sass/less and/or bootstrap to build sites, or must use the Dw workflow, it's a complete waste of time and money. Yes, it does offer good file management and ftp built-in, but if you are serious about web development, not much else.

      MySpiderPal
      MySpiderPalAuthor
      Participant
      June 9, 2017

      This is very interesting, and it seems to bring home not just the fact that my concerns are real, but also with some reason why.

      Thank you.

      I would like to respond on a couple of things..

      I do not intend to be derogatory towards participants in the beta program, though I accept that it may come across as such in my original post. It is more that I am stating a perception of DW development that would appear to be flawed, not because of the people that are taking part, but because more people are not taking part.

      I woulds then assert that it is valid for any user who invests in this product, given that there really do seem to be issues with support and development, to express concerns about potentially unproductive (it may not be that at all) development activities. I would hope that Adobe would take those concerns on-board, even if dealing with them is somewhat insurmountable.

      Another point, and perhaps talking about the potential market here: if there are so many calls for support from the amateur/beginner users, is that not indicating that Dreamweaver has a potentially broader market than they are aiming at. If these amateurs and small business people will grow into more professional users, what is the harm in humouring them on their way up?

      I do like Dreamweaver, but get frustrated with some of the changes and the way they are supported. I like that it allows me to feel like a coder at times, and that I have that visual interface, when it is working. I would be sad to see it go in many ways. But as I have said elsewhere, a parting of the ways sadly seems to be edging closer and closer, and Adobe seem to be happy for it to happen - and I can't criticize them for that (though the lack of support whilst it's still breathing is fair game). Maybe the break will actually liberate me!

      pziecina
      pziecina
      Legend
      June 9, 2017

      https://forums.adobe.com/people/The+Morris+Man  wrote

      I do not intend to be derogatory towards participants in the beta program, though I accept that it may come across as such in my original post. It is more that I am stating a perception of DW development that would appear to be flawed, not because of the people that are taking part, but because more people are not taking part.

      Correct.

      I have in the past taken part in both the CAB program and the pre-release. The frustrations I felt in doing so were largly because many of those also taking part, did not know what was happening in web development, so any suggestions by myself, (and others) were seen as 'not relevant', simply because they were aimed at the professional, and not the point and click user.

      Regarding the 'point and click' user.

      It is not that I am against supporting such users, it is the way they are and have been supported that annoyed me. They are as far as I can see, treated as 3rd class users, who have no aspirations to use anything beyond what was available 10 years ago. If such users are to be supported, then they should be supported in a professional manner, thought of as users who wish to build sites to modern standards, with modern features.

      https://forums.adobe.com/people/The+Morris+Man  wrote

      Another point, and perhaps talking about the potential market here: if there are so many calls for support from the amateur/beginner users, is that not indicating that Dreamweaver has a potentially broader market than they are aiming at. If these amateurs and small business people will grow into more professional users, what is the harm in humouring them on their way up?

      The problem with catering for such users, (except for my comment above) is that once you do so then the product itself never develops above the capabilities of that user base. Beginners in any profession are expected to learn how to do the job to a professional standard, using professional tools, not remain beginners forever using tools just for them.

      If you can give me a reason why only Dreamweaver should do so, and say why Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier pro, or even Muse and CC Animate, to some degree, should not also cater for the beginner, then I would agree, cater for them. But, as none of the mentioned programs do cater for beginners or amateurs!!!

      https://forums.adobe.com/people/The+Morris+Man  wrote

      I do like Dreamweaver, but get frustrated with some of the changes and the way they are supported. I like that it allows me to feel like a coder at times, and that I have that visual interface, when it is working. I would be sad to see it go in many ways. But as I have said elsewhere, a parting of the ways sadly seems to be edging closer and closer, and Adobe seem to be happy for it to happen - and I can't criticize them for that (though the lack of support whilst it's still breathing is fair game). Maybe the break will actually liberate me!

      I know a number of ex Dreamweaver users, who moved to other programs reluctantly, (myself included) but were left with no other choice. Once one starts to move between Dw and other program(s) on a regular basis, just to get the functionality or features one requires, then as they say, "the writing is on the wall", and dropping Dw becomes inevitable at some point unless Dw adds the missing features and functionality. Something it failed to do for me since CS6, though I hung-on as long as possible before finally giving up.

      O
      osgood_
      Legend
      June 9, 2017

      In short the problem with web development is it moves very fast and web-building software progam developers can't and never will be able to keep up-to-date as they are drowning in trying to perceive what the product needs to contain and what it can neglect. As an example I started out as a graphic designer many, many years ago. 25 years later the way we lay out a brochure or advertsiment etc is no different to what it was back then and the tools we need to do it have barely progressed - Quark Xpress or currently InDesign is really no more advanced than it was all those years back, save for a few largely unnecessary additions and some interface tweeks, its like comparing the tortoise to the hare.

      I have used nunerous web-development software options and NONE are perfect, each have good points and each have their bad points.

      I think there comes a point when you need to get away from relying on a particular product and start to stand on your own 2 feet, so you are not playing puppet to any particular workflow but that of your your own. That means learning coding. it's really the only way you can ever stay close to the edge of where things are 'currently' going and if you are a  serious web-developer then there is no excuse for not doing so, if you don't that is down to laziness and ignorance.

      I have some sympathy for what I call amatuer players as they can't be expected to invest huge amounts of time in learning something they use infrequently so for them I make allowances in terms of using extensions and frameworks. DW has probably lost its way because it no longer caters to them as it once did. I think that started when they buried their heads in the sand regarding server behaviours which lets face it was the flag-ship component of the product and why amatures used it.

      Since those days it has lost any innovation because innovation is costly and its developers were not exactly very good at what they did introduce. Infact it all mostly ended in disaster and I believe confidence in the product drained away as it was all built on mostly unfounded testing. I remember all the glossy videos for fluid-grid which looking back I now find insulting to my inteligence.

      Today DW is an over-priced shell for 3rd party extensions/frameworks. They can only charge what they do for the product because they still have a wealth of die-hard consumers who have no desire to learn anything, other than point and click and DW does a better job than most when it comes to that.

      I no longer see it as my main choice of editor but I don't class myself as someone who has no other options. If you can code the world is your oyster - you have the pick of the bunch.

        MySpiderPal
        MySpiderPalAuthor
        Participant
        June 9, 2017

        Thanks for the reply.

        One very good thing about the poor support for Dreamweaver is that it has pushed me to develop coding skills and tech awareness, though I am far from being an expert.

        I try to code as much as I can, but I don't have the confidence not to refer to live view, though both it and real time are occasionally (live view) and almost always (real time) slow to update or misleadingly failing to represent what is on the server, despite using all save and push automation. I have used text editors to create pages, and occasionally see the light regarding code bloating (I've given up on any third party poop-ware), but don't work on these web pages enough to gain the confidence to break away.

        With the server behaviours, perversely,  I do now feel much better about what I do with dynamic content because of Dreamweaver dropping them, and frankly have a better understanding because I am directly using MySQL and PHP, and feel more confident to be able to fix a problem with code than I was with working out a glitch in Dreamweaver. It took some more learning, and I have to brush up every time I come back to do work, but ultimately, using PHP now seems more natural and as easy as using the server behaviours, strange as that may seem.

        There are certainly times when I wonder how much of what is going on is being assisted by Dreamweaver and how much is being hindered. Ultimately I like the integration with other Adobe products, of which I do use many, but yes, I doubt very much if I would use Dreamweaver if it was stand alone, or wasn't in the CC package.

        Perhaps by being just a bit poop, Dreamweaver has unwittingly nurtured me to fledge the nest. Maybe my future as a roundly amateur web designer will be decided by the question of which will happen first. Me walking the branch, or Abobe flying south, with Dreamweaver in its beak?

        I agree with you about the fast moving nature of web design. We are in a ridiculous state when the bodies attempting to standardise the rapidly developing tech seem to require an uber-body to standardise their own actions. There's just too much money to be made I guess and too many big leaguers don't want to let go of any chance of getting a piece of the pie. But then, we don't want to stifle innovation either.

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