Real-Time Preview Is Unreliable!

Thanks, Jon, for your pair of explanatory and helpful e-replies.

Regarding your first of two that suggested that "something is goofed" in my site definitions, I've contacted my server's support center to ask for help learning what's different/incorrect in the setup of three of my numerous directories. Once I correct those three, I'll likely use the "right-click the file and choose 'Open in Browser'" option.

Regarding your suggested option for checking revisions to pages locally, I wasn't aware of the fact that when I open a page directly from a browser, by using File > Open, that I'd see the page "locally." That's a safe and effective approach to take from now on. Many thanks for your insight and suggestion.

Regarding your follow-up post, the suggested layout of the "htdocs" folder that you provided assures me that the way I've paced my few site folders is correct. And from what Nancy suggested in her most-recent post, I'll copy/paste all files of those directories having SSIs into the "htdocs" folder.

BTW: After reading and appreciating your two latest posts, I looked for the "Correct Answer" button but cannot find it. Where can I find it to trigger it?

Warren

wcamp wrote: [Using macOS Sierra] I very much appreciate the value and benefit of Real-Time Preview. However, when I try to activate it on some .html pages of many of my available directories, a blank-white preview opens with the title "Real Time Preview." It's extremely frustrating (and a waste of time) for me to find that a new or revised page cannot be opened using Real-Time Preview. Add to that the duplicated effort and wasted time needed to make to create a duplicate page with a TEST name, uploading and checking that page online, then applying the changes to the original page before deleting it when the page revisions are completed and uploaded. What a waste! Why is Real-Time Preview appearing only occasionally after selecting hat feature? What keeps it from working reliably? More importantly, will Adobe Systems show [us] how to get Real-Time Preview to cooperate reliably as it should on all available web pages? Sincerely, Warren

Real Time preview is not always 100%. Its  a nice idea but in reality it can be pretty unreliable. I've used other real time broswer previews in other products and they all seem to suffer the same issues - hit and miss leading to disappointment and frustration as they dont always do what they say they do on the tin.

The old method of viewing in a real browser and hitting the refresh button is probably still the best workflow......you know what to expect so it not frustrating.

RTP requires some back and forth communication between Adobe and your browser. For me, it just doesn't work as advertised most of the time, so I don't use it. I prefer the old style Preview in Browser that is still available in the program, albeit a bit harder to get to. That way I still get the correct localhost/domain/pagename.html addresses from my local testing server.

You can either right click the file name in the Files window, or if the open documents are set as tabs, right click the named tab of the document, to choose Open in Browser.

You can still open any given DW-created file directly from the browser... I'm not sure why you would be creating duplicate test pages and uploading them to your server for testing, then modifying the original page, that's not a workflow I would ever attempt.