Better working display with Google Fonts, Design mode?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I get the feeling there are only two answers to this — "It can't be done" or someone wearily pointing me to the how-to. (I'm more often over in the ID forum giving just those answers.)

I use Google fonts for most of my websites, and in most, the Design view is adequate. But I have one site that uses Titillium Web, and the Design display is so poor it's hard to work effectively: the body text is all bolded, and things like bullets don't appear (so I just see a — bolded — inset paragraph).

All faces of Titillum are installed and work fine in other apps.

They work fine in Live mode, but I can't do writing/development of web content in that mode.

Is there a way to tell DW to use the full spectrum of fonts in Design mode?

Win11, DW 21.3

[BenPleysier]

Hi James and welcome to our dwindeling Community. Dreamweaver is old and tired. In fact it is in palleative care as we speak.

Design Mode originates from the Macromedia days and has never been updated. Needless to say that Design Mode is not up to scratch for modern technologies. Even Live Mode is not up to scratch.

So, using the paraphrase: "it can't be done"

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Interesting.

Problem more or less solved by sticking some unnecessary statements in the page-top styles, a wholly redundant font-weight:normal and a list-style:circle. Doesn't affect the final page and forces/lets DW show the right font weight and the list bullets. Good enough, given the replies here. And all problems were/are wholly in that editing mode; pages validate and display in browsers just fine. I thought I'd seen some process or workaround for loading font sets into the preview, though, to solve problems like this; guess not.

I'm curious about the other comments, though. As a code-based web designer since around 1997-98, I've tried and rapidly dumped almost every web design tool there is. I use DW almost entirely as a managed code editor, with benefits, and pay little attention to the various platform supports built into it (and then usually forgotten). I in no way rely on Design mode as an accurate preview, but as I tend to write long-form web material, I find it slightly better than writing in some other tool and then export/code-formatting it.

But if DW is dead and dead-end, then what are pros and daily web developers using? I can't think of another tool that's made it past generation one. Is everything platform development now, with all the limitations of lego development?

[Nancy OShea]

Dreamweaver is not the only drill in my toolbox.  I use it alongside various tools, depending on the task.

AMAZON E-PUB, KINDLE CREATE:  Free download for Windows or Mac.

https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Create/b?ie=UTF8&node=18292298011

CODE EDITORS:
-- Adobe Dreamweaver CC - https://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html
-- Codespaces (free, browser-based) - https://github.com/features/codespaces

-- Nova (Mac only, formerly called Coda) - https://nova.app/

-- PHP Storm (PHP code IDE) - https://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/

-- Pinegrow (visual website and WordPress Theme builder) - https://pinegrow.com/
-- Sublime Text - http://www.sublimetext.com/
-- Visual Studio Code (free code IDE) - https://code.visualstudio.com/

+ FREE Live Preview Extension - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.live-server
-- Wappler ~ Visual Web App Builder - https://wappler.io/

DESKTOP PUBLISHING:

-- Microsoft Word - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/word

-- Adobe Acrobat Pro - https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/complete-pdf-solution.html

S/FTP CLIENT:

-- FileZilla - https://filezilla-project.org/download.php

Hope that helps.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, yes, I use most of those tools. (Well, not Kindle Create.) I have never seen DW as a Swiss Army Knife, only as a page/site developer and fairly optimized code editor. My question was mostly about what other pros use for actual page layout and development, not all the supporting processes. (What with one thing and another, I've never found a process superior to a code editor on one side and a browser on the other, but DW brings more to that function than, say, Notepad++, especially in Design mode.)

I find it perpetually odd that what might be the simplest form of "publication" there is has stubbornly resisted — even rejected — the WYSI development processes that nearly everything else takes for granted. And done so for nearly thirty years despite the best efforts of the smartest people/companies in the game.

[osgood_]

If you require a visual experience then it's hard to replace Dreamweaver, Wappler editor offers that option as does the Pinegrow editor.

As for pro developers,  l think VS Code editor is considered the current most popular choice of editors, it's pretty good and it's free, which is probably why it's so popular.

There's also Sublime Text editor which seems to have faded into the background a little bit since the arrival of VS Code but l think it's still being actively developed and is a good editor for pro coders.

Try Web Storm editor or if youre a php developer Php Storm editor. They are commercial products, personally I haven't found any paid for code editor or free one which rivals them. No visual experience of course, their market position is pro coders.

I don't no what you do but if youre also a technical writer then bbedit may be of interest, although its Mac only.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Short answer: technical question answered/resolved. And I'm using pretty much the same tools as everyone else — optimized code editor plus browser evaluation (and VSstudio for other purposes, including the editor, of course; prefer the tools I already have for web work). If no one has yet built a truly visual web design tool, I'm not interested in any sideways changes to same-as stuff. But thanks for all the recommendations.

[BenPleysier]

@Nancy OShea has already quoted some of the editors that are available. Most real coders tend to use Visual Studio Code with a number of extensions.

I personally use Wappler because it save me having to hand code everything. This saves a lot of time.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

So, just a code editor with no attempt at page or visuals rendering.

No problem here; that's how I've done my major web development work since there was a web. I have a number of code editors that suit me and I've modified/extended over time.

I thought — was hoping — I might have overlooked something. But from HoTMetaL through GoLive, the visual development tool history is pretty much a wasteland. Sigh.

[BenPleysier]

VSCode does have an extension to view the site live in a browser.

Wappler has a modern Design View.

Have a look at one of my videos:

https://youtu.be/VYcNYWiOf5g?si=EElaAWxpbTv803cD

[Nancy OShea]

Design View is a relic from the old Macromedia days.  It's not savvy to modern CSS & JavaScripts.  What you see is NOT always what you get.

Live View is preferred for most things because it emulates a Chrome browser.  What does your page look like when previewed in an actual browser?   File > Open in Browser...

Are you working with valid code?  Window > Results > Validation...

Can you post a URL to the problem page online?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Just an ETA to my above, really — while Live view gives a near-perfect preview, with some editability, I tend to work on web pages as a content-focused writer/developer, and the block mode of Live (with the editing frame often block-ing something I'm trying to see) just doesn't work well for me. I'm sure it's much better for web developers who are more independent of the content.