Dealing with HTML font attributes in CC2017....

[webguydave]

So...after downloading CC 2017 ( having to finally ditch an old PowerPC Mac running and equally old copy of Dreamweaver) I find that there seems to be no way to select text attributes - family, color, etc - in the property inspector....no other choice than manually coding in font information, or converting an old page to use style sheets.

Am I missing something here? Is this a move to boot HTML to the curb?? I really don't have time to update old pages at the moment to CSS....

Dave

[Nancy OShea]

CSS is the web standard for styling content. It's nothing new.  It's been on the W3C specs since the late 90's.   HTML is for content only. I don't call that throwing HTML to the curb because it was never intended to be used for styles. 

Your Properties panel has 2 buttons, one for HTML and one for CSS.  If you can't see your way clear to use a global external stylesheet, you're kind of stuck with manual coding and inline styles.  IMO, that's counterproducttive for anything but email newsletters. 

Nancy

[webguydave]

" because it was never intended to be used for styles. "

With all due respect, font attributes _were_ styled in HTML before and after the introduction of CSS...which, although introduced in the '90's, took quite some time to be accepted.

And Dreamweaver fully supported both methods for quite some time, at least until Adobe bought it...

So yes, 'kicked to the curb'...

And I'm not at all adverse to CSS but when it doesn't pay to convert...

(:<))

Dave

[John Waller]

webguydave  wrote

" because it was never intended to be used for styles. "

With all due respect, font attributes _were_ styled in HTML before and after the introduction of CSS

True, but that ignores the history of HTML and CSS and where the web is at now.

HTML was originally and always intended for document structure and nothing else.

HTML was coerced into formatting web pages back in the 90s because nothing else existed. The web became wildly popular before CSS came along so web editing software had no choice but to enable HTML formatting. We all knew it was an interim solution until something better and more permanent came along.

CSS was created to fill the gap of a formatting tool for web pages. By then millions of web pages had HTML formatting. It was going to take a decade to change that. So, in the early 2000s the "separate content (HTML) from presentation (CSS)" movement was born to encourage web content editors (people) to use CSS. Web editors (software), Dreamweaver included, made this transition very slowly.

Over 10+ years, HTML formatting incrementally disappeared from Dreamweaver and CSS formatting tools were prominently placed in the UI.

There is no "kicking to the curb" of HTML. It is still the backbone of today's web but it's doing its originally intended job. We've had more than a decade of slowly converting web pages to CSS.

Dreamweaver has completed a 10 year+ transition to CSS formatting. Sounds like you've leapfrogged a decade of DW development to now be using CC 2017. DW will continue to evolve so expect more change.

[webguydave]

Well, ok John, perhaps I overstated the issue a bit...

Admittedly I'm more than a little grumpy tonite about having to update _old_ site pages on a short deadline, and finding that the new tool has left out familiar ( and useful) features.

That they need to be redesigned and updated to use style sheets isn't an issue; just why not leave the original code for working html in place in the new tool?

And you're right; I'm coming back to coding and design after _several_ years of relative inactivity!  I rolled back tonite.to CS6, only to find that the html  properties I'm looking for had been designed out by that release.

Thanks!

Dave

[John Waller · Accepted solution]

webguydave  wrote

just why not leave the original code for working html in place in the new tool?

That's what happened for a few releases but the UI became increasingly cluttered. So they simplified it slowly as HTML formatting died out.

Plus, the longer the old tools stayed there, the longer people resisted change and didn't bother updating old pages. Eventually CSS was easier to use in the DW UI so people bit the bullet and updated.

No win position for Adobe really. Sell a modern, CSS-focussed web editor but get criticized by the web community in each release for not getting rid of outdated HTML tools. There was lots of angst and grumpy posts ("we want the old tools"/"we want the new tools") in the forums back in those days.