Dreamweaver always subject to resource indigestion

[B i r n o u]

Hello Everyone,

not a month goes by without someone complaining about slow processes and jerky user interface activity, so today I'm back in charge.
the new version of Dreamweaver is totally unusable... at least as long as it is not in demo mode... i.e. working on C:/, one site at a time, teamwork reduced to a single collaborator, etc... etc....
and then this Adobe Dreamweaver Helper... what a greedy one... couldn't we reduce its activity somehow without loosing the real use of the helper ?
fortunately Sublime Text can help me at these times....

[pziecina]

Hi Birnou, doing nothing today, so thought I would look in on the forum.

I don't think Dw is meant for users who are building anything more than 1 site at a time, or more than 1 user working from the local drive. So anything more than those users should not be using Dw. Even modern client side code has fallen way behind what is possible, (or required in many cases), with only code support for those who are building small 'cheap' or 'demo/personal' sites.

Dw was built, (years ago) for such type of user, and over the years bits have been added for such users. Without a complete rewrite of the underlying Dw code it has reached its limit of possibilities. All the updates to Dw since CS6, have simply been add-ons to support the single user, (designer not developer). Slowing it down completely once more is asket of it.

Who is to blame for this, is irrelevant now. Simply because to get it working correctly for anything more is not going to happen, as the underlying code that ties everything together is too old and slow, and Adobe either is not interested, or does not 'see' Dw as more than it currently is.

[B i r n o u]

hello Paula,

cool to see you again on the forum... well, actually, since the new forum is in place, I'm not as assiduous as I used to be.
it's too much mess if we're registered in various forums...

we get tons of mail without filtering possibilities by forums, by subject or anything constructive... everything happens in the same funnel... results, I only catch a thread, at random, once in a while

So let's get back to our business....

I share your opinion on the user target and the context of use, however... following Dreamweaver's digestive slowness, I opened the preferences... I unchecked... without thinking too much
- activate the integrated 2-byte input
- activate code indicators
- enable descriptive bubble information
- Auto insertion of braces
- Auto insertion of quotation marks
- Enable Linting
then I relaunched Dreamweaver,
I opened the task manager, and stopped Dreamweaver Helper, (the one who is an atonome singleton) not the one included in Dreamweaver's internal tasks.
and since then...

Dreamweaver works without slowdown, on server, and with multiple users

[pziecina]

You have just confirmed what I thought, (the underlying Dw code is to old), by that I mean the code that ties it all together.

The disabled features you mentioned, are mainly from Brackets based code, which is much more modern than the code on which Dw is still based -

Dw's base code goes back to html2, in-line css, javascript v2 all of which is then tied together using c++ from the 90's, (Windows 95/98/xp, or whatever the Apple OS was at the time, just recompiled). That's why I think the performance has dropped off so dramatically over the years, as more and more has been asked of Dw, without the base Dw code keeping up.

Yes, it could be argued that as computers have gotten faster, (remember a fast computer at the time of xp's release was still only about 1ghz, and ram about 512Mb), so the performance of Dw's base code should have increased, the trouble is, as we both know, there comes a point when it starts to drop off, which I think was reached in the late 00's.

There is also the problem of Dw now using 2 (or more) very different code bases, (1 from Dw before 2017 version, 1 from the Brackets code editor, and others from the different 3rd party features). All of which will have been incorporated using the 'quick and dirty' coding methods that have become very prevalent in programming over the years, (or to rephrase the methology, 'get it working, and that is good enough').

[B i r n o u]

basically you're right, but Dreamweaver (at the IDE level) was rewritten from scratch when Drumbeat was integrated (December 2000+, DW 4 and after), and we were at the time at HTML 4

the purely code editor part, is based on Nick Bradburry's Homesite (fabulous application), with TopStyle (also developped by Nick), to complete and compose the CSS editor.

just before Macromedia bought it, Homesite had to be at its version 4 or 5... I don't know exactly because being a beta tester at that time, we confused what was under test, and what was in public, but already present and integrated in DW, which besides was proposed in two versions Dreamweaver 4 and Ultra Dev 4, before the two merged (publicly) and therefore proposes the rewritten version from a white and blank page... so it wasn't at the HTML2 age 😉

[pziecina]

html4 was not a standard until late 1999, so given the development cycles of Dw/homepage/etc at the time it is unlikely that Dw used it, although I do agree that Dw2004 release that incorporated css does give the impression to the user of being a much more modern version than previous ones, (impressions can be deceptive), mainly because css usage was incorporated for the end user.

If you read the expanding Dw documentation for ultra dev, then compare it to CS6, (edit - sorry that should read CS5) there is almost no difference, (even reading the actual code, shows no difference, only new features written in html, in-line css and js v2).

[B i r n o u]

unless I don't understand what you're saying... which is certainly the case... I was talking to you about DW4 (Macromedia) and not DW2004 (Adobe)

then the HTML/JS code editor was not the one of DW but the one of Homesite, and the same for the CSS editor which was the one from ToStyle... both wasn't from DW (and that's why Macromedia acquire Allaire)

then you seem to confuse the DW 5 version with DW CS5... the two are ten years apart and have nothing to discuss. however, it is true that the DW5 does not exist and corresponds precisely to the rewriting of DW from scratch (bringing together Ultra Dev (fomerly Drumbeat) and DW) as I said earlier

Anyway, the point therefore that I was trying to demonstrate is that contrary to what you said in your first comment, DW was not written at the time of HTML2, but was entirely rewritten during HTML4... and for Javascript I hesitate between 1.4 and 1.5...

[pziecina]

You missunderstand Birnou. The comparison between Dw Ultra Dev and Dw CS5 was for the underlying code used, as both use html2, inline css (version 2) and js v2. It has nothing to do with when or what is included, which if you have Ultra Dev installed you can check for yourself. All that a user must do, is go to the Dw instalation, (including what is installed in the 'hidden' user folder) and open the files to see what is used.

The above does not apply to the Brackets editor integration, 2017 and later) as this does use html4, css and js v4.

As for Dw MX (2004), I included that simply to point out that the fact css was included for users to build stylesheets, that should not be confused with the code Dw itself uses. 

[B i r n o u]

In all honesty Paula, I must admit that your words are a dish of spaghetti for me, and I do not understand what you are saying, or what you want to convey as a message, or what the purpose of such a discussion would be...

Sorry....

[osgood_]

I don't know why anyone complains about DW any longer.  It's dead in the water, long ago, no serious developer uses it now because of its failure to keep pace with current technology/trends. It wont improve either. Its currently loosing users like rats fleeing a shinking ship to other more advanced editors. Adobe know it - they arent exactly going to invest wasted finances into a dead bit of software.

Panic is currently re-writing Coda from the ground up, it's taking a long time, but they know to keep adding bits onto an old, passed its sell by date programme is not going to work in the long term, they have seen a rapid leakage of users over the past 4/5 years.

Thats the way it is. Many, many web-develoment programs have died over the years as the result of the software developer/s unable to keep pace. Making the current program 'stable' is not worth the effort, given the sales drop off and stiff competition.

Move on, find someting that is suitable. If I don't like one web-editor I just pop another one open. Its only a web editor and if you can code you arent reliant on any one particular programme, for anything. Its all good!

[pziecina]

Osgood wrote -
Panic is currently re-writing Coda from the ground up, it's taking a long time, but they know to keep adding bits onto an old, passed its sell by date programme is not going to work in the long term, they have seen a rapid leakage of users over the past 4/5 years.

That's what I'm trying to point out Os.

Dw has used the same ageing (or old outdated) code for years. Mainly html, inline css, javascript with a bit of c++ thrown in for things like OS file managment, save, etc. Then over the years they have added, removed or changed so many features, (without fully removing what has been removed) that everything has slowed down to the point of 'no return'.

The comparison would be - getting IE5 to work with modern, (todays) html, css and js. Which would require the developer to use 'helper' js to implement the missing features. This would mean the browser, (IE5) would run slower and slower. Which is what has happened to Dw.

Many users do not realise that Dw itself, is little more than a browser based application.

[osgood_]

I understand what you are saying.

These programs take an immense amount of work, time and effort to keep up-to-date given they need to be cross platform compatible and take into consideration constantly changing OSs.

Over time they get filled with hack after hack to keep them going, a bit like a 6 year old website, eventually you end up with a pile of less than streamlined junk on life support.

Smaller software developers eventually  give up or open source the project. In the case of Adobe it probably should have been looking at a next generation editor rather than extending DWs life cycle. The web is not dtp or image manipulation, that hardly changes over the years, whereas web development is a rapidly moving environment which  requires software developers to move more swiftly and more frequently.

Anyway its good to see you are still around. You havent missed much. Since the forum upgrade posts have been even less frequent than before and we seem to have lost a few more contributors that genuinely had anything interesting to discuss or say.

[B i r n o u]

moved on appropriate feedback

[B i r n o u]

doing what I said in my second comment , I mean

following Dreamweaver's digestive slowness, I opened the preferences... I unchecked... without thinking too much
- activate the integrated 2-byte input
- activate code indicators
- enable descriptive bubble information
- Auto insertion of braces
- Auto insertion of quotation marks
- Enable Linting
then I relaunched Dreamweaver,

ah, and I forgot to mention, that there is just code view and some docs on display view... no live view used at all
I opened the task manager, and stopped Dreamweaver Helper, (the one who is an atonome singleton) not the one included in Dreamweaver's internal tasks.

helped a lot... there are 10 hours of intensive work using Dreamweaver in the workflow... many scripts run by node, code edited in Sublime text... and Dreamweaver handling GIT, and Web Sites managment... worked like a charm... no slowness... no freeze... back in the 60' but using a very modern interface...  so does this mean, that prefs setting should be set as this by default ????