How do I make table cell borders visible in design view, DW CC2021?

[carol mcgann]

I have moved to DW CC from CS6. In design view in CS6, table cells showed dashed borders, so it was clear where they were. While I didn't want actual borders in the finished product, the dashed view was very helpful for things like seeing cells to merge them, and where to put the cursor to add data. In DW CC, my tables do not delineate cells in any visible way, the conent is just "floating in space". Is there a way to get the cell borders to show without putting actual visible borders on them?

[Nancy OShea]

Are you in Live view or Design view?

Use Ctrl + Shift + F11 to toggle views.

For best results, give your table a border of 1 while editing.

<table width="80%" border="1"> 

Change border value to 0 when you're done.

Also turn on Visual Aids from your View Menu (see screenshot.)

[carol mcgann]

Unfortunately, "table borders" in design view options has been checked all along, and apparently doesn't do what I need. I am trying to get this to happen wtthout using code because my husband does most of the making of pages, and I don't want him anywhere near code if the page is ever to work again... So adding a temporary border won't do it, but could work well for others.

I have discovered that if you hold the control key and hover over cells, they get red borders, and you can select one or more and merge them, for example, or at least see where they are, and I think that may be enough if there isn't another solution.

[Nancy OShea]

These days, we use CSS Flexbox layouts, not tables.  Mainly because tables are not responsive on ALL devices.  If you must use tables, it should be minimal and only for tabular data (charts & spreadsheets).

[carol mcgann]

I'm afraid tabular data (race results: e.g., places 1-173, name, team, time, etc) is what I am using tables for; I haven't used tables for layout since PageMill. And, I have about 6000 pages on my site with such tables, and I'm not excited about changing them all. Those tables already in place are minimally formatted, and work pretty well on all the responsive pages and devices I've checked.

[Nancy OShea]

I have about 6000 pages on my site...

By @carol mcgann

=========

6,000 STATIC html pages or database driven?

With a database driven site, the manner in which data is displayed is specified by SQL queries and auto populated to the page by your server.  Therefor manual manipulation of tables and cells is totally unnecessary.

Content is entered into the database via a backend CMS that creates, reads, updates & deletes data (aka CRUD app) in the online database.  And best of all, it's "stupid user proof" because data entry is performed on the live site with zero access to your page's underlying code.

Static sites are OK for 10-20 page websites.  But when your site exceeds 20 pages, it's time for a database.

[carol mcgann]

I don't think I quite understand the question, but the tables we have are historical race results. They will not ever change. When a new race happens, we make a new table and enter the new data. So data manipulation is needed at the time of entry (which is when I would want to see the cell borders, which is what started this question). My bringing up the number was just to say that my table usage isn't/can't be minimal, and any site-wide change in data handling was just not going to happen.

[Nancy OShea]

I'll take that as a NO, you don't have a database-driven site.  So you're manually managing data within Dreamweaver which is a lot like dancing with a 10,000 lb gorilla.  😥 

Dreamweaver can only display table borders when borders are present:  either a value in the HTML  border attribute or a sitewide CSS style like this:

th, td {
  border-bottom: 1px solid #DDD;
}

https://www.w3schools.com/css/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_table_border_divider

Another option would be a striped-table with background shading on alternate rows like this:

tr:nth-child(even) {

background-color: #AEAEAE;

}

https://www.w3schools.com/css/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_table_striped

When you switch to a dabase-driven solution, you'll no longer be burdened by these irksome problems because your data (race results) will be managed outside Dreamweaver.

Good luck and happy holidays!