Is there any way to display the Design View in fluid grid pages?

[Ron Kurtus]

After upgrading to the newest version of DW CC 2014, I noticed that the Design View is disabled in Fluid Grid pages. You can only use the Live View to edit those pages. The Design/Live button displays on non-fluid pages.

I'm wondering if there is a work-around to allow Design View editing on fluid pages. It is a major hassle to try to edit some things in the Live View. It would nice to have a choice.

[bradm44645584]

I have never had a problem rendering. Now i know everyone's experience and method to their madness is different.  But if one does not like design view.. don't use it.

[Nancy OShea]

But if one does not like design view.. don't use it.

And I don't .  DW's Design View is a relic and it needs to be replaced with something better. 

[bradm44645584]

Design view is one of those thing has been a major features of DW since its inception. New functions have been added over time which almost all can be utilized through design view.  It is a common as the start button in windows.

So you don't use design view, but clearly advocate its removal. How can you advocate for something to be removed which you don't use in the first place? And please, I am looking for more then just calling it a 'relic'

[Nancy OShea]

So you don't use design view, but clearly advocate its removal. How can you advocate for something to be removed which you don't use in the first place?

I would like to use Design View more but it doesn't work right.  No point in using something that's broken.  That's why it needs to be replaced with something better.  1) that renders CSS correctly.  2) that allows one to edit pages quickly and accurately.  At the moment, Design View cannot do the job.

Nancy O.

[Mark.Kirkeby]

Nancy,

You are a little out of place in this topic because you are not effected by this update.

We are all aware that new web technologies have come along , and are not supported by Design View , and in this case  it is a antiquated application that has no use for you..

But there are those of us that are SEVERELY impacted by this latest update, coming in and saying "DW's Design View is a relic and it needs to be replaced with something better."

Is negative feedback, if you have nothing to add , them please dont, this thread is about people who have been impacted byu this updated , and wish to see appropriate changes implemented.

Does this mean the end of Design view, I am down with that if the functionality of my design workflow has the capabilities that are no longer available without design view, so please stop with

the negative trolling- it is irrelevant what you think.

Nancy O. I looked at your website , and the tools, templates, information and such that you host, Nice job, and nice collection, I do appreciate well rounded designers that are willing to share, Thank you for that....

[bradm44645584]

Exactly..  she takes such a strong stance against something she doesn't use. She is trolling

[Nancy OShea]

madwebllc wrote:

She is trolling

I'm not trolling.  Far from it.  I have advocated the need for a better Design View for ages. I don't see how that can be construed as anything but constructive criticism of  a product I use and would like to continue using well into the future.   Live View in its present state is not filling the void either.  Like I've said over and over again, it's clumsy and slow.  But I accept that if Live View were sufficiently improved to work well at rendering and editing without causing workflow and latency issues, it would be a win, win for everyone here.

Nancy O.

[bradm44645584]

But you don't use the tool by your own admission. You pan the use of design view despite the overwhelming number of people who use it with their workflows. You rip design view despite people stating very clearly that their work has been seriously hampered by this recent update.   If you actually used it I may take your input more seriously, but all you are doing is giving justification to Adobe for this boneheaded update.  A update and removal that is bad enough that people who center their business around this application (some over a decade) are actually entertaining the idea of dumping DW.

So I am calling it for what it is... trolling. Because your posts have done nothing to contribute to resolving the problem

[Joshbiz]

I entirely agree. As I said very early on in this thread, Design View is a key tool that has speeded up my ability to update HTML files for over 10 years. Yes, it's not perfect. It doesn't render 100% correctly and it's not great for page design and construction (I always work in Code View for this). But who wants to dig through tonnes of code just to find a word or image which needs updating when Design View makes this visually so much quicker and easier?

And those of you who don't use Design View, fair enough. But please leave the conversation. It doesn't affect you. Everyone will find different components of DW useful in their workflow. But please don't call for it's removal just because you don't use it. That's definitely heading for 'trolling territory'. I think that's the point being made here. I'm sure there's lots in DW I don't use but others do...

Live View would be perfect if it rendered as well as it does AND allowed the same quick & easy editing that Design View offers. But it's far off that at the moment.

Right now, losing Design View without a working alternative would be a disaster for me.

[Nancy OShea]

madwebllc wrote:

I have never had a problem rendering.

Copy & paste the code from this link into DW.  What do you see in Design View?

Broken In Design View

Just so you understand, there is nothing complex or tricked up about this code. The code is valid HTML5 and CSS3. Additionally, this layout performs well in all modern browsers.  Yet DView makes a complete mess of the rendering & it's unacceptable. So do you now see why I'm not fond of Design View?  The only way I can work this is in Code View or if I disable CSS styles which defeats the whole point of using Design View.

Nancy O.

[Mark.Kirkeby]

Nancy,

I still understand your point, trust me I have pages that design view scatters all over the place, but I as the creator know what elements that I am working with , and  for some of my more complex menus and such, I just deal with the crappy output of design view,

that hampers my workflow very little, trying to make the same edits in live view is INPOSSIBLE which is the point that I reiterate over and over and over. I have agreed with you prior, Design view does not meet the standards of todays web standard

I UNDERSTAND... but the current version of  Live view has bastardized the work space to a point as to make it entirely unsuitable to use THAT is the point. When I am working on a site , I switch between live view and design view to make sure that my output is as expected, but often because Live view in past editions did not get it right either I very often open a site in browser preview to ensure that my code is doing what I want it to do.

1. Design View broken

2. Design view works better than Live view

3. Live view must be entirely re-written to work

4. Design view is better than nothing at all

We have been going back and forth on the same points all day

As I see it you agree with me , and I agree with you

My daily workflow is effected-yours is not

I am angry and frustrated-you are not

I want it fixed-you use an old version and dont care, you want a new live view

I want to work smoothly and my monthly fee to have value, I do not want to feel like -Remember Vista...... go ahead and tell me you liked it~~

[bradm44645584]

You just don't get it do you? Design view is part of the DW application that in the end puts out the product for which our clients pay us to produce. You seem to think we would put out some garbage to our clients.

The fact you have to post some HTML lesson is evidence you don't get this point, or you are just that arrogant. Doesn't matter as any obvious thing I point out you will deny profusely. I do thank you for working AGAINST the group here to get a function back WHICH YOU DON'T EVEN USE.

Either way I will no longer feed your trolling, and I encourage everyone in this thread to not respond to your posts either. Lets remained focused on getting Adobe to listen to its customer base, so we can get back to serving ours.

[worker69]

Brilliant!

Nancy O is not helping to solve the problem, she is in fact part of the problem and obviously shares a brain with Adobe Management.

I join madweblc in encouraging everyone to state your disappointment at the monstrosity that Adobe has foisted on us and totally ignore the Adobe sycophant!

V

[Nancy OShea]

madwebllc wrote:

You just don't get it do you?

I think I do get it.  Perhaps it's you who are arrogantly dismissing all other points of view here...

You seem to think we would put out some garbage to our clients.

I have no idea what that means.  I have never disrespected you or your work or how you perform your job. Hell, I don't even know you.  What you do is strictly between you and your clients.

The fact you have to post some HTML lesson is evidence you don't get this point, or you are just that arrogant.

The example I posted above is from an actual demo I wrote & published on my site. Yesterday, I pulled out that handy example to illustrate just how broken Design View is for the doubting Thomas's like you who really don't get it. 

For those who didn't take time to examine the code, I'll quickly recap with screenshots.

Design View (impossible to work with)

DW Live View (more accurate rendering but not good for editing).

PineGrow Web Designer (priced at $49, this software excels at fast accurate rendering and editing with a scalable interface for people on Hi-res displays.  Something else which DW has neglected to provide.)

If this low-priced software can do it right, why can't Adobe? 

Either way I will no longer feed your trolling, and I encourage everyone in this thread to not respond to your posts either.

Good.  Nothing would please me more  .

Lets remained focused on getting Adobe to listen to its customer base, so we can get back to serving ours.

Fine. And don't forget I AM impacted by these deficits and every bit as much a part of Adobe's user base as you.  No different, really, just on opposite sides of the exact same coin.  I feel as strongly as you do that Adobe needs to fix DW or risk losing customers from BOTH sides of that coin.

Nancy O.

[rjerz]

Nancy, I did what you said and confirmed that you (and people) can design webpages that do not display well in Design View.  However, in trying to edit your example in Live View leads to the same problems, it cannot be easily edited and exhibits many of the same problems that people have mentioned in this discussion.  So my guess is that one cannot easily create webpages such as yours in Dreamweaver right now (maybe you can tell us what you actually used, maybe coded by hand???).

My fluid design webpages (that I created with Dreamweaver's templates) can be easily edited in Design View and not easily edited in Live View.  This is the point that I think we are all making.  Give us back something that works!  Sure, someday, maybe Live View will replace Design View.  But there was no need for Adobe to remove this functionality at this point in time.  (Actually, with the fix mentioned above, I can work just fine in Design View, recognizing that some folks found other problems with this fix.)

[Nancy OShea]

rickjerz wrote:

So my guess is that one cannot easily create webpages such as yours in Dreamweaver right now (maybe you can tell us what you actually used, maybe coded by hand???).

That's custom coded in DW.  I work in code view mainly out of necessity.  Given a choice, I'd like to use DView or LView or whatever actually works.  But from where I sit, DView is a failure at CSS rendering. And LView is failing at performance and other issues.

What irritates me most is the occasional client who insists on being able to edit their site in Design View.  Talk about a productivity killer!  I'm wasting additional development time on crazy workarounds specifically to placate Design View's many failures. I shouldn't have to do that!  Nobody should.  To that extent, I've pretty much reached the end of my rope.  I'm telling clients to use a different editor or let me build them a CMS. 

My fluid design webpages (that I created with Dreamweaver's templates) can be easily edited in Design View and not easily edited in Live View.  This is the point that I think we are all making. 

I totally get that.  That's my point too.  What Adobe has done is NOT consistent or adequately catering to its user base.  You want DView returned because, even though it fails at many things,  it's still better than nothing.  But that criteria is inherently flawed.  I want to see Adobe put forth something that actually WORKS for everyone.   I don't really care what they call the darned thing -- DView, LView or something New View.  Just so long as it works for every level of user.

Nancy O. 

[GA_]

I disagree. Everyone's RELEVANT point of view is valuable. If you're off topic, don't post. I reiterate to ANYONE who is not interested in the Responsive Layout Design View problems created by 2014.1, find subjects that ARE relevant to you and post there. Just because you can type here doesn't mean you have to...

[Nancy OShea]

I disagree.

That's your prerogative.

Everyone's RELEVANT point of view is valuable.

If by RELEVANT you mean an opinion shared by you, then you do not know the meaning of the word. My posts have not been off topic.  They have been very much ON TOPIC of "Design View." 

End of story.

Nancy O.

[GA_]

Nancy O. wrote:

I disagree.

That's your prerogative.

Everyone's RELEVANT point of view is valuable.

If by RELEVANT you mean an opinion shared by you, then you do not know the meaning of the word. My posts have not been off topic.  They have been very much ON TOPIC of "Design View."

End of story.

Nancy O.

No, Adobe-Apologist, by RELEVANT I mean relevant to the topic. I haven't expressed opinions as such, merely pointed out faults, problems, facts and offered encouragement to those doing the same, including you on those rare occasions when you're discussing Fluid Design View and 2014.1, which you HAVE NOT DOWNLOADED by your own admission. It seems you are hell bent on spoiling this thread for those of us concerned with the issue so why not entertain us further with your digressions... as if anyone could stop you. I won't bother trying again. Keep muddying the waters, spoiling the subject, confusing the issue with semantics and promoting your Adobe agenda. I have a life to get back to...

[Nancy OShea]

No, Adobe-Apologist, by RELEVANT I mean relevant to the topic. I haven't expressed opinions as such...

@GA_,

Your very first sentence is a contradiction.  If what you're doing right now isn't "muddying waters," I don't know what is.  It's not in keeping with Community Guidelines and does nothing to further this discussion about Design View.

...2014.1, which you HAVE NOT DOWNLOADED

Don't make unfounded assumptions, pal.  As I have said before, I choose to use CS6 on my main work box.  I have several computers BTW.  When you have been working in this field for as long as I have, you TEST first & then make informed decisions about the tools that work best for your particular workflow, projects, etc...  Anything less is irresponsible.

This forum is all about offering support, opinions & solutions in a respectful manner.   I have never been disrespectful to you.  You have not extended me the same courtesy.  I will close by saying I stand by my earlier recommendation to step down to a previous version of DW until Adobe rolls out another update.  It may take quite some time...

Goodbye,

Nancy O.

[GA_]

Muddy muddy muddy muddy.... take up space .... spoil the issue... muddy muddy

[Web Magi]

I agree that Design View is useless for designing anything other than table-based layouts. It should be renamed to something like Edit, or Text View, and remain an active component of Dw until at such time there is a qualified replacement that improves productivity not only for designers, but for those of us who design, develop, and then maintain client sites. Live View, with its sluggish HUD approach to editing HTML, is not a qualified replacement.

I think it's great that the Dw team wants the app to have an actual design surface. I want that too. But I also need speed when producing and updating large sites. Having a design surface to work with when I'm actually in design mode is good. Being forced to work within that same design surface during production and weekly updates is bad. Design View is not entirely useless in this regard, especially for working with text and images, even in the latest release. See screenshot:

I'm in the process of converting an existing site to RWD. Due in large part to the recent improvements over the last few months, I chose to build the design from scratch in Edge Reflow, and then export it out for Dw. Fluid Grid Layout was a fairly rigid system even before the removal of Design View. I couldn't imagine trying to design, build, and then maintain a site with it now.

Speaking of design surfaces, I have a question: considering Adobe owns Edge Animate, Reflow, Muse, and Dreamweaver, why do they all have completely different approaches to a design surface? Muse uses AIR, Animate and Reflow use a WebKit-based solution, and Dreamweaver uses Chromium Embedded Framework, which also incorporates Webkit, I think. Of all of these technologies, I find Reflow's implementation to be the most promising for web design and development. It's fast, intuitive, and best of all, no Heads Up Displays constantly covering up my design surface. If Dreamweaver's design surface does not move away from HUDs and into an innovative Property Inspector solution like Animate, Reflow, Macaw, Webflow, and others, I'm not sure anything else you do moving forward will matter.

[Nancy OShea]

+1 Good points all, Web Magi.

...why do they all have completely different approaches to a design surface? Muse uses AIR, Animate and Reflow use a WebKit-based solution, and Dreamweaver uses Chromium...

I often wondered about that myself.

Nancy O.

[RR456]

With all due respect, your observation as to upgrading, in this particular instance, I would humbly wish to review.

I needed to purchase an HTML editor to upgrade our company site last April.  DW, from the research, appeared the best and I recognized the Adobe name.  I wanted the latest DW version as a standalone product but was told the only manner in which you could purchase the latest version was in the form of a CC subscription.  Moreover, I was told, by Adobe, that that arrangement was the best for me since I would always have available the latest updated version.

My point is; Adobe presented DW CC in a sales fashion that, as a subscriber, the upgrade functionality was a value-added product component.

One could argue, the DW CC product, and the other CC products, is such that I have an ongoing business transaction with Adobe (i.e. they take $50 out of my pocket every month). Thus, there is arguably a good faith obligation on the part of both parties to said transaction.

Rolling a live grenade through my company's front door in the form of 2014.1 in that I suffer, and have noted in this thread, tremendous wait or load time in the simple task of opening and/or creating from a Save As command an HTML5 document. I have done rather precise calculations, in this thread's Response# 71, as to the wait-time factor that 2014.1 now presents and the projected dollar costs therein.

Yes, upgrades are optional.  However, when the product is sold in part as to not only the ease of upgrade for the consumer; but moreover, the tremendous benefits this arrangement has, and said is noted in their marketing material, as such; the seller should be cognitive of the arrangement to which they have entered.  At least for me, I got sold on the DW CC product and now waiting on two things.  For Adobe to fix this mess and waiting for my document to load.

[rjerz]

Hi folks, I am not a web designer, I am a professor who uses DW for course content.  However, about a year or so ago, I thought that all of this "responsive" design business was rather interesting.  I read up on it quite a bit, and thought that it would be a lot of work to convert my webpages to being "responsive."  I did talk to web designers who seemed to also think that it would be a lot of work.  Then, I decided to explore DW's fluid grid templates.  Wow, in really no time, I was able to create "responsive" webpages.  In about a week, I had converted my who website (maybe 100-200 webpages) over to being responsive.  This was the kind of productivity that I had expected from Adobe and Dreamweaver.  My school is still struggling (they don't use Dreamweaver).  I am the only faculty at my university with my course webpages being "responsive", and easily viewable on tablets and mobile phones.  Wow!

So this is why it really seems odd to me for Adobe to not still fully support fluid grid designs!  It really makes no sense at all.  It doesn't make sense to use other products to help DW along.

Many years ago, I was using Frontpage.  Then, as you know, one day MS stopped supporting Frontpage and decided to move ahead with some weird product.  This was when I decided to leave MS and go with Adobe Dreamweaver.  Why not use the best?  So I hope that I don't have to drop Adobe for some weird directions that Adobe's programmers want to take.  Maybe Adobe wants us to become dissatisfied with DW, and to change to Muse?