OT: Bindings panel, Databases, and Server behaviors in Dreamweaver CC

[Preran]

Hi all,

There was a query on the Dreamweaver Facebook page about using server behaviors in Dreamweaver going forward. The product team replied to the post, and I am posting it on this forum for the benefit of users not on our Facebook page.

In Dreamweaver cc release server behaviors will be available as an extension. Once you install the extension server behaviors feature will be enabled and extensions dependent on it will work as before. In the CC release, you can find the extension at the location

* Vista/Windows 7: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CC\Configuration\DisabledFeatures
* Mac OS X: /Applications/Adobe Dreamweaver CC/Configuration/DisabledFeatures

Additional documentation is available at

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/dreamweaver-cc-server-extensions.html

Also, check out this video created by Silas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB2vmNfcq7A

The Dreamweaver team has posted their view about the latest changes in Dreamweaver in their blog post  http://blogs.adobe.com/dreamweaver/2013/06/a-look-at-the-modernized-dreamweaver-cc.html

Thanks,

Preran

[Preran]

Have made changes to my post based on inputs from the product team. Many users were getting confused with the previous location.

Thanks,

Preran

[imwebby]

Adobe not everyone in world just skins over wordpress. we rely on DW because we can develope any php / asp page our clients need. If you discontinue the server behviors than dw is simpy an html editor for those who don't know how to write html without help.  Does the adobe team think "modernizing" means web developers will only use wordpress or joomla?

If so they need to adjust their thinking. Maybe newcomers to the development world will be ok with this but many of us work on larger sites with advanced features to PAY OUR BILLS. I cant tell you how many websites I have won because all of the competitors were only offering worppress sites that did  not do what the client wanted.

If DW is going to drop server behaviors forever I'm not sure why I'll need to use adobe any more. I have been a customer of adobe's since photoshop 2 (thats right before layers or drop shadows when it too 30 minutes to save a large file).

If you are looking to drive away a group of experienced innovators and long-time customer from your product than just keep on removing the things that we use the program for in the first place.

DMXzone is great, but server bahaviors should remain as part of DW's core functionality - that was made it great when MACROMEDIA created it.

- hoping for some better desicion making from Adobe

[IronADDT]

My opinion is that Adobe want move "DW designers" to Business Catalyst... all the old InterAKT team now work there...

The problem is that Business Catalyst is an wrong business solution and I think that Adobe will close it very soon.

DMXzone is a "Walmart" of extensions... they create extensions about interest of the period/moment but after some month not more update them (bootstrap extension is a great example to undestrand the work way of DMXzone... not more update it from several months).

Very significant the announce about Cartweaver to move from Dreamweaver to Brackets tool:

https://www.facebook.com/Cartweaver/posts/10151749950793439

[Lawrence_Cramer]

Just wanted to clarify here..Cartweaver is not moving FROM Dreamweaver to Brackets.  Cartweaver supports Dreamweaver CS3 through Dreamweaver CC and will continue to do so.  The "Significant move" is, Cartweaver 4 works just as well in a text editing environment such as Brackets, Eclipse, NotePad ++ or what have you as it does in Dreamweaver, so it is not dependent on Dreamweaver.  Both the source code and the DW extensions are included so you can work in the tool you prefer.

We see a huge shift coming in the way Developers / Designers work, with Client Side and Server side development becoming more specialized, as well as the move to more CMS systems and Cartweaver 4 is set to keep up with this trend by being more flexible.

Hope this clears up any confusion. If you have any questions on this, feel free to let me know.

Thanks

Lawrence Cramer - *Adobe Community Professional*

http://www.Cartweaver.com

PHP & ColdFusion Shopping Cart for Adobe Dreamweaver

Stay updated:

http://www.facebook.com/cartweaver

http://www.twitter.com/cartweaver

[nkhm]

Wow. I think many people will be glad to read this post.  But I'm afraid that communication is no longer a strongpoint from Adobe - the confusion of this upgrade, people trying to update their software and being told "you have the latest version" - this is a PR and communications disaster for Adobe, at least the main functionality of Dreamweaver for most people can now be restored.

[johngordon12]

Thanks for this - I had thought this was still in beta testing.

If I open an existing page that has any recordsets, they don't appear in the Bindings panel though.

[scot_baston]

John,

I've added the database, bindings and server behaviours as above and my recordsets are appearing

I don't know enough to help, but thought I'd at least say that it works for me

Scot

[raynestorm]

I have installed the extension, but do not see it in the Windows menu. How do you open the panel?

[njn007]

Thank you Preran for sharing this information. My sincere hope is to spread this knowledge to many of my fellow developers who rely on access to these features. With the exception of Dreamweaver's feature changes, I am very pleased with the release of CC.

[LocoATL]

Regardless... I have supported Adobe for a long time. I have purchased nearly all products. I have signed up for Creative Cloud... but I hate the fact that they don't clearly tell you what is being REMOVED from the program. They tout the few new things that we all thought we were getting in addition to what we already had only to find that's not the case.

I get it, there may be people that just do design and hand it to a developer for the heavy lifting of application code, but so many designs today require integrating the actual design with the data at that time. Now, that's not a feature any more of DW.

[Preran]

Hi all,

Silas from the product team has created a video on this solution. For new users that come across this thread, have a look

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB2vmNfcq7A

Thanks ,

Preran

[nkhm]

The video is great - if very long winded.  This doesn't show us how to get all the wizards back - insert/update/delete show region if, repeat region, pagination.

Are Adobe really that dense, do you have NO IDEA how much designers relied on these?

[mubrasmi]

This would be helpful if the Extension Manager CC would actually work. I can't get past a "Failed to initialize Extension Manager" error when I try to open Extension Manager CC. But the real question is, Why would Adobe bury these panels? Are these panel tools in Dreamweaver one step from being removed completely? Adobe just killed Encore and Fireworks... what's next? What is Adobe thinking? I'm I the only one that used the Server Behavoirs panel several times daily?

[bcdclaude]

Why the database connections, bindings and server behaviors options are now deprecated ? It was one of the best utility in dreamweaver. If I have to code all my MySQL stuf, I prefer to do that in others apps (eg: FLUX made a real good work). I'd rather hoped adobe to make DW more efficient whith PHP/MySQL, PHP classes and so on.

Today, we loose important functionalities, replaced by CSS gadgets whereas we have a powerful tool for CSS (I mean Edge reflow), definitely more effective for this work.

It' a long time I supported Adobe, I have purchased a lot of products for a very important budget. I don't think evolution means to loose important features !!!

Please ! Change your way of thinking very quickly !

Thanks

cb

[mubrasmi]

I totally agree. Without these features in Dreamweaver it is relatively useless to me. I have been buying Adobe and Macromedia products for many, many years. With Fireworks and Encore scrapped and the most useful features in DW deprecated, CS6 may be where I part with Adobe.  If/when these features are completely removed in DW I will have no choice but to part with Adobe.

[bcdclaude]

It's seem's to be because PHP plans to remove original mysql function. Ok. Why not. But adobe could explain and speak about what is in prodject. Are you prepearing a new way to use mysqli or not ?

[Steve Skinner]

Like so many others, I am seriously disappointed in Adobe's decision to remove native support for building data driven applications. In my opinion, this was the best thing about Dreamweaver. I think Adobe has their own agenda, and doesn't really listen to their development community at all. I've built a very successful small business using the database features and server behaviors that were built into Dreamweaver, so this particular part of the change in Dreamweaver is pretty alarming.

[nkhm]

I completely agree with you Steve.  Why should I now continue to pay Adobe's licensing when all the major work I do will be done using coda or some other tool - this is a serious dropping of the ball. It doesn't matter what's in the pipeline or may or may not appear in the coming months - this will be taken as a very big indication that designers who need easy to use development tools are no longer a priority - I would imaging that this is the majority of dreamweaver users. High end coders use text editors, designers who need to build sites use Dreamweaver - except that we now can't.  This is very serious and Adobe need to state whether not these data wizards will return as a native feature, and give a fixed time scale for this.

These aren't toys, they are professional work tools (and are priced accordingly), and for those who upgraded to CC and uninstalled CS6 as part of that process, we're now dead in the water. Yes, we shouldn't have uninstalled CS6 (and of course can roll back), but no one imagined that all data functionality would be gone when we upgraded - what were they thinking?

[Steve Skinner]

I've been reading, not upgrading. And I will be sticking with CS6 and see where it goes with CC. There have been a few instances recently where companies have reconsidered their changes after hearing enough backlash from their customer base. I can only hope enough of the DW development community feels the same as we do - and speak up.

It sounds like keeping Dreamweaver working with databases is certainly possible with the extra extension and the tweaks that are required to bring back this functionality, but the fact that they have deprecated these features means it's only going to get more difficult to keep doing this work in Dreamweaver as future versions come. The future seems a bit uncertain for developers who create data driven apps with Dreamweaver, but it's too soon to make any calls (in my opinion).

I see this going two ways:

1) Adobe realizes the importance of these tools for developers in Dreamweaver and either updates these capabilities in a future version, or releases another piece of software into the CC family that handles database interaction and server behaviors.

OR

2) Extension developers come up with updated ways to handle it all in extensions, instead of the native tools in Dreamweaver for inserting, updating, and deleting records, etc. After all, companies like DMXzone.com have built an entire business around extensions, and most of their popular ones all deal with database interaction. They will be motivated to find a way to make this work for Dreamweaver users. Their sales depend on it. Personally, this is the way I think it will go. Adobe has made their move and told us that they don't want to support database stuff in Dreamweaver anymore.

I'd be fine with either, but I think this is a period of flux where it's all up in the air. And that really sucks.

[Rick Gerard]

Removing these features is a truly bone headed decision. PHP is the highest paid web specialty, the most in demand skill, and without access to database information it's extremely difficult to build Intranet back end services for blogs, professional forums, professional document sharing, secure transactions. Not everyone wants to use wordpress or other CMS for this. I get 1/3 my my standard hourly rate for simple HTML and css work because you can get it overseas for $20/hour or less and Google is giving websites away for free. Nobody that is savvy is going to pay much for just laying out a gotta use Dreamweaver to edit and maintain my site contract.

The product team should immediately work at putting this feature back and pulling it off the deprecated list.

[mubrasmi]

Back in the DW Macromedia days I looked forward to new releases to see what new tools I would be getting to help me develop with. Lately, with new releases, I get scared to see what Adobe thinks I don't need anymore. I'm completely at a loss at why Adobe would even think of removing these features. DW is useless to me without them.

[holymackeral]

I ABSOLUTELY agree! PHP/MySQL development is my bread and butter as well and my ONLY reason for using Adobe's Dreamweaver.

[Steve Skinner]

DMXZone has just released a free extension called HTML5 Data Bindings. This is some good news to Dreamweaver CC users who are bummed about the loss of server behaviors and other related features that really help in building data driven pages.

This is actually what I had hoped would happen - a prominent extension developer coming up with the new, improved way to manage and work with data-driven content in our websites and web apps. Their new extension provides some pretty cool functionality, but the part I'm most excited about - the DMXzone Database Connector isn't quite ready yet, but at least they've put it out there to let us know it's coming soon. Read for yourself:

HTML5 Data Bindings Extension

http://www.dmxzone.com/go/21863/html5-data-bindings?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=link&utm_content=DMXz...

DMXzone Database Connector

http://www.dmxzone.com/go/21868/dmxzone-database-connector-coming-soon/

It looks like this could be our new way of bringing content from the database into our pages in a streamlined, wizard-like way, (like we've been used to in DW) and it looks pretty great to me. I own a bunch of their extensions already and they build quality stuff.

The part I haven't seen an answer for yet in Dreamweaver CC is a new way to handle inserting, editing and deleting content in a database. The (now deprecated) server behaviors which can be brought back into Dreamweaver CC generate code that is considered very out of date. I am hopeful that DMXzone or someone like them will also come up with an extension to replace these older server behaviors with new and modern code that current hand-coders would be impressed with.

In my opinion, I think these features would be better off handled by an extension developer rather than Adobe anyway. After all, it's Adobe who let these server behaviors languish into obsolescence in the first place! In a way, it might be smart for Adobe to stick to what they do best (graphics, design & layout) and let a 3rd party handle the extensions for programming and code.

So, there is some light on the horizon for Dreamweaver CC users who wish to go beyond what Adobe thinks you should be developing - and in the form of a free extension too! Still, I'm not interested in installing the CC version of Dreamweaver until I can do database inserts/edits/deletion (without hand-coding) in a way that's not considered deprecated. Until then, I'm happy with CS6.

[iraji]

Dynamic developements are a big part of DW and for one I am very sorry to see Databases, Server Behaviors and Binding panels depricated in this version and at the same time thankful for your post and the fact its at least available as an extension. However, it should not be an extension and should be a big part of the application. I am not sure if this is the proper place to voice this opinion but I would not use DW CC without the dynamic features and I would most likely stay with the previous versions and that would be a shame since the new features are so nice to have.