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

Well, it seems that Steve Jobs was right. Lazyness. Please, bring the panels back and working properly. I don’t want to have to copy and paste MMHTTPDB.php and mysql.php from a folder to another. Give us a decent solution, and respect your customers!

I agree. What  a cretinous decision. Just leave it in until you have something better. But it does mean that Dreamweaver CC has zilch value for me.

Is it better to put a fence at the top of a cliff on an Ambulance down in the Valley?

This situation is caused by not having the shop manager down on the shop floor.

The first rule of business is: Know your Customers (like Macromedia did)

Cheers up guys. nothing is so bad that it can't get worse.

I would like to add my disappointment in Adobe's decision to remove the database, bindings and server behaviors from Dreamweaver. This seems like a huge step backward for the product. I am not a serious coder, but a designer who relies heavily on these to help get my work done. And after installing the "Deprecated Server Behaviors Panel Support", and finding out what a poor implementation that is, I am even more frustrated with this decision. Previous behaviors can no longer be edited, although they show up in the panel. And certain behaviors I was using are not even listed.

I am sorry to say so, but your disappointing blog post just tells us two things:

1. You claim that you are listening to your users, but you have just proved you don’t. Despite the high volume of disappointment expressed through the comments to previous posts of this blog, through comments in Dreamweaver Help or through the Community Forum, you show no change of direction, nor any will to cater for the disrupted workflow that Dreamweaver CC is introducing. Instead, you are just producing blog posts that desperately try to prove us that you are “streamlining” and “modernizing” Dreamweaver. An extension that brings back half of the features is not a strong-enough signal that you have taken into account our needs. Extensions written by third parties which you claim are alternatives but are not resemble more leg-pulling than anything else. Will you reduce Dreamweaver’s price for the removal of killer features that were sold with the software before?
2. You do not seem to know how Dreamweaver users use the software or at least, to be fair, how a large number of users do. I thought the aim of software makers was to sell a tool that aids its clients in, and brings value to, their work.

As an extension writer, I can tell that the vast majority of my users are either DIY guys or professionals working on their own. Not big companies with teams of developers. The majority of those never have been Dreamweaver users and will never be, having different needs and ways of working.

As responses to your “streamlining” and “modernization” of Dreamweaver have shown, for a large number of users, the strength of Dreamweaver lies in its extensibility, of which server behaviors are the most advanced feature. I am not talking about the code they write, which we all agree has to be updated (and we have been waiting this for a number of releases, now…), I am talking about their very mechanism, which allow us to write our code and use Dreamweaver to speed up our job by helping us to write it again, faster, without errors, visually.

No other tool offers this possibility. Without server behaviors and database support, Dreamweaver is simply not worth its price…

Obviously, you are the ones with the real figures and only you can tell if it is a strategic decision or a big mistake. I was a bit surprised though by the number of voices that rose after the Dreamweaver CC release, so I tend to think that Mr. Adobe would not be that pleased by the loss of a good number of faithful clients. But then at least, be honest enough to tell us if you intend to drop a part of long-term users, and stop serving us your commercial soup…

Now, what will happen?

1. You still refuse to listen to the numerous voices who have called against your decision to remove useful features to us, and in this case, we will act accordingly: we are big enough, we do not need your blatant propaganda even by the product manager himself to decide whether Dreamweaver CC will still be worth its high price into our workflow, if the new features will outweigh the loss of server behaviors and database support. If not, of course, we will not upgrade just because you are marketing the supposedly wonderful new features, and we will turn to other tools, with features that will help us improve our workflow in other ways. And goodbye Adobe, we do not trust you anymore… It is as simple as that.
2. You show us you really are listening to your customers and you bring back updated server behaviors and database support. In this case, we will know that we can trust Adobe again, that you do listen to us, and will applaud with both hands.

And, more important to you, we will have a valid reason to upgrade and we will. Come on guys, our productivity is at stake, but your jobs may be in the line too…

If Adode persists to treat PHP that way, the whole Dreamweaver adventure will soon be deprecated too.

Just wanted to add that I am conserned about the removal of these panels and functionallity from DW CC as well. As a designer that is not a great coder- this allowed me to have simple dynamic pages and a database without using someone else's framework. Hope there will continue to be a built in solution for someone like me...

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.

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=DMXzone+Database+connector+coming+soon&utm_campaign=HTML5+Data+Bindings

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.

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.