What happened to Design-Time Stylesheets?

[Under S.]

Please tell me they did not remove Design-Time Stylesheets during my hiatus from development.

How do those of us that use header include files (among other includes) during development supposed to see the content in anything but raw text? Design (or Split) view used to offer a pretty fair representation of the end product while working directly on one of the included files.

Are we expected to just start working from the container file (the one doing the including) from now on? That's the only way I get to see some kind of formatting.

[Nancy OShea]

Design-Time Stylesheets were removed from DW quite some time ago.

I'm not sure I understand the problem though.  Includes are just code snippets.  If you have a testing server installed & set-up, you should be able to see includes in Split View as shown in my screenshot.

Nancy

[Under S.]

Never had a testing server, never needed one.

Oh, Adobe.

[Nancy OShea]

unders11 wrote:

Never had a testing server, never needed one.

Well, to parse includes locally in a browser, you would need one.  It's always been that way.  It only takes 5 min to set one up.

https://www.adobe.com/devnet/archive/dreamweaver/articles/setup_php.html

Nancy

[ALsp · Accepted solution]

And here is a helpful and happy and simple answer

We have created a tool to add Design Time CSS capabilities and Server Side Includes back into Dreamweaver:

PVII DW Tools 1

I guess Nancy must have forgotten.

[Under S.]

I started looking up a tutorial on setting up a testing server, and... ugh... why? Just why? It seems so unnecessarily complicated. A dedicated machine? Special software? That can't be right. (Maybe I read the wrong tutorial?)

I don't really need DW to act like a browser, I have temp files pulled up by the browsers themselves for that. I just need to ghost-apply a stylesheet to raw HTML files in the live view pane while I'm working on them. Why remove that ability and not replace it with anything?

(I feel like Rick waking up in that empty hospital in S01E01 of TWD. Ha.)

[Nancy OShea]

You read the wrong tutorial.

Setting up a local testing server literally takes 5 mins.

1. You download free Wamp or Xampp or Mamp for your OS & install it.

WAMP for Windows - http://www.wampserver.com/en/

XAMPP for Windows - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html

XAMPP for Mac - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html

MAMP for Mac - http://www.mamp.info/en/downloads/index.html

     2. Define your testing server in DW Site > Manage Sites.

Basic tab:

Advanced tab:

Final screen:

Nancy

[Under S.]

I am marking your post as helpful rather than correct because the commercial alternative proposed more directly caters to the question asked in the OP (and it might help someone else) but it seems inevitable that once I'm through my various stages of grief (sigh) I'm going to have to follow those instructions of yours. (Since I try to keep my online purchases to a minimum for paranoid safety reasons, a testing server seems inevitable.)

[Nancy OShea]

A testing server is only required if a) you work with server-side code and b) you want to see it parsed & styled locally.   

Nancy

[ALsp]

Our tools are beyond reproach as we've been making them since long before Adobe purchased Dreamweaver. That said, Nancy's answer (if I'm assuming I've properly read your initial issue) is totally wrong. You do not need a testing server to see server-side includes rendered in your page in Dreamweaver. Absolutely, unequivocally, and inarguably not.

If you are financially strapped, contact us as we are known to be generous to those in need.

[Under S.]

ALsp wrote:

Our tools are beyond reproach as we've been making them since long before Adobe purchased Dreamweaver. That said, Nancy's answer (if I'm assuming I've properly read your initial issue) is totally wrong. You do not need a testing server to see server-side includes rendered in your page in Dreamweaver. Absolutely, unequivocally, and inarguably not.

If you are financially strapped, contact us as we are known to be generous to those in need.

It's not that I doubt how reliable your products are. I remember you from our Macromedia Usenet days, and I trust you both implicitly. However, I feel you may be a bit harsh on Nancy here. To my knowledge, hers remains the only free way to do DTSS. I'm aware that there are people out there that can make my problems go away more quickly if I pay them, but that's a slippery slope, and always a last resort for me, personally. Not a knock on your extensions at all, PVII has a great rep.

Also, Nancy's solution does a bit more than just the DTSS (like local php parsing) so as much as I hate the idea of setting up a testing server when I managed to do without one for a decade and a half, it's looking like I might have to do some adulting here.

[ALsp]

It doesn't solve the Design Time CSS issue. I don't mean to be harsh, but you might consider that some folks get a little ticked off at Adobe for stripping Dreamweaver bear. Extensions are tools, like anything else, and designed to make  Web Designer's life easier. We understand that there are hobbyists and folks who do not have a related business and budget to justify spending money on tools beyond Adobe's... but it does not change the fact that Dreamweaver does not have an issue displaying rendered server includes in Design View. Nancy is talking about the way she does includes, and her  workflow using PHP, which is not necessary in order to use includes.

[ALsp]

Just to add some clarity on the Include part of your question here...

Dreamweaver dropped support for adding a server-side directive. It did not drop support for displaying server-side includes in Design View. As a matter of fact, if you click on included content in Design View, the Property Inspector (if you have it turned on) will display include info, as it always has, which proves to me that Adobe removed the feature mindlessly, and ineptly... simply removing it from the Insert menu, while not removing the code behind it.