Dreamweaver 8 Annoyances / Complaints

September 19, 2005 | 3:48pm CDT

I try to be a positive person most of the time and I don't like to complain and I try really hard to make my blog not just another personal ranting platform. So with that said, some of the annoyances and or complaints I have with Dreamweaver 8 are just too great for me not to get off my chest.

Background File Activity Window

My first and foremost complaint is that Dreamweaver 8 has this new annoying pop up windows that pops up each and every time you Alt-Tab to go to another program or you click on a another program in your task bar. The pop up window says, "Background File Activity." Ok so why in the heck does this keep popping up? If it's background file activity shouldn't it be running in the background where you can't see it? Why does it have to announce that it's doing something in the background? I've looked in the preferences and I can't see a way to get rid if it for the life of me. I'm working with a site on remote view and connecting via sFTP. In Dreamweaver MX 2004 this worked just fine and I never saw the popup window.

Dreamweaver 8 has added this neat new coding toolbar to the side of your document window in code view. I thought this was going to be a real bonus since I exclusively work in code view. However, the features the code toolbar have don't seem very useful. For example, I don't see a benefit to the collapse code section, since you have to highlight code you want to collapse instead if it just collapsing all functions or all logical if statements or something.

The code toolbar also has what I thought was going to be a nice feature for commenting code. There is an icon called "apply comment" but the function doesn't have a way to apply a comment in the javadoc format that just about every other language is using so that you can make API documentation automatically from your code. It would be nice if you could click the "apply comment" button and have it comment your code in the style you like.

Example:

/* Instead of commenting a comment block this way... */

/**
 * comment the code this way
 */

My last complaint isn't about anything in Dreamweaver 8, but more about what isn't in Dreamweaver 8. I really thought that Macromedia would add support for versioning systems like CVS and Subversion. As it stands right now I have to go out of Dreamweaver and use another program like TortoiseSVN to use Subversion. It would be extremely helpful if Macromedia would add support for SVN or CVS built into Dreamweaver 8.

Save this article for later, bookmark it!: del.icio.us digg newsvine blinklist magnolia

Comments

1. At 8:20am CDT on October 11, 2005, DunxD wrote:: Yep - SVN or CVS support is sorely missing. Part of me thinks this is deliberate, as it would surely be possible to add the right click context menu’s of TortoiseCVS or SVN on the files pane. Macromedia are selling their own versioning system with ColdFusion - perhaps this limits how much they want to promote other systems. However, since they support PHP why not an open source versioning system too? I guess there is always WebDAV with DeltaV, but that ain’t straightforward…

Dreamweaver 8 is really just a second update to MX as far as I can see. Still only half way to supporting CSS as it should be (only really supporting fixed positioning).

I’ve always found Macromedia slaves to a production calendar irrespective of bug fixes and new features that might be available.
2. At 9:08am CDT on October 11, 2005, Brent O'Connor wrote:: DunxD,

Good comments, you lost me on WebDav though because WebDav isn’t a versioning system and I haven’t head of DeltaV so I can’t comment on it.
3. At 7:31am CDT on April 04, 2006, Kevin Cannon wrote:: The background file transfer thing is one of the biggest things I like about Dreamweaver 8. In MX you couldn’t use dreamweaver while files were uploading at all which really killed my workflow. It hasn’t been implemented the best, but it’s still much better than MX.

You can integrate Subversion with Dreamweaver via extensions:
http://www.grafxsoftware.com/product.php/SVN_for_Dreamweaver/135/
http://www.nearlygeek.com/tools/subversion-for-dreamweaver/
4. At 8:28am CDT on April 04, 2006, Brent O'Connor wrote:: Kevin, thanks for the links to the svn extentions for Dreamweaver. I’ll have to try them out. I’ve been using TortioseSVN and more recently have just been using the command line on the server which works pretty good.
5. At 3:40pm CDT on July 13, 2006, Corey wrote:: Ok, it looks like I’m a year late, but I TOO have so many issues with Macromedia 8 that I had to get at least some off my chest as well. I guess I should just write my own blog. lol. Anyways, the Background Activity Window is inded a pain. I do REALLY enjoy being able to work in Dreamweaver once file uploads or downloads are going on, but that window pops up for every single action. There are times that I cant even open a new document or change doc views without it trying to connect. Also, why does it have to update the database scheme every second? Again, I can’t do anything without it trying to connect to my damn server.

Another problem is kinda back to the CSS support. It’s MUCH better than it ever was, but why do I have to use either CSS or HTML? Why can’t it give me the option for both in one doc? I mean, if I want to just do a simple color change using font tags and I dont want to break my workflow with going into the code and manually doing it, I can’t do it. If I have CSS on, then it automatically creates crappy lil style tags. And why can’t I just do inline style changes? Why does it have to create new style tags for a bold, then another to make it green, then another to make it italic? And thats not even an everytime occurence, it seems to depend on Dreamweaver’s mood for the moment.

I used to adore Macromedia and their products. But ever since Adobe took over, its went to crap! Go figure, ADOBE products are pretty crap themselves.

Ok, I feel a bit better, now what to do with the other 40 things on my list?
6. At 3:47pm CDT on July 13, 2006, Brent O'Connor wrote:: On the background activity thing I switched to using sFTP instead of using a windows file share and that made it not near as bad as it was.
7. At 9:51am CDT on October 02, 2006, hardi darweish wrote:: I agree entirely that dreamweaver 8’s new BACKGROUND FILE ACTIVITY is a major pain and believe it really destroys your creative flow when coding or designing. There must be a better way!!
8. At 2:46pm CDT on October 10, 2006, Jason wrote:: I found this page by Googling “dreamweaver background file activity.” Yes, I am annoyed by the window, but in my case, I only get it when I quit Dreamweaver, and at no other time. Clearly, my Dreamweaver actually uploads files at the time that I press the “Up arrow” in the Files palette. I know it does because I can then view them on the server from IE or NS. So what is happening when I quit Dreamweaver and it spends 2 minutes doing “background file activity”? This is too bizarre for my comprehension.

Jason
9. At 12:00pm CDT on October 20, 2006, Brent O'Connor wrote:: Jason,

I don’t get the, “Background File Activity” window anymore because I switched to connecting to my website via SFTP instead of a windows file share. Also, at work now I have since moved to a Mac computer and use skEdit.

Cheers!
10. At 12:50pm CDT on October 22, 2006, Hardi Darweish wrote:: I have been having a look around and there are many complaining about the FTP speed of Dreamweaver 8. My background file activity always triggers when shutting down the application and it lasts for a good 2 minutes. If anyone has any advice on how to speed up this process as wasting so much development time waiting for files to get and put.

Cheers!
11. At 8:29pm CST on November 17, 2006, buddy wrote:: am close to insane here…using dreamweaver 8 on a pc.

how do i get these frickin css thingsturned off in a site? i just want to design sites that ANYONE can use, and i dont want to use styles.

also, and this is killing me… how can i get the BOLD of my text…everything is bold. i cant find any bold tags or anything and i am just about over the edge. pleasehelp. pretty please.

buddy gal (fairly new to design - but not a complete moron)
12. At 11:52am CST on November 28, 2006, Brent O'Connor wrote:: Buddy, It sounds like you need to learn some basic HTML and CSS. The reason you are probably seeing everything as bold is probably because a <strong> tag isn’t closed. Meaning you probably left off the closing tag that looks like this </strong>.

“i just want to design sites that ANYONE can use, and i dont want to use styles.”

Using CSS for Layout and design is a lot better and I challenge you to learn it. It make it a lot easier in the long run if you know how to make sites this way. And using CSS for layout and design means that 99.99% of the people will be able to view it just fine.
13. At 3:55pm CDT on March 27, 2007, Kiley S. wrote:: The background file activity used to be very quick on my computer, almost unnoticable… until today. There is nothing different in my setup yet this pop-up fires on each save. I used to love how saving the file would ftp the flie to my server. It was fast and saved me from having yet another app running to alt-tab to. But this foreground background activity is ridiculous.

I’m afraid you have to learn css.

Good luck.
14. At 6:20pm CDT on March 27, 2007, Brent O'Connor wrote:: What do you mean by, “I’m afraid you have to learn css”?
15. At 7:39pm CDT on April 02, 2007, Ellen G wrote:: I agree with you folks on that annoying Background File Activity, and think it should be named Foreground File Activity as it locks me out of any use of Dreamweaver while it rethinks what it’s connected to when it just checked the files out.
16. At 7:26pm CDT on April 07, 2007, El Bekko wrote:: There is a free Dreamweaver extension using TortoiseSVN for SVN support. Quite nice: http://www.nearlygeek.com/tools/subversion-for-dreamweaver/introduction/
17. At 8:58pm CDT on May 09, 2007, Red Sand wrote:: I’m connecting to Visual SourceSafe and the background activity is killing me. With DW MX, I had no problem expect files in one directory were never checked out correctly. So I decided to upgrade to DW 8. Not only my problem is not solved (files in that directory are still not checking out correctly), but also this background file activity kicks in every time I open DW. It takes it a good 5-10 minutes to finish doing what it’s doing… I’m not exaggerating. It opened DW right before I Googled this blog, and it just finished after I read this whole blog and all the comments. And I do read slowly. Go figure. DW 8 was an absolute rip off.
18. At 8:10am CDT on May 10, 2007, Brent O'Connor wrote:: Red Sand,

I hardly ever use Dreamweaver anymore. I use either skEdit or Textmate now that I primarily work on a Mac. About the only time I use Dreamweaver anymore is when I’m converting a Microsoft Word document to html.
19. At 10:28am CDT on June 21, 2007, Brad wrote:: Overall, I have loved Dreamweaver 8 and never had any problems with it (for the past 3 years) - but recently I have been having problems with FTP uploads and such to the point where it’s really starting to affect me on a daily basis. Who knows, maybe I’m uploading too much, but I wouldn’t expect to see this kind of a problem. When I open DW, I can make maybe 3 to 4 uploads fine, without seeing (or only for a short period of time) the “background file activity” window. Then out of nowhere DW just decides to say “Nope, I’m tired and lazy leave me alone” and just sits there either saying “Connected to remote host” or “Connecting to remote host” - the bar moves but nothing happens. I have even waited minutes at a time for it to upload a 13kb file, keeping in mind this is the same file that was uploaded 3 to 4 times previously in seconds. I have found that the only way to ever get anything done is to cancel the connection, disconnect from the remote host (which then involves cancelling another background file activity window and than answering “Yes I’m sure I would like to cancel”), and then reconnect to the remote host to make 3-4 more lightening fast updates only to have DW get fat and lazy again. Am I the only one that’s having this issue? Anyone have any tips???
20. At 11:37am CDT on June 21, 2007, Brent O'Connor wrote:: I would try using a different FTP program and see if you are having the same problems with it. If you are having issues with a seperate FTP program then the problem is probably related to the connection to your server. If your using Windows I recommend FileZilla, if your using a Mac computer I would recommend Cyberduck.
21. At 2:21pm CDT on July 06, 2007, brandon mullins wrote:: congrats adobe… dreamweaver cs3 does the same exact thing.
22. At 2:05pm CDT on August 19, 2007, Matt Schmidt wrote:: There is a new extension to integrate SVN and Dreamweaver at http://sourceforge.net/projects/subweaver.
23. At 10:30am CDT on September 25, 2007, Mike wrote:: In response to Red Sand … I also experience the dreaded Background Activity when working with VSS. It is the most aweful, time consuming non-necessity. I am SO SICK AND TIRED OF IT.

When I work on other projects that don’t utilize VSS, Dreamweaver is great. It’s fast, responsive and easy to use. I use CUTE FTP Pro for file migration.

Cleary, Adobe has not understood the productivity impact that this stupid Background Activity dialog causes. I can’t do squat while it’s active and most of the time, I just sit there for a minute or two and sometimes longer!

I’m actively looking for another product. I hear cfEclipes is good but it seems like overkill. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Mike
24. At 4:02pm CST on December 14, 2007, Anon wrote:: Hey Mike,

I’m in the same situation - looking for a new product because of this damn background activity box. I’m blown away at how long it takes me to do simple updates. I’m using dreamweaver 8 with SVN plugin. I hear good things about eclipse but haven’t used it. I’m thinking about just going back to wordpad and core FTP.
25. At 2:38pm CST on January 22, 2008, David Hoffman wrote:: Personally, I just cancel the background file activity.
Until I hear that it’s doing some necessary operation (I don’t use synchronize, in case that’s related), I’ll just kill it and get on with my work.

Post Your Comment

Post Guidelines

Please be considerate of others. Keep comments relevant. Content deemed inappropriate or offensive may be edited and/or deleted. Email addresses are never displayed.

Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use p or br/. Quotes, apostrophes, and double-dashes are automatically converted to smart punctuation. Be careful when copying and pasting portions of entries or other comments.

Links can be created using the standard <a href="http://url">urlName</a>. The following inline HTML elements may also be used: strong, em, cite, & code. The title attribute is allowed within any element. All other code will get removed before posting.

Dreamweaver 8 Annoyances / Complaints

Comments

Post Your Comment

Post Guidelines

Latest Photos

Good Reading

My Favorite Blogs