dreamweaver

Dreamweaver CS6 Won’t Add Link Tag to Selected Text in Code View

Standard

I seem to be encountering more bugs in the latest version of Adobe Dreamweaver (CS6) along with OS X Lion…

One of the oddities I’ve been dealing with is a problem in Dreamweaver. It seems to happen after editing several pages in one session. During this work session I was in Code View a lot (and it may even be happening in Design View).

I’d add a string of text, or select an existing string, and then click in the link text box of the Properties pane. I’ll type the URL but when I click out of the box it doesn’t apply the link.

At this point I can repeat this step as many times as I want but it simply won’t work.

The “fix” is to restart Dreamweaver. After a while it just seems to have a problem keeping up with adding links.

Note that I have the latest updates installed that were available at the time of writing this post.

Using TextWrangler to Generate HTML Form Option Values from a Text List

Standard

While working on a project I needed to find a way to take a text-based list of values and convert them to drop-down options for an HTML form.

For example, I a have list in a text file like this:

One
Two
Three
Four

I need to convert them to this:

<option value="One">One</option>
<option value="Two">Two</option>
<option value="Three">Three</option>
<option value="Four">Four</option>

The items above would then be enclosed within a SELECT tag.

For a list this short I would just code it by hand but when you start hitting lists of 25 or more options it quickly becomes time-consuming. I attempted to use a Find and Replace operation in Dreamweaver using RegEx but ran into a problem.

Eventually, I moved over to TextWrangler for Mac. I’m not a RegEx guru but after doing some reading I came up with a method that works well.

In TextWrangler I opened the file and then went to the Search menu option and clicked Find.

Here’s what I’m using:

Find: ^(.*)$
Replace: <option value="\1">\1</option>

Also, and this is critical, I checked the option to use “Grep” under Matching. This enables the use of Regular Expressions.

The find pattern captures anything between the beginning and end of the line. In the replace section it takes whatever matches and then inserts it into the surrounding text (\1 instructs the software to insert the contents of the match).

Here’s a screenshot of the dialog:

Dreamweaver Delete Confirmation Warns Links to a File Exist After They’ve Been Removed

Standard

Here’s the scenario: You remove links from pages (and templates) that point to a file you are about to delete. After careful inspection you’ve determined all of the links are gone. However, when you delete the file from within Dreamweaver a confirmation dialog appears stating that other pages are still linked to the file.

This is an internal cache issue. It seems that Dreamweaver doesn’t always update the cache to track links within a site.

At this point you could just continue and let it delete the file. However, the safest method is to simply close Dreamweaver and then re-open it. This way you’ll know if you missed any links because it will again show if there are any pages linking to the file, but this time the cache will have been updated.

I’ve seen this in happen Dreamweaver CS5 for Mac and I’m certain I’ve also seen it in previous versions, too.

Improve Dreamweaver FTP Performance By Disabling Design Notes

Standard

I was having frequent time-out issues, especially when trying to upload to third-party hosts. Finally, I may have found a tip that appears to have significantly improved FTP performance and reduced upload times. Simply disabling design notes has made a quantifiable difference.  I don’t use Dreamweaver features that require the notes so disabling them wasn’t an issue.

Though the tip was for Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and earlier it worked in the CS5 version that I’m using.

From an Adobe Knowledgebase Article:

Disable Upload Design Notes in Site Definition

Sometimes having the Upload Design Notes option checked in the site definition can cause problems. Uncheck this option and see if the problem persists: Site > Manage Sites, select your site, then click Edit > Advanced tab > Design Notes category > uncheck “Upload Design Notes for sharing”.

Dreamweaver 8 for OS X Bug – Viewing Large Files

Standard

Last week one of my co-workers encountered a strange bug that in Dreamweaver 8 for OS X. It does not appear to be present in the Windows version. He was trying to edit an older page but the lower part of the page simply disappeared in Design View.

Hmmm…

I searched the Adobe forums and found the following post about this bug though the postings are specific to large text files.

Problems with displaying large text files

In my co-workers case it wasn’t a problem with a plain-text file but instead an HTML file (granted HTML files are really just plain-text files, but I’m referring to the context of this file-type within Dreamweaver).

No solution exists but there is a simple work-around, which is to reduce the view zoom from 100% down to 66%. Though the text may be more difficult to view at least it can be seen.

This bug exists even with the 8.02 update. Hopefully, it’s been fixed in the CS3 release.