We’ve been hearing from some users that their computers (running Windows XP) are shutting down or restarting when they try to start Dreamweaver CS5.5. Some users are also seeing a blue or black error screen prior to the shut down or restart.
The solution for this issue is to install the Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. For more information, see this tech note.
We’ve been hearing rumblings from some users about the upload (put) and/or download (get) process failing during FTP file transfer in Dreamweaver CS5.5. If you are having trouble uploading your files to or downloading your files from you server, consult this tech note for a number of possible solutions. You’ll want to make sure you step through the recommended solutions in order as you troubleshoot your upload/download problem.
Adobe has further identified particular failures amongst those using GoDaddy as their web host. The failure is usually indicated by the message “File activity incomplete” in the Background File Activity window, and the FTP Log in Dreamweaver showing an error similar to the following: “An FTP error occurred – cannot put ‘/index.html’. Access Denied.”
The issue seems to be affecting only those files you might be trying to put to/get from the root folder of your FTP server. For example, you may be able to put files to the /wwwroot/css/ subfolder, but not to /wwwroot/. The problem also occurs despite the fact that you can perform the same action (e.g. uploading a file) using another FTP client, such as FileZilla or an older version of Dreamweaver.
If you are a GoDaddy user and experiencing this issue, see Solution 3: Move or delete any symbolic links in the above referenced tech note.
As part of our wind-down from CS5.5, the Dreamweaver Team has started thinking about how we can deliver a world class experience for building CSS3 Transitions for the web. In the coming weeks, the Dreamweaver Team will be conducting surveys and asking for your input on how we can do just that, so we’re bringing it to our fans directly through our social media outlets. This week we want to see examples of CSS3 Transitions (or animations).
So send us links to your sites showing off your CSS 3 Transitions skills!
Today we’ve asked Bruce Bowman, product manager for Adobe BrowserLab, to guest blog for us with some exciting news about this incredible product. Take it away Bruce!
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I’m Bruce Bowman, product manager for BrowserLab (http://browserlab.adobe.com) and I’d like to tell you about how the BrowserLab team has made some recent improvements to the BrowserLab workflows in Dreamweaver. You can get the new BrowserLab panel for Dreamweaver by downloading the new Dreamweaver 11.0.4 updater using Adobe Application Manager (available beginning May 3), or by upgrading to Dreamweaver CS 5.5.
We’ve added some new features to BrowserLab to improve workflows for Dreamweaver users:
Watch this short video of BrowserLab in action in Dreamweaver CS 5.5: http://adobe.ly/lhKALX
If you haven’t tried BrowserLab (http://browserlab.adobe.com), or haven’t tried it lately, I invite you to take it for a spin. You can find it in Dreamweaver using the Preview in Browser “globe” icon, by choosing File > Preview in Browser > Adobe BrowserLab, or by opening the BrowserLab panel (Window > Extensions > Adobe BrowserLab).
Don’t just wait until the end of a project to do cross browser testing – we encourage you to use BrowserLab (http://browserlab.adobe.com) early and often in your workflows.
I hope you like BrowserLab, and it lives up to its promise of saving you time and money, as well as making cross browser testing less of a chore and a lot more fun.
Bruce Bowman
Adobe BrowserLab product manager
http://blogs.adobe.com/browserlab
http://facebook.com/browserlab
BrowserLab User Forums, http://forums.adobe.com/community/cslive/browserlab
Twitter: @adobebrowserlab, http://twitter.com/adobebrowserlab, @brucebowman, http://twitter.com/brucebowman
Today Adobe announced the release of the latest and greatest version of the Creative Suite family: Adobe Creative Suite 5.5. As part of Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium, Dreamweaver CS5.5 certainly stands out as one of the many jewels in this crown. The focus for this release is decidedly on mobile devices, and streamlining your HTML5/CSS3 workflow in this as yet Wild West-like land of opportunity. True to its history and the spirit of collaborative development, the Dreamweaver team has listened to its user base once again, and has delivered a show-stopping tool that now lets you easily develop and package web apps for mobile devices.
“One of the neatest things in Dreamweaver CS5.5,” says Randy Edmunds, Senior Computer Scientist at Adobe, “is the new Media Queries dialog box, which lets you specify CSS style sheets for different devices, so that your web page can look the way you want it to look on any screen. The feature eliminates something we see a lot of—the chances for typos and errors—and is going to remove a great deal of headache for people who want to target multiple screens.”
In addition to CSS Media Queries, Dreamweaver CS5.5 also supports multiscreen preview (where you can literally see in one window exactly what your page will look like on different devices), CSS3 and HTML5 code-hinting, and jQuery mobile integration, which includes drag-and-drop jQuery mobile application widgets, as well as jQuery mobile starter pages to get you up and running in seconds. “This release means rapid development for mobile apps,” Edmunds says. “And that’s good, since everything is about rapid these days.”
One of the most enticing features of Dreamweaver CS5.5, however, is the new Native Mobile Application packager, which lets you build and emulate native mobile applications for Android- and iOS-based devices. Dreamweaver CS5.5 now uses seemless integration with PhoneGap—an open-source development framework for building cross-platform mobile applications—and together the two bring a new level of ease to building apps for mobile devices.
“We wanted to remove all of the pain and confusion from the process of building mobile applications,” says Jung Yun Choi, Software Quality Engineer on the Dreamweaver team. “Our goal was to make it so easy that even someone who doesn’t know anything about mobile apps could step through the process and build one within minutes.”
And the Dreamweaver team has done just that. Building a mobile application for iOS- and Android- based devices is now as simple as installing the iOS or Android SDKs, specifying a few configuration settings, and selecting “Build and Emulate” from a list of menu choices.
To learn more about all of the new and exciting features in Dreamweaver CS5.5, check out Dreamweaver Product Manager Scott Fegette’s What’s New in Dreamweaver CS5.5, and the Dreamweaver CS5.5 feature overview on Adobe TV.
You can also read more about individual features in the What’s New section of the Dreamweaver Help system.
This tutorial by Scott Richards on the Adobe Developer Connection shows how to package an existing HTML and JavaScript widget using the Adobe Widget Browser so that it can be shared with other users of the Widget Browser. Read the full article here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/packaging-widgets-with-widget-browser.html
I have recently analyzed several web pages for Dreamweaver customers that complained about slow page loading times. A trend that I have noticed is images used for tiling backgrounds with a width or height of 1 pixel. I have even seen some 1×1 images used for tiling. Yikes!
“Tiling” refers to using a CSS background image that repeats in the X and/or Y directions to fill a page or element.
While it’s generally best to make images as small as possible, one exception to that rule is for tiling images. The smallest download that browsers can do is 1K bytes, so the best size for tiling image files that can be made to be under 1K in size is “as close to 1K without going over”. This can significantly reduce the amount of tiling that Dreamweaver and browsers need to do, which improves page loading performance.
For example, consider a 1×1 image versus an equivalent 10×10 image. The size of both images is under 1K, so the download time is the same, but the smaller image is tiled up to 100 times more than the larger image, which requires more time to render.
This argument also applies to non-tiled images, but those can easily be combined in a single file using the CSS Sprite technique.
In Dreamweaver CS5, the Design View Style Rendering Toolbar was given a couple new features.
Note that the Style Rendering Toolbar is not displayed by default, so you may need to turn it on using the View > Toolbars menu.
These are buttons to quickly adjust the font size on the page. This is a temporary adjustment to emulate font zooming as done in browsers so you can quickly see how this may affect the layout of your page.
These radio buttons are used to temporarily change the filtering of CSS pseudo-class styles in your page. By default, browsers display the :link styles and hide all of the other pseudo-class styles until a certain action takes place. This is a temporary change in the way styles are cascaded so you can quickly see how the other pseudo class styles are rendered in your page.
Notice that it’s not possible to hover over more than 1 link at a time, so this feature can cause your page to render in a state that can never be seen in a browser. This is just for doing a quick, temporary check of how styles are rendered, not to represent valid link states in your page.
All of the Style Rendering Toolbar functionality is also available through the View > Style Rendering menu.
HTML5 has received a tremendous amount of buzz, much of it driven by the potential for plugin-free video. However, the limited browser support for the HTML5 <video> tag has forced web designers to scramble for a solution that would work across platforms as well as browsers. To help customers overcome these challenges, Adobe has released an easy-to-use, totally CSS-customizable solution that shifts gracefully from the HTML5 <video> tag to the Flash Player when the tag is not supported. The shift takes place regardless of the screen—from phone to monitor to TV.
The HTML5 Video Player widget, now available through the Adobe Widget Browser, works with or without Dreamweaver CS5. Code generated from the widget plays video in the best possible player for the requested platform using a range of video codecs. Based on the Kaltura open source library, the HTML5 Video Player widget is fully cross-browser compatible with support for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera. Moreover, the player is completely customizable with industry standard CSS techniques.
You can run the Adobe Widget Browser directly from within Dreamweaver and, once you’ve set it up, insert the generated code and files for the HTML5 Video Player widget with point-and-click simplicity. But if you’re not a Dreamweaver user (shame on you), you can also download the Widget Browser independently. (You’ll need to install Adobe AIR first.)
If you’re new to the Widget Browser, you can get up to speed quickly with this video from Lynda.com.
Join us for an Ask a CS Pro session with David Powers on the hot topic of HTML5 and CSS3 in Dreamweaver CS5. David will present and take your questions live via chat.
THIS FRIDAY, September 24th.
Session begins at 11am Pacific Daylight Time.
Location: my.adobe.acrobat.com/askcspro. Guests will be allowed in the meeting room 10-15 min before session begins
Learn more about David Powers here:
http://foundationphp.com/about.php
Facebook invite here:
http://bit.ly/AskCSPro10_FB
Note that the session will be recorded and posted to the Creative Suite Facebook page Notes section soon after the event under “Ask a CS Pro”.
