BC Dreamweaver Plugin now broken?

[James___RT]

Not sure but I assume the recent update broke the BC DW plugin. Yeah I know you can manage the sites manually , but this tool was invaluable for quickly pulling out BC elements etc and most of all setting up websites instantly into DW..

Any thoughts on how to get it back working? MagdaN​ (I would have replied to the System Update post but its locked down)

Any help would be aces

[MagdaN]

Hi James, Can you please send me a private message with the details of your setup? DW version and plugin version? Thanks, Magda

[Luke Grayson]

Hi Magda,

I'm also having the same issue as of this morning (9:00am GMT+13, 28 October 2016).

I've sent you a private message with details of my setup as well.

Look forward to hearing from you.

[Luke Grayson]

Hi James,

Have you had any word on this?

[James___RT]

Nope still waiting.... I sent a reply to Magda straight away. My guess is they need to patch in new login method for the partner portal or something but it could be anything. I miss the most, the one click import of forms into divs I think.

[Luke Grayson · Accepted solution]

Hi James,

I followed up again with Magda and received the following reply this morning:

Hi Luke,

Sorry for the late reply. I forgot to update with the result of the investigation. The guys did determine the cause of the problem, and it is because of the move towards HTTPs. Unfortunately the solution is not a simple one, and due to the old version of DW being used we are not going to be able to correct this.

Magda

So there you have it: another inadvertent breaking and subsequent death of a useful feature. Bit disappointing honestly; it seems Adobe isn't big on backwards compatibility - not just with BC but across all their products. I imagine the BC dev team have their hands well and truly tied.

[Peta1]

Thanks for the update Luke.

It's more a shame that a new extension wasn't developed for Creative Cloud products, particularly as the extension was a huge reason why we hadn't upgraded, and as you said it's features were invaluable.

[Liam Dilley]

I just wanted to jump in on the backwards compatibility aspect here.

There are a few issues with how BC has been in Adobe. One of them has actually been the intense focus on backwards compatibility. It has held the platform and slowed its development dramatically. BC team has been very big on this and its actually been a problem for them.. we have seen to much time invested and for me wasted on this more then pushing the system further.

People like myself have wanted to see dropping legacy support to drive it more forward in the past.

So the comment about not being backwards compatible is actually not true Luke.

[Luke Grayson]

Thanks Liam - good to know. My comment was made based on my experience with Adobe products in general.

In the case of BC specifically (and perhaps this is not so much a backwards compatibility issue as a development issue), I have noticed time and again updates breaking things. Stuff works and then suddenly works no longer. No explanation is given. Seems often times no one knows what has happened or why.

I get the impression that at it's core, BC is a very difficult beast to work with - that it is relatively easy to break existing features when working on something unrelated without realising. Would that be a fair or accurate assumption?

[MagdaN]

Hi everyone,

Just a a quick note. The setup we are discussing here is a Dreamweaver version launched in 2008 and for which the development has been discontinued for some time, and a BC extension launched in 2010. Considering these parameters the team would not even look into the bug normally, because the combination of products is no longer supported. We have investigated this however, and had one engineer spend one day on the testing and possible fixing of the issue. It turns out it requires more than just one day, at which point we decided not to pursue this further.

The setup is fairly rare, and due to this being caused by HTTPs and security changes, any fix would be complicated in terms of time and resources required. While we have tried in the past to keep compatibility as much as possible, at some point it becomes difficult to support every single setup out there.

There have been 9 newer versions of Dreamweaver since this particular release, and while some of them do not include the extension, there is always the option to upload the site through sFTP.

Magda

[Luke Grayson]

Thanks Magda,

I completely understand why the decision has been made to discontinue troubleshooting this issue, and I certainly appreciate the fact that the dev team have looked into it. Having said that, it is kinda the least you could do considering there was no warning given for the breakage.

It should be noted that the reason this setup (i.e. an old version of Dreamweaver + BC Extension) is was still being used by some of us is because... wait for it: an Adobe update broke existing functionality. Specifically, the update requiring login with an Adobe ID (as opposed to any BC Admin user credentials) - back in 2013 I believe. (There are threads on this forum regarding this issue.) I realise this was all to do with CC and wasn't specifically a BC issue, but the update meant that if we upgraded past this particular version of Dreamweaver + BC Extension combo, we would lose the ability to use certain workflows.

What is troublesome in these situations is that no warning is given prior to these breakages. Imagine coming to work one day to find the system that you use on a daily basis simply no longer functioning. There is no explanation; it simply no longer works, and it is up to you to find out why.

This is why I asked the question about BC being a "difficult beast to work with". It is the only excuse I can think of for the pattern I see with BC, as no development company worth their salt would simply break legacy functionality without first issuing a warning to their clients. I totally get that legacy compatibility cannot be maintained indefinitely, but a dev team should understand their product well enough to know "if we change this thing, this other thing will (or may) no longer function".

Once again, I appreciate you looking into it for us, but for future reference, a warning ahead of time would have been even better.

[MagdaN]

Hi Luke,

We do try to test and announce most issues, but for this particular setup we do not have automated or manual tests in place. It is simply too old for us to test out regularly during our release schedule.

If you could send me a private message with what exact is not working on the Adobe ID/ DW CS workflows I will work with the engineering team to see if we could include that in the next releases.

Magda