Design View, Live View switching problem

Report · Apr 08, 2017

I'm experiencing many problems in switching from Design View to Live View. I almost always work in Design View and preview in a browser, because editing content in Live View (except applying classes) is a royal PITA. I'm on Mac OS 10.11.6 El Capitan. Specifically:

On a responsive site (NOT built with Bootstrap), I open a page in Design View, as usual. Then after some editing, it may switch to Live View automatically for some mysterious reason. The Live link in top bar (Code Split Live) then does not offer the little pulldown arrow for switching to Design View. If I try the top menu bar (View/View Mode/Design), it will not switch back to Design View. It's stuck in Live.

If I close the page, and even quit Dreamweaver, relaunch and open the page -- it's STILL stuck in Live View with no way to switch. Yet I have edited these same pages for over a year previously without this problem. Yes, II'm using the absolute very latest version of Dreamweaver CC 2017. Maybe my page declaration is faulty?

<!doctype html>

Please help!

Report · Apr 08, 2017

Additionally, when I try to switch from Live to Design View I get a complete BLANK in the WYSIWYG panel. Just white space. If I click the Live button, still a blank -- no display at all (except Code View in Split).

Report · Apr 08, 2017

You're saying which framework that you are not using. How about telling us what you are using, like Fluid Grid Layout.

Have a look at Is there any way to display the Design View in fluid grid pages?

Wappler, the only real Dreamweaver alternative.

Report · Apr 09, 2017

Yes, it's an old fluid grid layout composed with earlier version of Dreamweaver (2014, I believe)

Thanks for that link. I echo these relevant quotes from it:

Apparently this was an intentional move to promote more people to use Live View for editing. See the New Features below. helpx.adobe.com/dreamweaver/using/whats-new.html
If it was intentional a s way to promote some new feature, it was a pretty lame thing to do. No one wants features forced on them.
One cannot run spell-check, and many other features in Live view. It is also nearly impossible to copy webpage content, and paste it into another webpage.
But if one saves and closes this file, then reopens it, you cannot switch to design view.

Also nearly impossible to copy and paste code on the same page. Text edited in Code window does not display in Live window. Many other problems, making my workflow in Live View slow, laborious, grossly inefficient, forcing me to hand code a lot of stuff.

Report · Apr 09, 2017

How about showing us your entire code and not just fragments of code.

Nancy

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

Report · Apr 09, 2017

Without pasting the entire code for very long page, here's the relevant beginning:

<!doctype html>

<body>

<div class="fluid tagline">Moab's largest restaurant and only microbrewery

I've been editing these fluid grid pages in Dreamweaver CC (2017 for some time in Design View -- absolutely the most efficient way to edit these pages. Then, by some mysterious process, the page will switch Live View and I cannot get out of it. Closing and reopening page will still not permit Design View. Then I may open a different but very similar page, and Design View works.

It's an extremely aggravating flaw and needs to be fixed! I guess my only option would be to download CC (2014) and edit pages with it.

Report · Apr 09, 2017

Legacy FGLayouts were removed from DW CC 2017 for a reason. The framework and it's CSS code is very temperamental to work with. Bootstrap is much better for responsive web design.

If you're married to FGLayouts, I would suggest dropping back to earlier CS6. If you don't have it, you can get it from your Creative Cloud Desktop App under All Apps > Previous Versions. See screenshot.

Nancy

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

Report · Apr 09, 2017

Thanks so much, Nancy.

Ever since Dreamweaver incorporated Bootstrap, I've been using the new technology to build all my sites. Not married to FGlayouts, but clients are not going to pay me to rebuild their older sites using FG. They won't see the difference.

But I've also had the same problem (switching between Live and Design view) with Bootstrap pages.

IMO, Live View is an awkward, gimmicky, inefficient way to do basic editing of existing pages (which makes up about 75% of my work). I'm constantly finding myself resorting to hand coding in Split view make things happen. Often, I will copy and paste code in the Code window (in LIve/Split view), and it simply does not work! Paste doesn't work. Text edited in Code view does not show up in Live window! On and on...

I echo what a lot of users are saying -- editing exclusively in Live View is a royal PITA!

Report · Apr 09, 2017

I mainly work with code in PHP, LESS/SASS & JS files so my workflow may be different from yours.

But my overall experience in CC 2017 on Win10 with Bootstrap files has been good. So I wonder if there's something different about your code that's causing DW to choke. You might want to validate and see what comes up.

Nancy

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

Report · Apr 09, 2017

I'm primarily a designer, not a coder, working on Mac El Capitan. I'll check code validation, but I still think the whole Live/Design View issue is a major flaw that needs to be fixed. As one poster in a related thread said:

Apparently this was an intentional move to promote more people to use Live View for editing. See the New Features below. helpx.adobe.com/dreamweaver/using/whats-new.html
If it was intentional a s way to promote some new feature, it was a pretty lame thing to do. No one wants features forced on them.

Ditto.

Report · Apr 09, 2017

Live View and editing in Live View are not new features, though. So I wonder how old those remarks are and if they were about this version or an older one.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

Report · Apr 10, 2017

In Adobe's quest to make DW more "modern" they systematically removed the ability to work with Fluid Grid Layouts over a couple of versions. First, by removing Design View, then by giving them the name "Legacy Fluid Grids" (an omen of things to come) and finally, removing the option all together.

You can still get your Design View functionality back while working with them, but you will need to modify your LFGL's stylesheet file...

First, close all other files, open the Legacy Fluid Grid's .css file and add the X shown below:

/*

Dreamweaver Fluid Grid Properties

----------------------------------

dw-num-cols-mobile: X 4;

dw-num-cols-tablet: 8;

dw-num-cols-desktop: 12;

dw-gutter-percentage: 25;

=====================================

Then save and close the file.

Restart DW and you should have Design View from there on out on any files using that particular LFGL's .css file.

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Design View, Live View switching problem