3 Replies Latest reply: Aug 16, 2007 5:15 AM by Newsgroup_User RSS

    "Converting" DW MX 2004 files to CS3

    JayNewWeb Community Member
      I had DW MX 2004 and just installed the CS3 trial, and right away I noticed some of my pages created in MX 2004 were appearing very differently in Design view, with text being too small, or appearing rasterized if I zoomed, and with dotted boxes around paragraphs -- but only on some pages. But in a browser they all look normal. This is definitely going to confuse me... or require conversion of some sort. I have no idea what I would convert them with -- possibly one of the features that I noticed in the File – Convert menu?

        • 1. Re: "Converting" DW MX 2004 files to DW CS3?
          Newsgroup_User Community Member
          JayNewWeb wrote:
          > This is definitely going to confuse me... or require
          > conversion of some sort. I have no idea what I would convert them with --
          > possibly one of the features that I noticed in the File ? Convert menu?

          The only conversion necessary is in your brain, and possibly turning off
          some of the visual aids in CS3. One of the main features of CS3 is its
          improved rendering of CSS in Design view. If things look wrong in Design
          view, it's almost certainly due to problems with your style sheets.

          The dotted lines that you see are visual aids introduced in DW8 that
          indicate the extent of divs and other block level elements on the page.
          You can toggle them on and off with the Visual Aids menu on the Document
          toolbar (or View > Visual Aids). Once you get used to them, you'll
          probably find them more useful than a hindrance.

          --
          David Powers, Adobe Community Expert
          Author, "The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3" (friends of ED)
          Author, "PHP Solutions" (friends of ED)
          http://foundationphp.com/
          • 2. Re: "Converting" DW MX 2004 files to DW CS3?
            JayNewWeb Community Member
            Thanks for the help.

            I spoke to tech support and he couldn't figure it out, and is working on it. He did tell me to turn off visual aids and that did get rid of the dotted-line boxes, but the main problem is with font sizes. Some pages are "showing" me the type smaller than it really is. It still appears okay in a browser but not in Design view. Other pages on the same site appear fine.

            I've put a few screen shots of what I'm seeing on different pages in Design view here on my web site.

            Of those, the story is such:

            DWinCS3-2 = shows how my pages "should" all look both in a browser and in Design view (and all did in DW MX 2004)

            DWinCS3-3 = shows the type "too small" in Design view; this is the problem I'm having on "some" of the pages in CS3

            DWinCS3-4 = also shows how the pages "should" all look in browsers and in Design View (-3 looked this way in MX 2004)

            DWinCS3-5 = also shows how the pages should all look; I now know that the boxes are just the visual aids

            DWinCS3-aids-zoom = shows a page zoomed without visual aids; I'm assuming this "raster" look to the text is normal (?)

            DWinCS3-zoom = shows the same page zoomed before I knew to turn off visual aids

            DWinCS3 = shows another instance of a page that no longer looks like it should; again, the text appears smaller than it "is"

            When I say the text appears smaller than it is, I mean that ALL of the pages on ALL of my sites followed the same convention of using a consist type size for all body text. They always appeared consistently in Design view in MX 2004 and in browsers.

            Now, "some" of my pages are displaying this "too small" type in Design view, but they're still appearing correctly in a browser after I change and save the file and upload it.

            We tried going to the bottom of the page, adding a few carriage returns, choosing None for Format and Style, adding a word, and giving it fresh new font and size attributes. The same problem still exists for that page.

            We also tried selecting some text and making it the next size up, so it would appear the way it should appear in Design view --- but once we did that and looked at it in a browser, the text was indeed one size bigger -- which was now "too" big in the browser! So, the pages being affected are consistently showing me type smaller than they should in Design view.

            Just some pages. On more than one of my sites.

            And one of these sites (ie: the one with the last sample shown above) doesn't even have any style sheets -- no CSS files at all.

            (Note that newly created pages are not exhibiting this problem.)



            • 3. Re: "Converting" DW MX 2004 files to DW CS3?
              Newsgroup_User Community Member
              JayNewWeb wrote:
              > I've put a few screen shots of what I'm seeing on different pages in Design
              > view http://argentechinc.com/x/dw.

              Screenshots display only the symptoms, but give no indication of the
              underlying cause. For that, you would need to show people the actual
              code and CSS. Since it's not happening on new pages, it sounds as though
              the way you have designed your CSS is having an impact on the way fonts
              are rendered in Design view.

              The fact that the fonts display as expected in a browser could indicate
              one of two things: a bug in CS3 Design view rendering, or you're
              checking in only one browser (probably Internet Explorer). Previous
              versions of Dreamweaver tried to emulate Internet Explorer. CS3 no
              longer does that. Instead, it attempts to render pages according to the
              W3C standards. It's not perfect, but it's a lot more accurate than before.

              --
              David Powers, Adobe Community Expert
              Author, "The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3" (friends of ED)
              Author, "PHP Solutions" (friends of ED)
              http://foundationphp.com/