I’ve done my coding in Dreamweaver for 5+ years now. I think I’m the only one who does so at Automattic, but it’s a good fit for me with the network/SFTP integration, decent PHP highlight, regex search/replace, and good project support. It was a natural transition for me from Homesite. I know there are a thousand other editors that I could use, and I know I shouldn’t be on Windows most of the time, but that’s not what this post is about. I’m utterly appalled by how bad Dreamweaver CS3 is. I paid hundreds of dollars to upgrade to something that consistently crashes when I edit certain parts of PHP files and CTRL + F no longer opens a search box unless I have a document open.
Dear Dreamweaver team, I’ve been putting up with these bugs for close to a year now. I will come down to San Jose and show you the bugs personally. Just please do something, or feign the appearance of movement. For now, I’m switching from CS3 to version 8, which is just sad.
I still use Dreamweaver 8. I had a similar problem with CS3 when I upgraded, was completely appalled by how utter crap it was. Just kept crashing whenever I did just about anything.
Are you running Windows or Mac OS X? The upgrade to CS3 on my Intel Mac was amazing. The only problem I have with it is using remote view sometimes slows things down a tad. That may have more to do with my poor connection than anything.
Maybe it is a windows thing. I’ve been using it since DW3 and I think it’s the best ever. On a mac, running leopard……
I use CS3 on a MAC – (unsurprisingly without any problems).
I too use Dreamweaver 8 and have been thinking about “upgrading?” to C3 because I don’t have Photoshop. Thanks for saving me a “bundle” of time AND money!
Perhaps this is a hint at a new Automattic endeavor?
Open Source rules…
I don’t see any reason to upgrade to CS3. Dreamweaver 8 works perfectly fine for me.
I’ve never felt the need to upgrade from version 8 to be honest, but I never liked Go Live so I am cautious about even trying new versions.
Matt,
Send me an email and I’ll put you in touch with someone I know over at Adobe in the Creative Suite Business Unit. They’re looking for feedback from folks like you in order to make CS3 (and CS4) better.
I used Dreamweaver from the days when it was just an infant… Come CS3, I dropped it for TextMate.
Adobe: If you’re going to kill off an app in exchange for another (GoLive for DW) make sure the replacement is at least REASONABLY feature complete!
I use CS3 here at my work, and it runs eh, ok. I’m not impressed, that’s for sure. I use 8 at home, and that’s probably the best I’ve used.
But if I don’t need DW goodness I just use Notepad++ .. it’s good and free.
So far only the Mac users are on CS3 and it’s been stable. The PC users are still on 8. Bummer CS3 PC is inferior.
I was moved to respond, however, because of my own surprise that Dreamweaver has hung on as our desktop IDE of choice for PHP/CSS/HTML.
Agreed!
The stability of CS3 is far worse then 8. I see lots of people having the same issues, but none of them have been addressed.
The worse thing is when it fails to restart after a crash. Eventually, I found that if I renamed my configuration file, restarted, over wrote the new file with the original configuration and restarted again… Only then would everything work again. WTF?
Yep I’m on PC.
Do yourself a favor and try Aptana. It too has it’s bugs. But it’s evolving with so much speed (Open Source).
All you’d miss is the search field from DW. Just file a report in the tracker. I’m sure it will be Even with the mentioned bug, it’s absolutetly the best i’ve seen so far.
I myself used dreamweaver since version 2. But the crashing bug(s) since some versions first made me use a cracked version (although i paid my license!) which worked better but wasn’t updatable. Since 3 Months now i’m using Aptana, and i don’t miss anything.
ermmm … redirect script killed the link:
it’s Aptana.
Well, for me Dreamweaver CS3 is almost the same as Dreamweaver 8. I mean, as functionality…
I use DW mostly for editing HTML/XHTML and CSS code, PHP from time to time, as well, but rarely…
Integrated FTP/SFTP of Dreamweaver, code highlight/autocomplete/tags-autoclose are just some of the things I like about it, and one of the reasons I am using it everyday in my Web design/coding work. I work 99.9% of the time in code view in it, and it’s very handy and powerful as a code editor…
But, OK, yes… If I must be frank, I don’t think that for the webdesigner/coder there is such difference between 8 and CS3. And if CS3 crashes more often, then yes, better switch back to 8… :-/
PS I’m on PC as well, Windows XP Pro SP2…
You poor, man.
Shame you’re on a pc, because Textmate is truely wonderful.
Dreamweaver just stinks to me because of the wysiwyg*
* I realise this is not valid, but I can’t blame my mind for working funnny.
I think it’s been the best part of ten years that I’ve been meaning to ‘try’ Dreamweaver but I’ve just never got round to it.
Of course, for about nine of those ten years I’ve been using Linux which hasn’t had a native Dreamweaver client (although I believe it runs fine in Wine). There’s always been a good text editor for me with each distro I’ve been with, gedit being the latest with superb php highlighting support, I haven’t really felt the need for WYSIWYG editing.
Now, with the news that Dreamweaver doesn’t run correctly in it’s native environment, it looks like I’ll never get round to trying it. 🙁
Wow, I thought all my problems were because of the ancient hardware I am using. Maybe CS3 just isn’t as good.
I’m yet to experience CS3 crashing (Vista Ultimate 64), but do find it a lot slower than any previous version of Dreamweaver. I’m a MS Expression user at work though and find it to be a great alternative to DW.
I quit Dreamweaver and I am using Eclipse with Aptana and PHPeclipse plugin. It is so much easier to work with WordPress using Eclipse. And the code complete for CSS and HTML is much better.
I still have DW-MX and use it when I’m booted into Windows although, that’s not very often. Tried DW8 and it drove me nuts. Heard about Adobe’s DWCS3 and just balked at the cost. I tend to use what works best for me. CS3 sounds too buggy for a Windows platform. Hmm, wonder why? 😛
If I need to code something quick and dirty, I use either Screem or Kompozer in Ubuntu.
Matt .. I’m a professional tech and here is my suggestion:
Buy a chicken. Do a voodoo dance around your DW CS3 disc, chicken in one hand, knife in teh other. Prepare the sacrifice. … wuss out, get a rubber chicken. Redance the dance. Cut the rubber throat.
Reinstall.
That usually helps with my computer issues.
As far as the Mac vs. PC version goes … I’ve had plenty of problems with the Mac, as well, and don’t understand why nobody else does. Having used DW since v3, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten up to do something else and come back to the Mac and the App was closed with no apparent explanation. Just because the Mac doesn’t give me an ugly (or pretty) crash report doesn’t mean there wasn’t a crash. 😉 And I’m sure if you guys who responded would think about that a little, you’d remember the same issue..
I gave up on DW some time ago and still swear by Homesite & Top Style.
As a PC user I have yet to find a better combination. Although I have dabbled with CSSvista
I only really use DreamWeaver CS3 for its code coloring and FTP handling… It’s slow but only crashes on particularly complex pages. Doesn’t everything crash in Vista?
I guess the secret to happiness is low expectations!
Seeing as the big “updates” to CS3 (afaik) were mostly in the WYSIWYG department, I never really felt the need to upgrade at all. :/
I too was a huge Dreamweaver fan for years from using it daily at work. I recently stumbled upon Aptana Studio and switched for good after about an hour of use. Free version has good PHP highlight, regex search/replace, better project layout, good code completion and it self-updates. Paid version ($99) has SFTP. I can’t speak to the support as I haven’t needed it.
the only bug i have on cs3 on mac is when i link to an external css sheet it freezes up.
I love VI! It hasn’t changed in years, and it still works just the way I like it.
I still use Homesite 5.5 at work with ColdFusion code though we have purchased multiple copies of CS3 for our dev machines. I have dipped my toe in both CS3 and Eclipse quite a few times but I have come cowering back to Homesite and Ultraedit every time.
I almost never use the WYSIWYG so that’s not a huge deal to me. (Though I sometimes use it like a document editor, since it creates nice clean HTML, but it’s been crashing and losing stuff so much I just can’t trust it anymore. I’ve lost many, many hours of work to this thing, including a lot of the core WordPress CSS changes.)
I used to use Dreamweaver for all of my coding work, but now I use Aptana which has already been mentioned. Honestly, I think Aptana updates too much. Every time I open the program there are new updates. But its been a good program for being open source.
I’m using Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 (on Windows XP SP2) and it’s ok…I didn’t experience such problems 😀
I haven’t had any issues with the limited amount of time I’ve used CS3 (on PC)
Note to ‘Mac is the best and never crashes stupid PC people!!’ You obviously haven’t ever had the pain and suffering of using Final Cut or Pro Tools on a Mac (like me) They are just as prone to crashes. I literally threw a G4 out a window and beat it to pieces with a pipe in the parking lot after it crashed for the 5th time trying to render out a film with limited FX or transitions.
You should contact this person: [redacted] about your issues directly. He can either put you in touch with the proper team members or get you involved in their beta programs.
BTW, when you do contact him, encourage him to bring WordPress minimal support into DW, will ya? I’ve certainly ranted about that for the last couple of years. You can say that I gave you the contact info, if he asks. (he will know me)
I use CS3 on Windows XP daily, but not to connect live to the db. I do layouts (for themes) as static site design and then develop all my WP page files, using only the code view, of course. I groused heavily about it for a couple of years and finally got used to it… I don’t crash at all.
Hope the contact info helps.
Notepad++ for the win.
I used to use Dreamweaver as well, simply for it’s syntax highlighting and it is what I was used to. Once I started experiencing all the bugs and realizing how much they hindered me getting work done (not to mention the initial load time) I went looking for something much more lightweight.
Hmm. No problems with Dreamweaver CS3 under OS X, first Tiger, now Leopard.
And I go back as a user to the days of GoLive! 🙂
If WYSIWYG isn’t a big deal and you’re using Windows I can highly recommend WeBuilder:
http://www.blumentals.net/webuilder/
Fantastic software and developers who listen and respond quickly. For me it’s the perfect half-way house between EditPlus and Dreamweaver. Could suit you perfectly Matt.
Heck, I’m still using Dreamweavwer 3
Makes me glad I stuck with (err…couldn’t afford to upgrade from) version 8.
If you have access to a Mac give Coda or skEdit a try. Both have very nice remote access features allowing you to easily edit files on the server.
At work I use Notepad ++ on Windows. It has nice tabs and other features, but I mainly use it because it’s easy.
I have to say Matt, I’ve been using Aptana a lot recently, and it does a fantastic job – very similar to Dreamweaver, looks like it does code hints for PHP and handles FTP/sFTP and synchronisation.
The documentation has let me down a couple of times, but for a free project I’m not complaining.
I too suffer from the lack of movement in the land of Dreamweaver, the stupid thing is, i’d probably continue to happily use it if adobe fixed all the stupid little issues.
I’ve found the latest Zend Studio for Eclipse to be great for PHP, It brought real IDE features to my PHP development, things like class navigators, etc. It also meant i could pull the CF Eclipse extensions in for the little bit of Cold Fusion work i’d been doing. Therefore negating the need for dreamweaver all together. I’ve got to admit, i’m not a fan of Zend Studio stand alone, but the eclipse version is pretty darn good.
Now to get a few hundred dollars together before my 30 day trial runs out!
Here’s another enthusiastic vote for Eclipse, possibly the greatest IDE known to humanity. Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic, but Eclipse has changed my life.
I’m currently using Eclipse PDT (PHP Development Tools – basically a version of Eclipse with all the “stuff” for PHP) and it’s great. Besides offering autocomplete of built-in PHP functions, it also does that for any functions/classes you’ve created. The only thing I wish it had was advanced refactoring, but perhaps the Eclipse JDT (Java version), which I use at work, has spoiled me.
But perhaps the best part about Eclipse (besides being FOSS) is the large array of plugins available. This is really what sold me on it. Having integrated SVN access, and the ability to add/edit stuff on Trac within your IDE is a really nice feature that I simply couldn’t live without.
I too, was once a die-hard user of “advanced” text editors like UltraEdit (did all my coding with it), and was hesitant to switch over to an IDE, which is typically used for compiled languages. However, Eclipse really got me, and now I’m hooked.
At MacWorld I took a peek at Coda and it looked like a great alternative to DW on the Mac. Haven’t had a chance to give it a test run yet.
I’ve stuck with version 8 for exactly this reason. It’s sad; I really like DreamWeaver, too.
I use Dreamweaver CS3 on windows vista and I haven’t had any problems at all. Works fine for me
Personally I’ve had no problems with DW CS3 on Win XP Pro. But on the text side I also use and love UltraEdit — I happily give it highest rating, but it’s not free. Not expensive though, but a good turbo-boosted, souped up editor!
Matt- looks like someone already passed along my email address above, but if you’d like to ping me directly I’d be happy to look into the crashes for you.
Many people I know who ran the upgrade had problems. But I’ve never experienced problems when you completely rid yourself of the previous version and install fresh.
Matt, could you please remove my post with scott’s address as obviously some of your readers abuse your site to contact scott to request free software, etc.
Thanks all of you (you know who you are) for that. I was just trying to help out matt with respect to Dreamweaver.
Scott, I apologize publicly. It was not my intention to expose you to the nasty side of the internet.
First of all, I’m really surprised that WordPress development occurs on a PC running Dreamweaver. Were it not for the link to this article in my WordPress dashboard I would not have ever known. Guess I don’t feel so bad for clinging to PC/DW for so many years.
Matt, for the longest time I was a Dreamweaver/PC guy. When Ultradev came out I was ecstatic – finally I could use MS Access databases to power dynamic websites! After building countless blogs and sites in ASP and a few in PHP I started getting tired of supporting all the CMS’s I’d built.
About this time, Vista was coming, and Coda for the mac was released. I wanted no part of Vista, so I bought an intel macbook pro and a copy of Coda and began the painful procedure of switching and handcoding (everything I had ever done in DW was using extensions and built-in server actions.)
Testing various CMS systems, I landed for awhile in Expression Engine. We had a good relationship, and we still talk sometimes, but lately I’ve been spending a lot of time after hours in the loving arms of WordPress.
I’m not writing plugins, just modifying themes and other light work, but I’ve found Coda to be nothing short of the perfect tool for the job. I imagine if you’re editing and managing PHP files for WordPress development you’ll find it up to the task.
Switching to the Mac was hard. Coding HTML by hand was frustrating when Dreamweaver used to do it all for me. But now that I’m using WordPress instead of building my own CMS’s, I really don’t NEED Dreamweaver. And that’s where Coda fits in so nicely – it’s really the perfect tool for the job – php and css editing and file transfer. It’s very well thought out; you aren’t thinking about using a tool, you’re just doing the job: you aren’t operating a hammer, you’re driving a nail – you’re building something.
Just last week I had to turn out a movie trailer site very quickly. I tried to do it in CS3 and got nowhere. It was stable on my mac, but I just wasn’t as efficient a worker in CS3 as I was now hand-coding – after only about 6 months without my beloved Dreamweaver! I never thought I’d say it – but coding by hand was actually easier.
So kick it around. It’s not like you couldn’t justify the purchase of one of these sweet, sleek iMac 24’s in the name of product development, right? Even if it ended up gathering dust, at least you tried.
So ends my impassioned plea for Coda. Keep up the good work, Matt, and thanks for making my job easier with WordPress.
I thought I was the only one experiencing the program crashing when I edit parts of a PHP file. Tsk.
I’m a huge supporter of Notepad++. SFTP used to be a huge issue for me – but I’ve grown out of that. If I’m working hard, I boot up Ubuntu inside a VM just to use the SFTP integration.
I have a slightly “older” system with 512 MB of shared memory… unfortunately DDR1. This meant that I couldn’t install the trial of CS3. From what I’ve read here, it doesn’t seem like I’m missing out on a lot.
1. Use a Mac
2. Use Coda… it’s amazing. Uses Transmit’s engine for FTP (solid, even supports SSH Keys). Good feature set, well made.
Just another plug for Notepad++ – been the best editor I’ve used for code. Lightweight, fast and gets the job done.
Notepad++, and FileZilla.
I like the editor-solution, but may give Aptana some time. I may need to adjust my tools, to have a local WordPress WAMP install, and easy updating of the remote host.
Did you mean “whither Dreamweaver” as in “where is Dreamweaver” or that Dreamweaver is withered? If it was a spoonerism it was a wonderful one.
Good catch Charles. 🙂
I use Dreamweaver at work (my boss prefers vim … don’t ask) but I prefer Smultron on my Mac at home. It has the regex find and replace and an extensible platform for adding new languages. And it’s 100% cheaper than Adobe’s effort.
I’m using/have been using CS3 error less for about a year now.
Maybe it has something to do with their acquisition by Adobe. What u think? 😀
Have a look at e: http://www.e-texteditor.com/. It’s a TextMate clone on Windows and thanks to the shrinking dollar/soaring euro, it’s even less expensive than TextMate.
Hey Matt, you should be giving Coda a try. From what I have read above, it might be just the right tool for you (and is ways cheaper!) as a matter of fact, if you only buy CS3 for Dreamweavers sake, you could be buying an iMac and Coda for roughly the same price and would get a better OS along the way.
Dreamweaver is working well for me; I haven’t seen a single crash so far. My only concern was its loading time. It’s quite slow compared to other editors I’ve tried.
On my new PC, I have Dreamweaver CS3, Notepad++ and Aptana. But so far I’ve seen myself most often working in Aptana because it’s great.
It brings the best of both worlds. Dreamweaver, many of whose features are found in Aptana. Notepad++, being free software as well as being a superlatively fast program, like Aptana.
You ought to try it as the previous commentators have suggested.
wpcandy wrote a very nice entry about coda – in the comments i participated, we discussed what other solutions are possible to get this wonderful coda tool for pc user. and i think dreamweaver, in what version ever, is the best tool to work with.
i also do my works with this tool and i still in a learning process. if one day a similar program like coda for mac, would be possible for windows, no doubt – i would switch
what i like the most is, the interesting extensions like “wordpress tag-stention” from bas wenneker.
i ´ve never had any problems with dw, but im sure i only use it for nearly 20% – and photoshop is another story 🙂
@nick- coda and transmit are the tools. in this combination its wonderful to work with
Hi,
well… I went through using funny editors such as Dreamweaver, and then I discovered that all of them are too intrusie,and always put lots of stuff you wouldn’t want to have in your code. So I’ve decied to code everything by hand, plus I’m using something called Programmers Notepad – it doe nothing except for highlightimg the syntax. Really good one
cheers
a.d.
Depending on your workload and familiarity with DW, you may or may not want to try a different IDE. If not, then I hope the Dreamweaver team are hard at work ironing out the problems. If you are up for a change though I heartily recommend Aptana, which from looking at the list of features you use, has everything you want. Plus some sweet extras such as code-hinting for JavaScript libraries.
I abandoned Dreamweaver for jEdit many years ago, but Aptana has made me abandon jEdit, I’ve not looked back since.
I am forced to use Dreamweaver @ work and I despise it. Notepad++ is by far the best editor I have used.
Coda is very tempting since I’m on an Intel Mac and Dreamweaver 8 runs a bit wonky (compared to how it runs on my G5). However, I’ve got 70 or so static html pages tied together using DW’s fantastic template functionality. I don’t want to lose that if I move to Coda. I’m leaning on using my education benefit and go to CS3 on the Intel Mac.
Now if Coda had a way to import/replicate templates…
Heck, I use UltraEdit32 for most of my coding needs. If I *have* to use a WYSIWYG tool, I used Dreamweaver 3 or 4, depending on the machine I’m on. Mostly, though, I use whatever text editor I have handy.
You should try e – Text Editor
It seems very strange and not logically, but it helped me. I’v done exactly this what is written in the Adobe-Forum at 10/30/2007 12:37:06 AM.
Greetings fron Switzerland, Uwe
Dude, why GoLive ever went the way of the dodo is beyond me… maybe it was the consistent, crippling crashes that got worse by version, and were NEVER addressed by Adobe.
I just converted some older GoLive sites to Dreamweaver CS3, and let me tell you… I’m wishing I never did. Dreamweaver crashes, sputs, and hacks like crazy. Sheesh. Anyone out there know of an editor that has the intuitiveness of GoLive with the “this isn’t the last version” of Dreamweaver?
Anyone else in my boat?
My DW8 isn’t broken. I fail to see why I should fix it.
I generally stick to eclipse PDT for PHP work, and Microsoft’s Visual Web Developer for CSS/HTML/XML work. the auto-completion and code validation is far superior in both enviroments. Subclipse is great for working on wordpress.
Its typical with the Adobe apps now. They are the new Microsoft in the graphics world. No more competition, no more drive to make code efficient.
While everyone’s trying to use AJAX or MooTools, they make Flash player even more bloated and now trying to introduce AIR.
Dreamweaver 8 sucked on OSX, CS3 is much more stable, albeit SLOOOOW loading, just like the rest of the Adobe apps.
PC Dreamweaver 8 was better than Mac DW8, but now, its switched and PC CS3 crashes as my old DW8 did for my Mac.
I fear this is the problem when a company now monopolizes all the graphic apps.
I can’t think of anything good or better in my latest Adobe Suite that wasn’t more efficient or faster in CS.
Bloatware sucks.
When I read the following, I thought perhaps you had lifted it out of a thread on the wordpress.com forum describing using the TinyMCE visual editor which is soooo borked right now. P tags randomly being turned into div tags and both disappearing at random in posts, paragraph breaks disappearing when you save or edit a post or page.
I’m surprised that you have good experience with project management in Dreamweaver. It’s been required where I work and the project management aspect is atrocious – always reverting to older code and stepping on toes (and that’s DW8) – I’d hate to think that CS3 has more bugs to worry about.
Wow
Seems every time someone (macromedia) gets a good idea, and hatches a good product as a result of that good idea, someone else (Adobe) comes along and proceeds to screw it all up.
They should have left Dreamweaver alone I think. Hey, if it aint broke, don’t fix it.
Adobe is/was fine, all by itself (I’ve got PhotoshopCS / ImageReadyCS).
And Dreamweaver “was” fine by itself too. I’ve got DreamweaverMX 2004 / FlashMX 2004.
Nothing has been right since the two got together though, from what I’ve heard.
So far, I haven’t ventured to try any Macromedia product that falls in under the Adobe name.
I’ll save mixing oil and water for my salads.
I have been using it on windows since version 3 and I love it. It crashes after about 9 hours of coding and has to be restarted pretty consistantly. and the FTP transfer is a toy compared to cute ftp or other ftp programs. I can’t find anything better for web developers and web maintenance content editors to work together to rapidly develop web sites on a tight budget and timeline.
Like you I’ve always been one of those who my fellow developers mock for not using vim as my editor. However, I too find DW a good fit for me as far as my PHP syntax highlighting, code cleanup, and as a general FTP/SFTP client.
I’m sorry to hear of your crashes with CS3. I switched to Macs a little over a year ago and I’ve not seen any major crashes with CS3 in comparison to DW 8. There have been one or two every month or two but nothing insane as what you’ve described. Hope you’re plight is heard by the DW team.
Wow… I use to code in homesite also! I was very stubborn and finally moved to dream weaver, but I have never looked back.
Just recently I was thinking about looking around and seeing what is available.
I started on homesite in 1999… not sure what year I moved up to Dreamweaver, but I am still using DreamWeaver 8… I guess I wont be upgrading anytime soon.
Huh, am I the only person who uses Dreamweaver CS3 on Windows and doesn’t have issues with it? Mine runs smoothly, never crashes, has no weird memory leak problems…I really like it. I’ve used Dreamweaver since v1, and I plan to stick with it.
Now, I don’t like DW’s FTP interface, I prefer WS_FTP, and I don’t like how bloated the interface on CS3 is, but those are really my only gripes about it. Maybe my computer has some obscure “Make Adobe Apps Stable” setting or something, I didn’t know anyone had these sorts of problems with CS3. I did have stability issues with DW 2004, which I replaced with CS3 when it came out.
I use Notepad++ and the FTP_synchronize plugin which lets me download, edit and upload files on the server from within Notepad++.
Wow, it’s really sad im reading this having just installed a copy of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 into my PC.
And why not just use Quanta+ (for example) instead of that utterly expensive bloatware ?
Notepadd++(for php) and Aptana(for all the helpful css suggestions) seem to be great. I’ve improved at css so much so I use notepad++ all the way now with the built in ftp plugin. Just have to do the occasional google for the more obscure css properties.
This makes me glad I was too lazy to upgrade from 8!!
I always use dreamweaver, and 8 versión make some strange things like disapear some boxes or images, i used to think was a memory problem in my computer, but i´ve installed DW 8 in new work computer and make same thing.
So is risky to me upgrade to DW CS3.
Its FTP has problems with cgi-bin files persmisions. FTP connections works slow and uses a lot of CPU´s attention, but is useful to mantain syncroniced the site
Strange, I updated from Studio 8 to Web Premium CS3, and have been happy with the new software. I’ve had it over half a year, and it hasn’t given me any problems. I’m on an XP Media Center desktop, bought just ahead of Vista’s release.
Ever since Adobe started the CS series – no matter if it’s Dreamweaver or Photoshop – the apps kept getting worse. Random crashes in Dreamweaver are the top of the iceberg, there’s much more crap that might only happen once – but when it happens, your ship sinks. Dreamweaver 8 + PS 7 are still the fastest and most reliable choices if it comes to Adobe imho.
mac:
– apple+f: sometimes the search window just doesn’t get the focus and appears behind an other window
– dw crashes at least once a week
– if you mark text on a page the “properties” window just appears – even if deactivated in the window tab (shortcut to close it again: apple+f3)
…
Nothing has been right since Macromedia was acquired by Adobe…
I’m running CS3 and It works pretty good for me. Have way more issues in Visual Studio. 🙂
I was going to mention Aptana but I see someone else already did.
And I am glad I didn’t upgrade to CS3…
I’ve been using DW CS3/ Xp sp2 for a while now. On multiple computers it has had the same issue. The cache sometimes gets corrupted and so when I open a specific document it always freezes. It happened to a couple of people in my office. There is a fix where you delete the cache and it works fine after that. Otherwise I love the program and the new code folding. I think the answer is here http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb402776&sliceId=2
Dreamweaver is my first IDE for Web Developer, but recently I decided to use more simple text editor such as Coda, TextMate or Notepad++ on Windows 😉
I’ve run across the same issues with Dreamweaver CS3 and have removed it from my machine….never to be re-installed.
I just tried out Microsoft’s Expression Web…not a bad editor for simple stuff but not sure how well it will handle hard-core Web coding like some of you folks seem to do.
TextEdit rocks! 😉
I am sticking with Dreamweaver 8 for now. I have heard way to many bad things about CS3 and this post has sealed the deal.Thanks for the heads up!
PSPad Editor too is quite good for PHP! Has an inbuilt FTP Client and all. Been using it since quite a while!
i use homesite on windows, but i use (and am on the testing team for) bluefish on linux most of the time… i’ve looked at dreamweaver, but it’s too “feature rich” for my tastes, and doesn’t do what i want it to do anywhere near as much as either homesite or bluefish… i’ve also come across Nvu for linux, that i think may be on the same par as homesite, which would mean that i could get away from windows all together…
I think since Adobe bought into them, they decided to cheapen their code. I loved it when Macromedia was there. No problems. I still use it, but not as often as I want to. I sometimes resort to hand editing. Hopefully the next release will help.
1) Dreamweaver is based in Adobe’s San Fransisco Offices. 2) I have been using DW for development for a few years too, and I haven’t had many issues using it in windows xp. In fact I’ve had no issues except for a small problem with their uploader since I installed CS3 in august.
CS3 crashing this end also…bah.
I was using GoLive back in the mid to late 90’s before Adobe bought it and it was a great product, but not perfect. Adobe bought GoLive and promptly turned it into an unusable product within two upgrade cycles. I can only speculate that they didn’t know how to fix it, so they bought Macromedia to get Dreamweaver, and will do their magic to turn it into a brick as well. If someone had some money and a team of good code-jockies, they could come out with a competing product, go through a few upgrade cycles and at some point Adobe would buy the new competition and continue their cycle of “fixing” what isn’t broken.
For only the editor, I couldn’t stand with the heavy application like dreamweaver. Coda, much better!
Awwwww… you have ruined me. Now I am going to notice it every time DWCS3 crashes. I guess I had just come to expect it.
The main thing I use it for anymore is modifying templates… I like the ability to click on something and easily figure out where the CSS is located, and choose whether to edit directly in DW or open in TopStyle. Still, it’s probably overkill for how I use it.
TopStyle, Notepad++ and SFTPdrive are all way more useful than DW.
Looking to move completely to Linux ASAP.
Transmit + BBEdit for the win!
Want a life-altering suggestion?
Eclipse PDT + Zend Plugin + Aptana Pro Plugin + Subclipse
You will never, ever want to use anything else. It’s the best of all worlds. One thing I always missed when I stopped using Dreamweaver was the easy CTRL-SHIFT-U to upload a file. This has it. Plus:
– Advanced find-replace with regex
– Autocomplete of all PHP functions, plus all your custom classes/methods/functions. Plus it can pull in PEAR packages and other 3rd party frameworks and auto-complete them too.
– Integrated SVN support
– Integrated Firefox, Safari, Opera, and IE for testing right in the IDE
– Wizards for tables and other HTML elements
It takes everything that is great about Dreamweaver, Zend Studio, Aptana, and Eclipse, and combines them into one IDE.
Best. IDE. Ever.
And free. 🙂
The CS3 series really takes me down except Flash CS3. And it really works very strange in Vista. I cannot even install it in my Vista. Anyway, 8.0 series is enough for 90% of the job.
Dreamweaver CS3 is working fine for me on a PC with WinXP! I use it almost every day with no problems.
Funny you should write this post. The day before yesterday I downloaded the trial version from Adobe’s website so that I could play around with it and see if it was worth purchasing. The damn thing crashed my pc and not it’s not a hardware problem on my end. I quickly got rid of it but it still took half hour to uninstall it then another half maintenance work in safe mode to clean everything up. A little buggy perhaps?
ps – I sent you an email about something which you may or may not be aware of.
I still use Dreamweaver 3 !!! It’s just so pure. — Grace
Dreamweaver 8 works like a charm on Linux anyway (use wine-doors to install it with one click).
I couldn’t find a substantial new feature in Dreamweaver CS 3 anyway (except maybe Spry, which you can use anyway), so why not switch back to 8?
It’s not Windows people! It’s not like Mac’s are perfect, the reason they get no viruses (and crash), is because they’re so expensive and useless that no ones buys them.
I have the same problems on CS3 on Windows (and on my mac laptop)… It’s Dreamweaver that crashes, not Windows.
I just wish they would dump the WYSIWYG junk from it completely. Just strip it all out.
Switched from Windows XP to Mac 10.4 a few years back and the change wasn’t as easy as I’d like but I’m glad I made it as everything is more stable.
I’m currently using TextWrangler, Dreamweaver 8, and CSSEdit at home. Yes thats a lot of feature overlap but it allows me to concentrate on specific parts of design when I need to. Plus they are rock solid for me. Using Dreamweaver 8 at work on Windows Vista Business is fine but has glitches when connecting to databases.
Coda is good but I still prefer my collection of apps. Aptana looks much more advanced than the last time I had a look at it and might be worth my time now to play around with it though it’s database support doesn’t seem as robust as Dreamweaver.
Thanks for all the info as I’ve been contemplating the move to CS3.
I’m still on DW8, I hated CS3 when I tried it (luckily, i opted for a trial) 🙂
I had some issues with Dreamweaver CS3 conflicting with some other software, which seemed to make it crash when I’d edit certain parts of a file. It would consistently crash when I edited those same places. I reinstalled Windows and it’s worked fine now for 6+ months. I’m running Vista Ultimate on a quadcore w/ 4GB of RAM. Love me some Dreamweaver CS3 (after I got through those issues / cussing every 5 minutes).
Hey Matt, if you don’t mind, you could give Eclipse with PDT a try. It works for me when I’m coding CakePHP applications. Cheers.
I have several Issues with DW CS3, I am using Windows XP SP3, it is crashing anytime when I am editing CSS files and editing at the same time the html file. It is a waste of time or What? Recently I found APTANA, is amazing, allow me to fix the issue in the HTML and then I can open again the file in DW, before that the file Crash over and over. APTANA My friends is free, no cost If i met APTANA before I wouldn’t buy DW CS3. From my standpoint Adobe is not supporting the applications as Macromedia did. Since all Macromedia Products became Adobe all the problem stands. It is a Shame…
+1 for using Eclipse. It’s a great IDE for most languages and it’s 100% free.
Quite frankly if you’re paying for Dreamweaver to code PHP, you’re doing it wrong.