Macromedia Studio 8

[rjcuser]

Are there any issues with regarding using the new Studio 8 with the latest version of Actinic? Is it still fully compatible? Cheers, Richard

[magicalwonders]

Hello Richard,

You might want to check out this thread http://community.actinic.com/showthr...ht=Dreamweaver

Myles

[jont]

Richard - how do you find the new CSS stuff in Dreamweaver?

[Bob Isaac]

I have just moved up from DW 4 to DW 8 and it has changed a lot. I like the dynamic links to the CSS file, was this in earlier versions? This will certainly improve productivity.

I have always done most of my work in code so all these bells and whistles are quite remarkable. The validation comes up with some unexpected results, such as not liking <BR /> and other similar closed tags.

Having read another thread about a possible issue with the Actinic extension I have not tried this yet. So far I am quite please with what I have seen.

Bob

[Stealth-F117]

Richard - how do you find the new CSS stuff in Dreamweaver?

It's pretty damn good - I have started to use Dreamweaver MX2004 after using Netobject Fusion for over a year - have to say Dreamweaver is miles better - I lot more in depth and flexible and you have full control over what you can do - something that Netobjects was sadly lacking.

[jont]

I have started to use Dreamweaver MX2004 after using Netobject Fusion for over a year - have to say Dreamweaver is miles better

I had MX and upgraded to MX2004 which handled the CSS much much better - looking at the new v8 on their website and the CSS seems to have been taken further still - wondering if it is worth the leap again if substantially better

[Bob Isaac]

I have stuck with the 'old ways' of doing things for a long time, never liked the way some of the web design apps have taken control away. But with the more complex designs that can now be created I find that DW8 is going to get a lot of use.

The way it handles CSS is simply great. I only use the 'enter', space bar and down arrows keys now most of the time.

One thing that puzzles me is that with the automated system of inserting values and attributes, the validator still pops an error that the value/attribute it just inserted is not valid??

Bob

[jont]

The validation comes up with some unexpected results, such as not liking <BR /> and other similar closed tags.

May be worth checking what doctype you have specified. The official tag is <br /> but not all the older browsers recognise this hence the space is used as a legacy workaround

[Bob Isaac]

To be very very pedantic you should use <br /> as this is an empty selector tag and will future proof you - but it will work as <br>

.... the XHTML rules say you should use <br /> to be syntactically correct ... although <br> will work just fine at the moment.

See: http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=16312

I've used <BR /> for some time now. I would be interested in others views on this.

Bob

[jont]

Take a look at the W3 School page at http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_br.asp

[jont]

Also w3.org point c.2 on empty elements :

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#guidelines

[retekdirect]

You say the validation throws up <br /> as invalid - are you validating using XHTML or HTML specs? That's about the only reason i can think of that it wouldn't like it.

And yep, if you're writing XHTML-compliant code, all tags should be closed. The examples i would have given are the same as on the W3 site that Jont posted above, <img /> and <br />

<br> and most other older or deprecated tags (<font>, et al) will continue to work in most browsers, but only because they still support old tags for ... backwards compatibility, i guess.


I've been creating XHTML-compliant sites for a whiley now (not my work one, sadly impossible) - it keeps you honest and encourages a solid coding style (nesting elements properly, and promotes the use of CSS).

[Bob Isaac]

Thanks for the links. I have tried using all the options in DW8 for validation of XHTML but it still throws up the error. Never mind, the pages display correctly in all the regular browsers.

Bob