I Love Dreamweaver, Except When It Acts Crappy
Macromedia... er... Adobe Dreamweaver is one program I use almost every single day. Aside from Firefox, it is my most-used application. I love it.
Except when it acts crappy.
In the many years I've used Dreamweaver, there have been some encounters with craposity. Usually, this occurs when I've upgrade to a new version -- which I do with religious fervor. Most recently, I upgraded to version CS3 and I ran into this bit of crap today:
The only thing more crappy than software misbehaving is misbehaving software that gives you utterly unhelpful error messages.
"An error occurred"? Oh, thank you so much for that news flash, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3! Could you possibly give me a clue as to why?
Dreamweaver threw this error when I tried to use its Web photo album (Javascript) command. Unfortunately, the photo album is something I use frequently and so I cannot just ignore the problem and hope it'll go away. So far I have found nothing useful through Google or the Adobe support site. The only suggestion that seems remotely helpful is to completely re-install DW and Fireworks (which DW uses to generate the photo album).
This is a royal pain the ass because the Adobe Creative Suite 3 installation -- of which DW and FW are components -- is painfully slow. I mean, it took something like 2 hours for me to install it initially. Plus, it forces you to close all Web browsers while you're installing it. So, your computer is essentially useless while it's churning along.
Man! What a piece of crap!
Update 8/30/07: In desperation, I tried the uninstall/reinstall method. Took about half an hour to uninstall DW and FW. I don't know for sure because I started it going in my office and then went home for the day. The next day, I began the reinstallation. Timed it. Clocked in at 45 minutes. Sheesh.
But, of course, the big question is, Did it fix the problem?
Answer: nope.
I guess it's time to give up on this function of Dreamweaver. Yesterday, I experimented with Photoshop's Web albums. They work just fine. I'll start using them instead of DW's.
This makes me suspicious. Is Adobe sabotaging a formerly Macromedia product? Are they making DW and FW buggy so that users will shift over to Photoshop? Do they just not care about fixing DW/FW issues?
Or am I just being paranoid?
Except when it acts crappy.
In the many years I've used Dreamweaver, there have been some encounters with craposity. Usually, this occurs when I've upgrade to a new version -- which I do with religious fervor. Most recently, I upgraded to version CS3 and I ran into this bit of crap today:
The only thing more crappy than software misbehaving is misbehaving software that gives you utterly unhelpful error messages.
"An error occurred"? Oh, thank you so much for that news flash, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3! Could you possibly give me a clue as to why?
Dreamweaver threw this error when I tried to use its Web photo album (Javascript) command. Unfortunately, the photo album is something I use frequently and so I cannot just ignore the problem and hope it'll go away. So far I have found nothing useful through Google or the Adobe support site. The only suggestion that seems remotely helpful is to completely re-install DW and Fireworks (which DW uses to generate the photo album).
This is a royal pain the ass because the Adobe Creative Suite 3 installation -- of which DW and FW are components -- is painfully slow. I mean, it took something like 2 hours for me to install it initially. Plus, it forces you to close all Web browsers while you're installing it. So, your computer is essentially useless while it's churning along.
Man! What a piece of crap!
Update 8/30/07: In desperation, I tried the uninstall/reinstall method. Took about half an hour to uninstall DW and FW. I don't know for sure because I started it going in my office and then went home for the day. The next day, I began the reinstallation. Timed it. Clocked in at 45 minutes. Sheesh.
But, of course, the big question is, Did it fix the problem?
Answer: nope.
I guess it's time to give up on this function of Dreamweaver. Yesterday, I experimented with Photoshop's Web albums. They work just fine. I'll start using them instead of DW's.
This makes me suspicious. Is Adobe sabotaging a formerly Macromedia product? Are they making DW and FW buggy so that users will shift over to Photoshop? Do they just not care about fixing DW/FW issues?
Or am I just being paranoid?
Labels: Adobe, Dreamweaver, Fireworks
posted by Jeremy Butler at 4:20 PM
15 Comments:
This may or may not work for you.
In my case I was getting this same error. I had the previous version of DW/FW that came with Studio 8. I uninstalled these versions before I installed Creative Suite 3 Web Premium.
I checked my preferences in DW CS3 in "File Types / Editors" the path to Fireworks was still pointing to the "Macromedia" directory under "Program Files". I changed this to "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Fireworks CS3\Fireworks.exe" and it works fine. (I am not sure if the path to Fireworks is different for other versions of FW that were not bundled as the Creative Suite Web Premium Edition.)
Hope this helps you too.
-German
I tried german's fix and... it worked!
This is a major surprise to me, because I've run into this path problem before in other situations and so I thought I'd already fixed that. But no. When I checked today, the path was wrong. And after I fixed it, suddenly the Web photo album began working again.
Thanks to german for the good advice! And no thanks to Adobe for (1) the unhelpful error message ("Fireworks can not be found" is all I needed to be told.) and (2) its online help system not suggesting this simple fix.
I like dreamweaver, don't get me wrong, but have always found it buggy. Make a point to save when you don't think you need to, close everything else running that does not have to run and it is tolerable. The problem is there is no real competing product out there. They bought Homesite which I had switched to some time ago. This was the only real competitor I can think of.
Thank you very much for keeping such a great blog. It was extremely helpful for me today! I had the same problem with Dreamweaver photo album and I followed German's advise and it worked!
German, Thanks a million for your advice!
thanks for the post and the assist. still, the complaint is valid. why can't the error message direct the user to the solution?
Thank you SO much!! I was beginning to think I had totally wasted my money on Dreamweaver....
Fantastic - Thanks a million German!
I seriously thought I had lost my mind trying to figure out 'an error occurred'... geez! THANK YOU so much for saving my day!!!!
Searching and searching the web, finally stumbled upon this blog. I had the exact same error, and the Fireworks path update worked perfect. Thank you !!!
Thanksssss so much. You save my day. German you are great!!! really appreciate this!
Canadian
My god I thank you for this advice!
I was creating (upgrading) my dad's website (for his birthday 01.01) and I ran into this error while trying to create a photo album. I was totally depressed until I found this blog!
God bless Google, and you!
THANKS GERMAN!!!!
The preferences fixed it. It's so strange, I haven't had "Macromedia" Fireworks on the computer in ages. But man, it solved the problem instantly!
I love German!!!!!
I cited you in an article of mine, I hope you like it! :)
Post a Comment
<< Home