The official CS5 announcement will be April 12 sign up at http://cs5launch.adobe.com/?sdid=FDSEN to view the announcement live.

Well, we’ll soon find out what Adobe has in store for us. The official Creative Suite CS5 announcement is scheduled for April 12: http://cs5launch.adobe.com/?sdid=FDSEN

I’m compiling my list of most wanted features for the upcoming CS5 version of Dreamweaver. What would you most like to see in Dreamweaver CS5: bug fixes, user interface enhancements, new features, support for additional web standards? Or maybe there’s something that you’d like to see removed. Whichever it is, just add your wants to the comments and please try to be as specific as possible.

If you use the Dreamweaver Extension for BrowserLab (and I recommend it) you should update it.

Information and the download files are available at http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/browserlab.html

Note: Read the instructions carefully:

• Installation requires installing two extensions.
• If updating it is necessary to manually remove the old BrowserLab extensions.
• If you’re installing for the first time, make sure to install the Extension Manager CS4 2.1 patch before installing the extensions.

Important Update: I’ve recently seen a report that this bug can affect the selection of folders using the Find in menu of the Search and Replace dialog. Obviously searching and replacing in the wrong folder can have very dire consequences. So, if you choose to use the Find in Folder… option in Dreamweaver for Windows, be very careful to insure that the correct folder is selected.

And, of course, it’s always a good idea to back up your site before you do extensive search and replace operations across multiple files.

The issue: While defining a site using the Windows version of Dreamweaver, when the users tries to set the local root folder by browsing into and selecting it, the local root folder is set one directory higher than the one he’s chosen.

The (very unsatisfactory) solution: Type in the directory name manually OR select a directory inside the one you actually want to set as the root folder.

More info: I’ve experienced this issue but wasn’t able to get any concrete information until now. Now thanks to a response from David Powers to my post on the Adobe forums we at least know it’s a “known issue.” Here’s David’s response:

…when I reported it as a bug to Adobe, an engineer […] said the problem had already been identified internally by Adobe on Windows 7. I was originally alerted to the problem by Al Sparber, who told me it happened after the Service Pack 2 “upgrade” to Vista. I didn’t have SP2 installed, so I tested my version of CS4 (on 32 bit Vista). There was no problem selecting the local root folder. I then installed SP2, and immediately tested it again: the root folder was not selected.

It affects all versions of Dreamweaver, not just CS4. Adobe’s comment was that SP2 has obviously brought Vista in line with Windows 7. I have no idea if or when a fix will be made available. It’s certainly annoying, but it doesn’t prevent the program from working; and I don’t create new sites every day, so it’s something I can live with.

Added Info: A report that this bug also affect linking to external CSS (and I assume JavaScript) files: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2197998#2197998

The response to my What version of Dreamweaver do you use? poll wasn’t overwhelming but I got enough responses (20 and counting) to make the results interesting. I’m going to keep the poll open in hopes of getting additional feedback(as I get more responses, I’ll add them here) but here’s a summary of the results so far:

Respondents were split just about down the middle between version CS3 and CS4 with 9 people indicating they used the newest version and 10 still using CS3 (although one of the CS3 users indicated he had dropped Dreamweaver in favor of another program). There was one holdout still using DW8 who indicated that he was happy with the program and didn’t plan to update (although lower cost could change his mind).

Not surprisingly, seven of the CS3 users indicated the cost of the upgrade was keeping them from moving up to CS4 and all of those folks plus the DW8 user indicated that lower cost was the main thing that would convince them to upgrade (although six of them would also like to see more features).

The new features folks would like to see include:

• Built-in integration with BrowserLab.
• ASP.NET support
• An Better FTP Interface.
• Less costly way for clients to update their sites than Contribute (they might want to check out CS4′s InContext Editing)
• html 5 support
• ability to work without css
• Support for all Spry widgets
• Making it easier to recover Site Definitions

Thanks to everyone who responded and, for everyone else, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to answer the survey questions now.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I’ve been busily working to expand the amount of information we provide here at DWcourse.

Well, after some long hours and late nights, I’m proud to announce the release of Let’s Get Started with Dreamweaver, my introductory mini-course to Dreamweaver.

It’s a FREE 50+ page PDF that walks you step-by-step through the most basic steps you need to master when starting to work with Dreamweaver.

If you’ve been working with Dreamweaver for years, this information is probably old hat to you by now. However, if you’re relatively new to Dreamweaver this mini-course covers everything I wish someone had told me when I first started using DW.

It covers the kinds of things that a lot of people screw up early on, get frustrated with, and then quit before even giving the program a real chance.

Ok, enough with the sales pitch. If you’re interested just go enter your name & email address and I’ll send it over to you.

If you’re already registered for our newsletter you don’t need to sign up again, there’s a copy on its way to your inbox shortly.

Anyway, I really hope this helps and as always, if you have any questions feel free to email me or message me on Twitter.

We’ve completed the move of DWcourse over to our main server with Hostgator!

The move is part of my plans to increase the offerings here at DWcourse but – ironically – I’ve been bogged down in some of the details for a few days and haven’t had time to post. I’ll be back on my regular schedule soon and plan to have something special to offer you to make up for the inconvenience.

So stayed tuned and, if you notice any lingering glitches from the move, please let me know.

Thanks!

I’ve recently had a number of folks  inquire about domain registration and hosting. I recommend keeping them separate for a few reasons that I’ll try to go into in a future post. In the mean time, here are my recommendations based upon my own experience and those of other web professionals:

Domain registration:GoDaddy

Web Hosting: HostGator

Full disclosure: These are affiliate links, using them for purchases won’t cost you more, but you’ll be supporting DWcourse.

If you have a question about creating websites using Adobe Dreamweaver, we’ll help you find the answer. It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner struggling with how to define your site or an old pro having an issue with CSS, we’ll do our best to help you.

Simply add your question as a comment to this post and we’ll try to get you an answer in ASAP in a future post. If you have a website that demonstrates the issue you want us to address, please include the URI with your question.

Welcome to dwcourse.com, your resource for Dreamweaver Tips, Trick & Tutorials. We’ve got big plans for the site including free resources, a newsletter and in-depth tutorials. Check back mid-April and see what we have in store.