I need to rant. Dreamweaver has the most frustrating, nearly non-functional implementation of FTP ever. You would think that a product that has been around for over a decade would excel at the basic neccessities of web design. Chief among these is the ability to manage the workflow for a designer wishing to edit files directly on a production server with FTP.
Dreamweaver allows this, but does so in a way that will probably ruin your life.
For instance, opening a file on an FTP server causes Dreamweaver to download a local version of the file, allow you to edit it, and then publish the changes upon save. This is really great until you accidentally press “Put” and all of those local file you forgot existed are uploaded to overwrite all of those new versions you laboriously tweaked from another computer.
But of course you will only get to experience this malady if you are actually able to keep a connection to your FTP server, which Dreamweaver is unable to do. I swear half of my development time is spent staring at a “Waiting for server” dialog. Dreamweaver is completely unable to revive a connection that is stale. You have to close it and reopen it, pray, cuss, and kick a small child to get it to work.
Do Adobe developers even use this piece of crap?
When it comes to syntax highlighting and things of that nature, Dreamweaver seems to keep up with most other editors, but who cares…I mean simple pieces of software like TextPad easily keep up with these features at a much more reasonable cost.
So thank you Dreamweaver for ruining my life. I hope to return the favor someday.
In the meantime, can someone suggest a resonable alternative that won’t ruin my life?
#1 by Terry Edger at June 1st, 2009
I’ve been using Dreamweaver for many years and I never have used their FTP program. I am really pissed with what Adobe is doing with the program. I tried CS4 and didn’t see enough improvement to justify the price. When I uninstalled CS4, CS3 no longer previews in any browser. Reinstalling CS3 didn’t solve the problem either. CRAP
#2 by Dave Doolin at June 2nd, 2009
Aptana,
from aptana dot com.
Much less suckage than usual, and better than HTML-Kit. And I’m an emacs user mostly.
#3 by Dains at June 5th, 2009
Adobe is now the Microsoft of the Internet. I gave up on DW’s FTP nonsense forever ago and now develop locally on WordPress using Uniform Server, then upload with FileZilla Portable.
#4 by Terry Edger at June 5th, 2009
Well, I have to apologize to Adobe. DW4 was not the cause of my problem. (Although they, as expected, never emailed me back) I do agree, the first time I hit the put button, I went running to my FTP program. I’ve found i have to re-install Dreamweaver about once a year. It does get used 10x as much as any other program I use.
#5 by Eridal at June 14th, 2009
SciTE didn’t change my life, but make it happier every day!
http://scintilla.org/SciTE
#6 by Pjerky at June 22nd, 2009
I am a huge fan of E-Text Editor with its FTP features, extended syntax highlighting for a lot more languages and formats than Dreamweaver has ever supported, multi-line synchronized editing, fully customizable highlighting including fonts, colors, sizes, and conditions, the extendability using TextMate addons, and its myriad of other features.
I have been using it for a year and a half now and love it. Can’t imagine using anything else. They are even working on a Linux version of it.
Find it at: e-texteditor dot com
-Pjerky
#7 by Michiel at July 9th, 2009
I just switched to Coda on my mac, and the built in Transmit client works like a charm. Keeps the connection going forever, along with the ability to work directly on remote files or on local copies of remote files. The built-in CSS editor isn’t bad either. Does require a mac though :/
#8 by Hillary at August 14th, 2009
Never use their FTP, it’s suck! I don’t knwo what’s wrong with my PC setting
#9 by Martin at August 16th, 2009
Dreamweavers’ FTP screwed up my whole site! I was moving an older version of the code into a new (‘old’) directory and moved the new version onto the root, all on the server itself. It somehow combined the two sites (having 2 index.php’s and 2 style.css’s), thus overwriting my data partially. Thank God I had a backup, but I still have to do some reprogramming…
#10 by Callem at March 1st, 2010
Glad someone is saying it, i swear to god DW CS4 is the biggest piece of crap, with every new release the application seems to get worse and worse. Not only does the FTP and RDS functionality completely bite but now they had to go and balls up the interface making everything laggy. Oh and correct me if im wrong but “Background activity” generally means something that occurs in the BACKGROUND, how the fuck have they not noticed this shit, everytime i attempt any operation (sometimes even just clicking to make a page active) the entire program freezes up along with my entire computer whilst the “Background activity” dialogue comes center stage and performs its “Background activity”.
End Rant.
#11 by Matt at July 22nd, 2010
This problem can often be worked around by manually allowing port forwarding on port 21 (typically the port for most FTP clients) on your router’s configuration page. This is true for Netgear and Apple routers at a minimum. Routers will not have this port open by default and identifying the port in DW’s setup is not usually adequate.