dreamweaver messes up frontpage

[greenDilim]

Hi there..
Im a frontpage user, I've been making this website: http://basesurge.vaio-hosting.com/main.php using Microsoft Frontpage. I recently got dreamweaver and trying to get used to it so i can start using it more often. But its really hard to use when i open up the pages that were made with frontpage in dreamweaver.. everything is messed up! like the tables are scattered, theres bits n pieces on the left and right and one big gap in the middle with the rest of the page on each side, so whats up with that? is there a way that this can be fixed?... i want edit the page as if i was viewing the page on a browser..
Thnkyou.. ^^;

[chilipie]

Serves you right for using FP's crappy code :p .

If you stick with a WYSIWYG editor, you're bound to end up with code that won't look right in different editors. AFAIK, FP doesn't add a DTD at the start of each document (although I haven't used the latest version of FP). Try adding one of those. Also, you might have forgotten to add a meta tag with the charset of the page - forgetting this sometimes makes it do funky shat.

If you want to edit your page like it's in a browser, there should be some buttons that say "Code View", "Split View" and "Design View". Click "Design View".

[Scootertaj]

For FP 2003, not sure if you have that or not, but next to design view, code view, and split view there should be "Preview" which will have what it will look like in a browser.

[Graft-Creative]

If you are using Dreamweaver then you are pretty much stuck with the fact that how your site looks in 'Design View' isn't neccesarily how it will look in a browser. And you are pretty much stuck with the fact that web coding isn't WYSIWYG drag 'n' drop desktop publishing.

It's nothing to do with the fact you originally designed your site in Frontpage - it's to do with the fact that DW's design view sucks, big time!

Don't sweat it, just keep hitting F12 - you are designing for the browsers after all, not Dreamweaver's design view.

Kind regards,

Gary

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

true but i have found that if you code correctly and watch at what dreamweaver tries to add, the design view will closely ressemble the view of your page as if it was in a browser

[Graft-Creative]

hey man, trust me - I have sites with cleaner than clean code (xhtml 1.1/css 1 & 2) all valid etc, and boy does Dreamweaver not like them, even though they look good in almost every modern browser ;)

All I'm saying, is code for the actual browsers, not for how a site looks in DW :p

Gary

[JamieR]

With my site, it would look in-perfect in Dreamweaver's design view, but look fine in the likes of Firefox.

Jamie.

[whackaxe]

hand code. it's the only way to go :) at least drop frontpage. ive had to work on site orginaly made with FP and it was hideous code. dreamweaver generate better code 'm told, but if you want pixel perfect cross browser layouts, your in for a hell of a struggle with either

[ronaldb66]

Boy, does that markup make my cry...
I counted four (!!!) html start tags, two html end tags, three head start-end tag combo's and another four body start and two end tags, all nicely dispersed throughout the page. That, and numerous inline styles make for a pretty untangible and woefully invalid mess.

Please, pleeeease learn some HTML and CSS and stop depending on what a WYSIWYG editor churns out; even DreamWeaver, the most recent version being pretty well-behaved, generates a pile of garbage if you let it.

Even the best editor is no more than a tool, an aid, to speed up the work and take over some of the more tedious and time-consuming tasks; it can never, ever replace the knowledge and experience needed to build decent, well-structured, efficient and beautiful web pages.

[seoUK]

Ya write IMHO , Initial when you are in learning phase you should try to write the whole code on your own say in notepad , after than when you feel that you can make a web page without a error than use Dreamweaver to save time and energy
and you can learn XHTML only when you are perfect in HTML & CSS

[chilipie]

and you can learn XHTML only when you are perfect in HTML & CSS
I disagree ... HTML is extremely similar to XHTML, the main difference being that the markup has to be perfect in XHTML for it to be "proper" XHTML.