Having trouble with Dreamweaver templates?

The bottom line when it comes to working with templates, is that where there's a will there's a way. (This applies to most anything in life in my opinion and I've found it to be the truth for the most part.)

Huh? What am I talking about? Patience dear blog reader...

In my observation, it seems that so many people find themselves in situations where templates don't seem to be able to do what they're after. Often I've heard people say that they feel overly constrained by how templates work and that they find templates unusable. Anytime that I witness this type of situation (usually on the newsgroups I visit), I feel compelled to try and help. Unfortunately these questions are often complicated and I just can't spare the time to help out like I'd like.

It is my hope that this blog post helps someone struggling with templates in Dreamweaver...

All I really have to say is that I've struggled too and when it comes to templates I've yet to find something that's completely stumped me that I can't make work for the site's needs. Sometimes, the solution isn't what I'd prefer it to be and is not what I'd call "ideal", but it works.

Please don't take that as an open invitation to try to stump me. Remember, I said I don't have the time to reply and help as tempted as I get to try...

My point is, that setting up templates to work for you and reach your template goals can take some heavy thinking. Chances are there's a suitable solution if you open your mind and are willing to explore different strategies.

To the intermediate to advanced template user: Yes, I know there are some issues and things could be better. I don't dispute that at all. That's not what this post is about; this post is for template skeptics or people new to templates.

Templates take some effort, have patience; they're worth it. Take the time to read the Dreamweaver help documentation. (It may seem like a boring thing to do, but its important.) Visit http://www.dreamweavermx-templates.com and buy their book. (I did some tech editing on it way back when. Even though its 2 Dreamweaver versions behind, its still relevant and worth it.) Learn about how templates work, get some practice doing template tutorials, and you'll be much better off when doing your own templates.

Lastly, don't expect to be a total template master over night. Dreamweaver's templates are extremely powerful and once you start using their advanced features it can get very complex.

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Dreamweaver 8.0.1 Updater Released Today

Adobe realesed the Dreamweaver 8.0.1 updater today. (It is sure going to take some getting used to not saying "Macromedia"...)

Get the scoop on what's been fixed by checking out the Resolved Issues: http://www.macromedia.com/go/f56452a8

In the first paragraph of the Release Notes you'll find a link to the download. Be sure to read the installation instructions! (Don't forget to disable virus protection like I did...Oops!)

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<cfinclude /> Rendering Trick for Dreamweaver

Here's a tip for you if you don't want Dreamweaver to render a specific <cfinclude> tag in Design view. Look at the tag in the previous sentence. Now go back and look at the tag in this subject line. Spot the difference?

If you close a cfinclude tag as if it were an empty element like in XHTML, Dreamweaver does not render the contents of the cfinclude.

This won't render in Design view:
<cfinclude template="/includes/header.cfm" />

This will render in Design view:
<cfinclude template="/includes/header.cfm">

Why wouldn't you want Dreamweaver to render a cfinclude you ask? Oh, I can come up with a lot of reasons... I'll give you but a few of them.

• Dreamweaver parses the code in includes, hence rendering can be slowed down in Design view.
• The Server Behaviors panel may take longer to load.
• If you work with others who use Dreamweaver's Server Behaviors panel a lot, but they won't have any reason to touch your code you can hide it from them this way. (Sure, they can get around this but I mean hiding it from a Designer who might mess things up.)
• If you're doing conditionial logic and showing includes with an if/else or switch case, Dreamweaver will render all of the includes. Having all includes render at once could distort what the layout might look like if only one were showing. So you could disable includes using this trick and only enable the one you need to see.

If anyone cares to share some potential uses for this trick, please be sure to leave a comment.

To any Adobe employees reading this blog post: Please do not "fix" the translator to account for the space and closing slash. This is not a bug; its an undocumented feature. ;-)

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