Dreamweaver (MX, MX 2004) has a feature called ‘Design-time Style Sheets’ which allows developers to specify a custom css style sheet to use when rendering a page in design view, within the Dreamweaver application.
So, after discovering this previously unknown feature, I began to make attempts in using design time stylesheets to aide in my development.
To give a bit of background – we create templates and provide them to many other entities for their use. To facilitate this, we’re using Dreamweaver templates, as well as externally referenced (using href=”http://…”) stylesheets to maintain a consistent design across servers and sites.
The problem now arises that Dreamweaver will not pull external stylesheets when displaying in design view… so our users are left with a design view nightmare because all of the layout is contained within our external stylesheets.
My idea now, is to distribute our templates with some local design stylesheets so the design view is more friendly to the end users. Now the local stylesheets work fine, but obviously they will be only used at design time and not in production – so AHA! With my new knowledge of Dreamweaver’s Design-time stylesheets, we’re all set to go, right? Well……… almost.
Even though we distribute a local stylesheet to reference, Dreamweaver will again not pull externally (url(http://…);) referenced images inside a local stylesheet. Ok, fine, they’ll just get the layout. Good to go, right? Well…….. almost.
While yes, we can distribute design-time stylesheets for everyone to use, Dreamweaver manages these stylesheets on an individual file basis. So to be of any use, the users will have to add a reference to the local design time stylesheet for every page they’ve made… and every new page they make – which is kind of a pain for end users.
BUT, suppose I make a Dreamweaver template (.dwt) – and specify a local ‘Design-Time Style Sheet’ for that template’s design view rendering! Then will every page based on that template automatically have a reference to that local ‘Design-time’ stylesheet??? No. They don’t.
So I’ve got two requests to Macromedia.
1. Give me an option in the preferences to turn on/off pulling remotely referenced files (images and css) for design view rendering, and
2. If a Dreamweaver template has a ‘Design-time Style Sheet’, all offspring from that template should start with a reference to that ‘Design-time Style Sheet.’
Avast ye Salty Beagle.
