I lost all of yesterday to a mysterious problem with Dreamweaver CS3, the software I use to manage the www.slowtrav.com site. I am posting this because this will happen to everyone using Dreamweaver 9 (CS3) with PHP or ASP code.
I was going crazy trying to figure out what might be wrong. It took me hours to even figure out which pages crashed and why. When I determined what was happening, I posted on the Dreamweaver Support Forums and got my answer.
There is a known bug that happened with Dreamweaver CS3 after we switched to Daylight Savings Time. Read the TechNote Dreamweaver CS3 crashes after Daylight Savings Time ends.
I was working on the website and everything was fine. Then I opened up a page that I have worked on many times before and that had not changed recently. This page contained regular HTML and some ASP includes. Whenever I selected text or clicked and dragged the mouse to select text, Dreamweaver crashed with the error: Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Other pages, with only ASP SSI includes did not crash. Other pages where I call ASP scripts with variables did not crash. I took the page apart and rebuilt it piece by piece until I found the part that made Dreamweaver crash. This script had not changed. The page had not changed. How on earth could this piece of code that had been there for years be the problem? The page on the website worked fine - it was only when I looked at this page in Dreamweaver, that made Dreamweaver crash.
I found the answer on the Dreamweaver Support Forums. I would have gone there sooner, but I did not even know what question to ask! I am posting this here in case someone else is running into this.
Comments (10)
I'm sorry you had the problem, but I was very interested to read about it.
I'm spending all my spare time teaching myself new things and doing reading about websites.
I have a new job at school next year using the skills I have taught myself - my class will be a computer/laptop class (unheard of at my conservative shcool) and they'll go even further with publishing their work onto websites than they have gone this year.
Did you see my homework site? It's made specifically to make the homework look fun and to encourage the students and their parents to be more comfortable with what I'm doing.
Anyway, it's fun to read a technical post on websites so thank you for posting it.
Posted by Leslie | November 14, 2007 12:06 AM
Posted on November 14, 2007 00:06
Thank you very much for sharing your experience and posting for others to read. The Dreamweaver crash has beeb absolutely frustrating and I was sure it was either my .asp code, or something on my pc. Google and your blog has saved my evening.
Posted by Dave Miller | November 16, 2007 9:37 PM
Posted on November 16, 2007 21:37
You are very welcome Dave. I am happy that I was able to help. This was such a frustrating problem!
Posted by Pauline | November 16, 2007 11:32 PM
Posted on November 16, 2007 23:32
Thanks for posting that, dude. I was getting that problem this morning and it was driving me crazy. I think I've restarted my computer 30 times or so today. Problem seems to have fixed itself now after I followed the instructions on the Adobe site. Thanks a million.
Posted by Tom | November 28, 2007 8:31 PM
Posted on November 28, 2007 20:31
Thank you for posting your problem. I found the solution I needed after having already given up and started using Editpad for my ASPs. :P
Such a shame Adobe won't fix it...
Posted by J. Gonzalez | December 4, 2007 6:16 AM
Posted on December 4, 2007 06:16
I had always the same problem, Sometimes, I open the Code in Notepad, Delete the File, Open a new PHP file in DW, and then Copy/Paste the code and Save...
But, some times, I fail when i use this technique, So, instead, I'm still searching for answer?!?
Posted by Massalh Shady | December 13, 2007 4:29 AM
Posted on December 13, 2007 04:29
I had the same problem for a few weeks. I was traveling between Puerto Rico and Maryland and switching timezones on my laptop. I never thought this will be the issue, but i tried it and the problem solved.
Thanks for sharing this.
I wonder why Adobe takes so long to post patches for Dreamweaver.
Tommy
Posted by Tommy Irizarry | December 24, 2007 9:35 AM
Posted on December 24, 2007 09:35
Thanks for that.
I encountered this problem last night.
In a rather large file that had HTML and PHP blocks, whenever I tried to insert the '{' character, Dreamweaver crashed.
Posted by Ben | January 4, 2008 7:48 AM
Posted on January 4, 2008 07:48
This post has saved me hours and hours of time. Thank you.
Posted by Brett Farris | January 9, 2008 2:19 AM
Posted on January 9, 2008 02:19
Yeah! Great! I've been bugged by this for so long... I usually just resolved to editing those crashing files in Notepad... But ofcourse allways forgot it first... loosing so much work... Now it's been fixed!
Posted by HenkJan | January 12, 2008 10:03 AM
Posted on January 12, 2008 10:03