Apparently, either the standards have changed, Dreamweaver 8 can’t produce “standards compliant” code, or Internet Explorer cannot properly interpret “standards compliant” code, isn’t that right?
So far as I know, the standards haven’t changed… so far as I know, older dreamweavers (if they indeed were the ones writing the code) could NOT write very compliant code (the newest one, cs4? using the Presto engine for Design View which is the same as Opera’s, is the closest to “ok code”), and Internet Explorer has not really ever been able to interpret “standards compliant” code (though IE8 is very very close, and maybe I’d even say, it’s on par on basic CSS and HTML as the other modern browsers since they did away with that Haslayout business, a major source of bugs).
In fact, I’m wondering if this is what happened (haslayout being removed). You didn’t state before that your users/viewers all have the same browser; are they on a intranet? The rules for something like that where everyone has the same user agent are more lax: you only have to make sure stuff works in just that one browser/user agent.
If the Adobe Web site tells me that I can download free updates to Dreamweaver 7, Dreamweaver 8, Dreamweaver 9, etc., then why is the download site incompatible with IE8, as Adobe TS is telling me?
Hm, how much of the code you are using is actually truly being written by DreamWeaver? If it’s a lot, then I would expect problems in both IE8 and most of the modern browsers (depending on how good their error rendering is). Do I have this clear: IE8 is the ONLY one having problems?
Alternatively, you could post a link to a website in question. If it’s a clear and obvious code problem, it may be possible for someone to say “hey it’s really just this one thing here in the code” and you could continue using DW to write your code while being able to check for the One Big Thing That Breaks. In general, I do not code anything special for IE8.
That doesn’t solve your issue with Adobe in general, but it may help you continue living with their business decision.
If the WSYIWYG portion of a development system like Dreamweaver can’t be trusted to work reliably, what purpose does it serve? Should everybody write all of their HTML and CSS in NotePad? Why would anybody ever purchase a development system like Dreamweaver (any version) if they will be advised to write their code in a simple text editor like NotePad?
Actually, many of us wonder that ourselves: it costs an arm and a leg and outputs crappy code (most/all WYSIWYGs anyway). However, the market is not coders (though I suppose there are a good number of misguided people who want to learn to code and believe starting out with something like DW is the way to go) but Joe who wants to make his motorcycle website. He has a lot of knowlegde of motorcycles and wants to share it with the world, or gain a web presence for his business. He isn’t in the market to actually pay someone to build it for him, plus he happens to like doing things for himself. However, he also doesn’t want or plan to spent 2-3 years learning web coding. That’s what DW is for. However as a product, it evolves with the user agents (the browsers). The current version of DW can output something that works ok in FF, Opera, Safari, IE7 and 8, etc. The older versions were built to output code that worked on Opera back when it wasn’t free, Firefox when it was the new, secure, faster browser the nerds were embracing, and back when Safari was a “new” browser. Every generation of browser have bugs that affect coding styles. IE is just the worst of them, especially because of the special entire strange set of rules it had for CSS called “Haslayout”. I would assume the guys writing DW would have tried to add code that could deal with Haslayout without breaking the other browsers too much.
I do not make a living developing Web sites, and I have no intention of ever doing so.
I feel your pain, man. You are in a position of having spent a good amount of money on software that for whatever reason cannot deal with modern user agents, and you are not a coder and are not planning on becoming a coder and are not going to spend money so someone else can code your websites.
I don’t have experience with DW other than through clients and other forumites who have used it, because I started out wanting to be a coder and bypassed the expensive step. But it would seem strange to me if your DW’s code output ONLY broke in IE8 but worked reasonably well with other modern browsers.
Other than my suggestion above to see if there’s some single, obvious and easily fixable code issue your copy is outputting (that would be ideal), another option could be trying out some of the free WYSIWYGs out there. I don’t expect Adobe to change its mind, so we might be able to help you best by helping you find an editor that can do what you need with much less fuss and less coming out of your wallet.
And hopefully less hair loss.
*edit
Upon checking the Adobe Web site, I find that there have apparently been some sort of “updates” to Dreamweaver 8 that were available as downloads. Whenever I try to even access the “downloader” page on the Adobe Web site, my IE8 browser hangs up and I must use the Windows Task Manager to close it.
Have you been able to get the downloads with another browser? That may have been Adobe’s reaction: your IE8 is puking, but possibly Firefox or Opera can download the updates. Getting a copy of either of those will not affect your copy of IE8… and while I doubt it, it’s possible that the updates will help your DW work “well enough” with IE8.
You may want to peruse this page if you think switching to another editor is just easier all around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTML_editors
