I am using Dreamweaver MX 2004. I have tried to download at least 5 free CSS
templates from various places. All of them have correct CSS code and they
preview correctly in Internet Explorer, however my "Design View" is all messed
up, nothing appears how it should. The alignment is all off, pieces are all
over the place, nothing is as it should be. I have to modify a line or two,
then preview in IE, the do it again and again after ever little change to make
sure i am not screwing the whole page up. That kind of illiminates the whole
purpose of Design mode. I am a visual person so staring at lines of code will
not work for me, can anyone . Serious answers only please.

Please do not post "Learn the code" or any variation of that, i am slowly
learning more about the CSS code, but for now its hard for me to see how it is
applying to the design when the design mode is messing up so bad.:disgust;

I'm afraid you are just stuck. DMX2004 was a beginner at rendering CSS
layouts. Without learning the code, you will be flying blind.

--
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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"Adamtosman" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:fpaq80$3l8$1@forums.macromedia.com...
>I am using Dreamweaver MX 2004. I have tried to download at least 5 free
>CSS
> templates from various places. All of them have correct CSS code and they
> preview correctly in Internet Explorer, however my "Design View" is all
> messed
> up, nothing appears how it should. The alignment is all off, pieces are
> all
> over the place, nothing is as it should be. I have to modify a line or
> two,
> then preview in IE, the do it again and again after ever little change to
> make
> sure i am not screwing the whole page up. That kind of illiminates the
> whole
> purpose of Design mode. I am a visual person so staring at lines of code
> will
> not work for me, can anyone . Serious answers only please.
>
> Please do not post "Learn the code" or any variation of that, i am slowly
> learning more about the CSS code, but for now its hard for me to see how
> it is
> applying to the design when the design mode is messing up so bad.:disgust;
>

One thing I have run into is when there is a tag that isn't closed or when
there is a tag closing that doesn't have the opening, Dreamweaver visually gets
messed up even when browsers ignore the problem. This happens inadvertently
sometimes when pasting text from a word processor such as Word Perfect. Can
you validate your HTML and see if that shows any problems there. It makes it
look like a CSS issue, but in my instance, it is not.

You might look into some CSS editors. There are free and/or cheap ones out
there and they can sometimes render your work much better than Dreamweaver. On
the Mac, I use CSS Edit. It's almost a toy but it shows the results instantly,
validates your CSS, and also autofills some values that give you a hint of
guidance. I find it a gentle ing hand with CSS.