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The COMPLETE GoLive > Dreamweaver Migration Bible...
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| Splash screens for Adobe GoLive CS2 and Dreamweaver CS4. Despite Adobe's claims, most users of Adobe's former flagship Web authoring software -- GoLive -- will find it excruciatingly difficult to migrate their existing webs to Adobe's new flagship Web authoring software --Dreamweaver. In fact, it can't be done with the information currently available on Adobe's Web site(!), but this 9-Step Checklist will show you how to migrate your GoLive 5, 6, CS or older Webs into Dreamweaver CS4. | |
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WHAT A HOOT! Seriously! As many Adobe GoLive users have discovered to their sorrow, the official Adobe GoLive Migration Tool (that is supposed to convert existing GoLive Webs into Dreamweaver Webs) doesn't work in many cases, and the biggest losers are Adobe's most loyal, longtime customers. Here's the straight deal. No matter what Adobe claims at the top of the official GoLive Migration Kit documentation, what the company says at the bottom is what really matters. Specifically, at the very end Abobe mumbles...
What this means is that Adobe's GoLive Migration Kit only works for Web sites created from scratch in GoLive CS2 or GoLive 9 -- sites with the above mentioned web-content, web-settings, web-data folder structure. Since there were seven versions of GoLive before this stretching back Gonet GoLive in 1996, most GoLive users -- I'm guessing 85 percent or more -- have been hung out to dry here by Adobe. And please understand, it doesn't matter if you upgraded faithfully, paying economic tribute to Adobe at regular intervals. If you are a longtime Abobe GoLive user who upgraded from earlier versions to GoLive CS2, you still can't use Adobe's GoLive Migration Tool, because older Webs that have been upgraded don't have the suddenly necessary web-content, web-settings, web-data file structure. And that's just the beginning of the fun that Adobe has up it's sleeve with the GoLive Migration Tool. Even in the best of circumstances -- even when it does "work" -- the GoLive Migration Tool can't handle or successfully translate nested GoLive Components; it doesn't maintain links to the existing Javascript routines in the GoLive GeneratedItems folder; it can't maintain any GoLive Component Head Actions; control over GoLive Body Actions, such as Roll Overs, is similarly lost, producing something like digital incontenance. IFrames? They're pranged too. Yet at the same time, Dreamweaver DOES sometimes automatically make changes to the HTML code that may mangle at least some perfectly good HTML code created with GoLive. You CAN get your GoLive 5, 6, CS and CS2 Webs into Dreamweaver, but you'll need more than Adobe provides. If you're reading this, you probably already know that Adobe's offerings in this area are utterly inadequate. Good news! The following 9-Point GoLive-To-Dreamweaver Migration Checklist covers what you'll need to get the job done, starting with the crucial "solution" to the "folder structure problem." Armed with this info -- plus a couple other necessary procedures not mentioned in Adobe's GoLive Migration documentation as of January 10, 2010 -- you can move a big Web from GoLive to Dreamweaver with a few weeks' work, not a few months' work. But you know, it doesn't have to be this way. Check out how Claris handled migrating older FileMaker files to FileMaker 10 for an entirely different, and MUCH happier story. But that's Claris, and this is Adobe. Here is the 9-Step Checklist in outline form. Click links to jump directly to the step you want, or read them in sequence...
I have personally used these procedures to successfully migrate GoLive 5, 6 and old-folder-structure CS2 Webs with 1,000 static pages or more into Dreamweaver CS4 via the Adobe GoLive Migration Tool, including this site -- Astonisher.com. None of these Webs would import into Dreamweaver without the procedures outlined in this article. So here we go...
First of all, back up the GoLive Web you want to convert. Leave the original GoLive Web site completely untouched, and perform all the following procedures on your backup. OK, open the backup of your site in GoLive and run the Site > Clean Up Site command to remove all orphan files. Now look at all your GoLive Component files -- Extras Tab > Components in the GoLive Site Window. Are any of them redundant, or unnecessary, or even just empty place holders you left for possible future development? If so, get rid of any you don't really need. Why? Because all will result in a big dump of Adobe-generated garbage code on your pages, and you will lose control of GoLive-created Javascript routines in your Components once you migrate into Dreamweaver, except what code-level Search & Replace and a stand alone Javascript editor may be able to accomplish. You'll save yourself time and energy if you cull unnecessary GoLive Components now. Now go back and look at your remaining GoLive Components again. Do any of them employ GoLive Head Actions, such as OnLoad SlideShowAuto and PreLoadImage? How about GoLive Body Actions such as OnMouseUp, OnMouseDown and OnMouseOver? The former are used for the Javascript slide shows you can build in GoLive, while the latter are used for the Javascript Mouse Overs, Mouse Downs, etc. that you can create in GoLive. When you migrate to Dreamweaver, they'll all be flattened into the pages where they appear and all the links will be broken -- in even the best GoLive-To-Dreamweaver Migration scenario. Dreamweaver has similar features to GoLive Components and Actions -- Library Items and Behaviors, respectively -- but the Adobe GoLive Migration Tool doesn't "migrate" them from one program to the other, despite its name. Mind, this isn't third party code. This Adobe code -- in an Adobe-to-Adobe migration -- raising questions of deceptive advertising by Adobe. I mean, what exactly does "migrate" mean to Adobe?
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Basically, there are two ways you can go here, and only you can decide what's best for you. The quickest and easiest thing to do is is to leave your important GoLive Head and Body Actions as they are. During the migration into Dreamweaver, they will all be flattened into the code of the pages where they appear. You will lose control over them, and many may not work when you first open the converted Web in Dreamweaver, but with a little fiddling (see #7 below), they can be made functional again. I followed this approach to make Javascript slide shows functional again after migrating Astonisher.com from GoLive 6 to Dreamweaver CS4. The problem here is that you can't control these Javascript Slide Shows and Mouse Overs in Dreamweaver, except at the code level and with a stand-alone Javascript editor, and when you go to the code level you see that Adobe's Migration Tool has left an astounding amount of Adobe-generated garbage code in the HTML.
Garbage Code. The Adobe GoLive Migration Tool doesn't clean up after itself, littering the HTML with a lot of garbage code, as seen above with the <csobj> tag. The second option is to rebuild all your GoLive Mouse Overs, Slide Shows, etc. from scratch once you get your Web into Dreamweaver. Here is Adobe's help for creating Mouse Overs and Slide Shows with Dreamweaver Behaviors (although Adobe Flash would be the tool of choice for many Web developers, if Adobe hadn't dumbed down Dreamweaver and made this officialy impossible to do). This second approach requires more time and energy up front, but it ultimately produces a cleaner result in Dreamweaver. Don't be fooled, though. Dreamweaver simply does not have the ability to replace many GoLive features. Even now, two years after it was discontinued by Adobe, GoLive remains a stronger program than its successor, Dreamweaver, both in terms of feature set and bang for the buck. No wonder Dreamweaver has been called the "poster child for the dumbing down of PC software." Some of Dreamweaver's limitation may seem a little esoteric (Adobe acknowledges "there is no Dreamweaver equivalent to the GoLive QuickTime and Real Player Editors"), but others are really basic (Dreamweaver lacks a Site Map feature, even though earlier version of Dreamweaver had it when the program was owned by Macromedia). If this sounds like a massive hassle for GoLive users in order to achieve reduced functionality, you're right. That's what Adobe has served up for it's loyal, long-time customers, thank you very much. So at the very beginning, you should make a realistic determination whether or not it's worth it to convert all your GoLive Webs to Dreamweaver. Because of the real hassle and real loss in functionality involved in converting older GoLive Webs to new Dreamweaver Webs, some GoLive users may want to simply maintain their existing GoLive Web sites in GoLive, and slowly move their Web work into Dreamweaver as new, from-scratch Dreamweaver Webs are created. I mean, why downgrade your Web mastering power and make yourself a weaker Web master before you have to? Others like me, however, may not have this option, so let's keep going... This is a free excerpt. Click the PayPal button below to purchase
© Copyright 1973 - 2012 by Bruce Brown Astonisher and Astonisher.com BF Communications Inc. Website by Running Dog |
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