I'm working on a project and am having a tough time getting a webpage to render correctly in Dreamweaver MX. I am forced to use this version because of the client we are working with. It's a XHTML+CSS site and renders fine in IE, Opera, Firefox, and Safari, but looks like crap in Dreamweaver MX. I have templates set up for the client to edit the pages, but because of the way it renders, it is tough for them to do any edits. Is there a way, either through html, CSS, or some sort of special commenting to hide certain areas from the display in Dreamweaver MX? This is really important as I'm nearing the end of the project and need to show the client how to manage the site.

Dreamweaver MX is horrible when it comes to rendering CSS in their preview pane. Encourage your client to preview edits in a browser and close the preview panel.

I wish I could have the client upgrade, however, it's a college. It would be tough for them to upgrade the entire campus.

Also, I'm not looking for hacks to fix the rendering. I would prefer to just set certain elements to "display:none" just for Dreamweaver.

Ok, I've done some testing and I have finally found a way to hack CSS for Dreamweaver. By using @import url("dmx_hacks.css"); in a 'media="screen"' css file, you can put css hacks for dreamweaver in the "dmx_hacks.css" file. The main css file takes precedance over the dmx_hacks.css file in browsers. In Dreamweaver, the dmx_hacks.css file takes precedance. Just to be safe, I have included the star hack for IE, and the Mac-IE backslash hack. That way, even if some other browser renders like Dreamweaver, it won't have the applied styles because of the * html hack.

I'm still working on some minor adjustments before I post, so it isn't live yet. But it will be soon, if anybody is interested in viewing the code.

Also, it seems that DMX in NO WAY can hide elements through display:none or visibility:hidden; That kind of sucks, so I just adjusted height and width properties and used position:absolute to throw the elements off to the side of the screen.

This is horrible. Tell your client to preview in the browser, not use WYSIWYG. A dreamweaver extension that replaces the design view with a browser like TopStyle does would be nice. If you find one, let us know.

Arun - I think you're referring to the preview panel which Dreamweaver has... the discussion revolves around the fact that Dreamweaver's preview pane renders CSS similarly to IE 4.

If anyone if considering buying a WYSIWYG HTML editor avoid MS Frontpage like the plague. The code it generates is atrocious. I haven't used Adobe GoLive for quite some time, but that wasn't creating very clean code either.