Alexander’s Blog

If you work with Dreamweaver 8 for Windows and have noticed that your FTP login settings in the Dreamweaver site definitions are lost when you close and re-open the program or after you reboot your computer. If you have an earlier version of Dreamweaver, you may not encounter this problem.

According to Adobe, there are two known causes for this.

1. The most common cause is that Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is installed on the same machine as Dreamweaver 8.
2. A less likely cause is that the following registry key is missing or is empty:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Explorer\User Shell Folders\AppData

If You Have IE7 Installed on Your Computer

If you have IE 7 installed then installing the Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater should resolve your problem in most cases. Make sure that you verify the installation of the updater. In Dreamweaver, go to Help > About Dreamweaver > and click the scrolling text to reveal the version number. It should say Dreamweaver 8.0.2. You should not have to reboot the computer after installing Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater.

If You Don’t Have IE7 Installed, or if the Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater Doesn’t Solve the Problem

If you don’t have IE7 and are experiencing the problem then install the Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater as described above and then perform the following steps.

Warning: Modify the registry at your own risk.

1. Launch the Registry Editor by clicking the Start button, choose Run, then type “regedit”. In the Registry Editor, navigate to this folder:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Explorer\User Shell Folders\

2. See if there is a key called AppData, as shown in the screen shot below:
   
3. Backup the Users Shell Folders registry branch as follows:
   1. Right-click the Users Shell Folders folder and select “Export”.
   2. In the “Export range” section, choose “Selected branch”.
   3. Save the .reg file to the desktop.
   4. If problems occur after editing the registry, double-clicking the .reg file will re-install that registry branch.
4. If the AppData key is missing, then perform the following steps. If the AppData key exists, then skip to Step 5.
   1. On the right side of the Registry Editor explorer pane, right-click in a blank area anywhere under the last key in the list. You should get a context menu that says “New” with a flyout menu.
   2. In the flyout menu, select “Expandable String Value” and name the new key AppData.
5. Right-click the new AppData key (or the existing one if it was already there), select Modify, and enter the following in the Value Data field: %USERPROFILE%\Application Data. If the values for the other keys in your User Shell Folders directory don’t start with %USERPROFILE%, then use the value that your other keys use. For example, if your Local Settings key has a value of u:\Local Settings, then try usingu:\Application Data.
6. Open Dreamweaver, re-enter the FTP login information for one of your sites, and see if the FTP login is now saved when you close and re-open Dreamweaver.

The following information is useful to understand some of the issues related to IE 8 User-Agent String.

Affected Platforms

Clients – Windows XP | Windows Vista | Windows 7

Servers – Windows Server 2003 | Windows Server 2008 | Windows Server 2008 R2

Feature Impact

Severity – Medium

Frequency – High

Description

The User Agent String is the Internet Explorer identifier that provides data about its version and other attributes to Web servers. Many Web applications rely on, and piggyback on, the IE User Agent String. Those that do so and depend on an earlier version number will be impacted. The User Agent string now includes the string ‘Trident/4.0′ in order to allow differentiation between the Internet Explorer 7 User Agent String and the Internet Explorer 8 User Agent string when running in Internet Explorer 7 Compatibility View. See Understanding User Agent Strings link below for details.

Manifestation of Impact

There are two impacted areas:

• Web pages that explicitly check the User Agent String and do not support the Internet Explorer 8 User Agent String may not run properly. In the majority of cases, this means the pages will be block users from the content they are attempting to access or display incorrect or malformed content.
• Applications that host Trident (see Hosting and Reuse) will default to Internet Explorer 7 using the Web Optional Component, but will not have access to Internet Explorer 8 features.

Solution

Ensure that your applications properly handle the new ‘MSIE 8.0′ version in the User Agent String. You may also opt in to the Internet Explorer 7 Compatibility View for those applications based on Internet Explorer 7. This can be done with meta tags. See the discussion in Understanding User Agent Strings for details.

Compatibility, Performance, Reliability, and Usability Testing

• Run your applications and Web pages in an Internet Explorer 8 environment on Windows Vista or Windows XP to ensure that they behave in the desired manner.
• Alternatively, you can run the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool (IECTT) provided with the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) to locate any potential issues due to security feature updates.

Links to Other Resources

• Understanding User Agent Strings: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537503(VS.85).aspx
• The Internet Explorer 8 User-Agent String: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/02/21/the-internet-explorer-8-user-agent-string.aspx
• User-Agent String and Version Vector: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ie8whitepapers/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=531
• Hosting and Reuse: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752038(VS.85).aspx
• Application Compatibility Toolkit Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=24DA89E9-B581-47B0-B45E-492DD6DA2971
• Known Internet Explorer Security Feature Issues: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722079.aspx

How to View the User-Agent String

To view your browser’s user-agent string, type the following case-sensitive command into the address bar.

javascript:alert(navigator.userAgent)

Internet Explorer User-Agent Tokens

The following tokens are used by recent versions of Internet Explorer, which places three tokens in the user-agent string by default.

1. Version tokens
2. Platform tokens
3. Feature tokens

The following information pertains to the version and the platform tokens. In general, version tokens begin with MSIE and are followed by the version number of the browser. Many pre-release versions append the letter “b” to the version number. The following table lists the version tokens used in recent versions of Internet Explorer.

Platform tokens describe your operating system. The following table lists Internet Explorer platform tokens for the last several versions of Windows.

(Source: Microsoft TechNet)

Internet Explorer 8 (IE), which is the default browser in Windows 7,  has been reported by the general public as one of the most problematic versions of browser in years. People are reporting that there are numerous Web sites that are not accessible in IE8. When they are able to access the sites, the content is not displayed right. Sometimes only part of the page is displayed. People who have multiple computers have success accessing the troubled sites in older versions on other operating systems (e.g. IE 7 on Vista or IE 6 on Windows XP).

Unfortunately, Windows 7 users are reporting that they are spending too much time troubleshooting the problem before they finally give up. Some get lucky and find a solution. Others, who must use IE8 for whatever reason, have no choice but to continue looking for solutions.

What’s the under lying cause of all this mayhem? Well, there are thousands of Web sites that are displayed improperly, or not displayed at all, when you use IE8 engine to surf the Web. In February 2010, Mary Jo Foley posted this article: Microsoft’s IE 8 Incompatibility List: 2,400 major sites (and counting). In her article she lists the incompatible Web sites, which includes major Web sites such as:

microsoft.com

msn.com

amazon.com

ebay. com

google.com

yahoo.com

myspace.com

youtube.com

…..and more.

A Compatibility View List is essentially a list of Web sites that are broken in IE8. In other words they are incompatible with IE8. Obviously, calling it an Incompatibility List won’t sound too good. Compatibility View List puts a very positive spin on a painful experience and makes it sound as if it were a preplanned “feature” of IE8.

Let’s take a closer look at the actual issue behind the scenes. Unlike previous versions, IE8 renders content in a standards-compliant way. That’s a good thing. Because the previous versions of IE were so messed up (for lack of a better word) and Microsoft has decided to offer a browser that is “standards-compliant”, now all these Web sites are inaccessible in IE8. It’s going to take a while before the Web designers fix all the mess because they wanted their Web sites to appear properly in previous versions of IE and as a result intentionally created sites that won’t follow the standards just so they would run properly using IE engine. To help the public, Microsoft now puts out a Compatibility View List which may make these Web sites accessible. However, I can tell you from personal experience that the Compatibility View will not fix the problem in all cases. Some times it works, some times it doesn’t.

Possible Solutions & Workarounds

There are several solutions and workarounds that work for some individuals. Here are a few examples. Keep in mind this is not a complete list by any means. Also, don’t be surprised if you still have problems accessing the inaccessible Web sites after you have tried all the tips that I’ve listed below because there are too many possibilities and I can’t possibly cover them all.

NOTE: You may have to first install another browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, before you try these solutions because if you use IE8 you may not be able to go to Microsoft’s Web site and access the KB articles that I have listed below. Microsoft’s Web site is one of the thousands of Web sites that are reported as inaccessible in IE8.

1. Go to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced tab and click Restore advanced settings. I know, you are going to tell me that this means that you can’t configure IE8, but you want to surf the Internet don’t you?

2. Run the command prompt as an administrator and type “netsh winsock reset” without the quotes. Reboot the computer. This KB article 811259 has more details.

3. Try Resetting TCP/IP.

4. Uninstall all IE8 updates. Yes, it may make your computer less secure.

5. Disable all IE8 plug-ins and add them back one-by-one.

6. Your computer may be infected with a virus so go to Safe Mode and run a program that will clean the virus. I prefer AVG, which is free and includes anti-virus and anti-spyware components. You may not be able to access AVG’s Web site in IE8 that’s why I mentioned earlier that you may have to install another browser, such as Mozilla Firefox first so you can download the AVG software.

7. Disable Windows firewall. Yes, it may make your computer less secure.

8. Turn on Compatibility View, either for individual Web sites (Tools, Compatibility View) or for all sites (Tools, Compatibility View Settings, Display all websites in Compatibility View). To view the content of your active list you can type the following in the IE8 address bar:

res://iecompat.dll/iecompatdata.xml

9. If you are running more than one browser, make IE8 your default browser. For example, if you run Firefox as your default browser you need to make IE8 happy by making it your default browser. Just do that temporarily so the sites start to work. Then switch back to Firefox as your default browser. You’ll have to remember to keep doing this whenever IE8 starts to give you problems.

10. Use Mozilla Firefox. All the 2,400+ sites that are incompatible with IE8 are likely to work in Firefox.

Have you run into a situation where you try to logon to a SharePoint site in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox and get no error, yet the page still shows the Sign In link, instead of Welcome SHAREPOINT\username? And you can’t edit the pages because the browser doesn’t think you are logged on. Here’s what I did to fix the problem.

I started Internet Explorer and went to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced tab. I unchecked the box “Enable Integrated Windows Authentication.” That allowed me to properly get authenticated and I was able to edit my SharePoint site both in Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (you may have to refresh the screen).

Assuming you are interested in installing, or have already installed, Windows XP SP3, here’s some interesting browser comparison reported by BetaNews today.

“In a set of comprehensive Windows Web browser performance tests conducted by Betanews on August 7 — our first test of browsers running on the final Windows 7 RTM Build 7600 distributed by Microsoft yesterday — the five major families of browsers tended to run 13% faster on Windows XP Service Pack 3 than on Windows 7, and 29% faster than on Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

That reflects a decline in the speed gap between XP and Win7 of about 1%, from tests conducted comparing XP-based browsers to those running on Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100. Some browsers are faster in Windows 7 RTM, although Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2 ran just a tick slower.”

You can read the entire article here.

Well, since I am not interested in Chrome, I think I’ll stick to Mozilla Firefox. By the way, I am not pleased with IE 8 at all and I am lukewarm about IE 7. Firefox, although not perfect, is much more reliable, well-organized, safer, offers gazillions of nice add-ons, and have far better support than the rest.