DH Templates

Why is my design view in Dreamweaver MX04 messed up when I am using a free CSS template?

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 help. 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.

Public Comments

1. Design mode isn't perfect. I've noticed it does that. It probably has something to do with the template not being created in dreamweaver. You should learn to use code mode... its the only way to really get dreamweaver to work for you
2. Hi there, I haven't really encountered the problem you are having, even so, I'm still not a huge fan of Dreamweaver. Since you are visual person you might want to try using a different HTML editor that allows you to preview your work. Here is a good one that I have been using for years, easy to work with, has a lot of "one touch" features if you prefer that and it's completely free. It's call Arachnophilia and you can learn more about it here: http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/ Good luck with it!
3. ok if you are using so many CSS templates. I think that is the first point of your messed up. if you have two CSS class with same name the design view is not show correctly. and don't be worry some time design view also not show the page correctly. for that you can use table for maintain your alignment correctly. otherwise no more talk of course design is out of structure. consider about these things and check the CSS classes and use proper table structure.