Dreamweaver 8.0.2 menu options are grayed out from the view and insert menu when editing ASP or PHP files in either code, design or split view and the spell checker option is disabled

System Requirements:

  • Macromedia Dreamweaver 8.0.2

The Problem:

When you are editing page content in Macromedia Dreamweaver 8.0.2 in an ASP file you are unable to chose many of the menu options from the insert or view menu, such as Server-side Includes, form’s and form objects irrespective of whether you are in code, split or design view.

Changing the view doesn’t influence the situation.

More Information:

This seems to be more of a bug in Dreamweaver 8.0.2 than an intended characteristic.

Of the information that I have seen published on-line, the suggested solution is to just change views, but this doesn’t fix it, at least not when I experienced the problem on a Windows XP Professional SP3 install. It was working fine in the same configuration on a Windows 2000 Professional SP4 install.

Steps to try

  1. Change view : View > Code / Design > Code and Design
  2. Rollback any custom extension installs and re-test
  3. Repair install Dreamweaver by going into Add or Remove programs in the control panel (Programs and Features under Vista / 7), select change and then hit repair
  4. Rename the file as a .html file. For example if your file is a default.asp file rename it to default.html and test in the editor whether the fault is coming from the parser for ASP/PHP etc
  5. This is the one that sorted it for me:
    1. Edit > Preferences > New Document
    2. Check to see what the default document type and DTD being specified are. In my case, these had been changes to set .asp and ASP VB Script as the defaults from the standard ones as specified below.
      Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Default Preferences
      For some reason, if you change these defaults, the behaviour of the editor changes and you will no longer be able to utilise all of the options from the insert menu. In my case, simply putting them back and restarting Dreamweaver re-enabled all of the content that was missing. Bug? Yes, I think so.