In CS6 on both Windows 7 and 8.1 Pro, the new Extension Manager, version 1.1.0.0, presents an illegible interface. It appears to be using a font that is unreadable on both of my machines. The Win 7 machine has an ATI graphics card and the 8.1 machine has an Intel graphics card.

A screen grab showing the previous appearance of the Extension Manager in v. 1.0.15 is at: bit.ly/22ROk1l

A screen grab showing the new appearance in v. 1.1.0.0 is at:
bit.ly/1RXEDGS
(It actually is even more unreadable than the picture shows; Photoshop cleaned it up quite a bit when it created the .jpg.)

Also notice from the second screen grab that all the DMXZone extensions now are shown as not installed. This happened on my Win 8.1 machine but not on Win 7. Both are 64-bit machines running the same CS6 with the same sets of extensions installed.

Does anyone know of an easy fix for the vanished extensions in Win 8.1, or do I really have to reinstall everything?

Hi Jack,

Could you please make sure that ClearType is enabled on your Windows, see:

for Windows 7:
www.howtogeek.com/howto/28790/tweak-cleartype-in-windows-7/

for Windows 8:
www.wikihow.com/Adjust-Cleartype-Text-in-Windows-8

As for the missing extensions choose the "Reset Database" in DMXzone Extension Manager? It is an option available under the hamburger icon menu on top right.

Let me know if this helps.

Greetings,
George

sorry found the problem for the empty installed extensions list. It is DW CS6 only. Not everything was migrated well to the new DMXzone Extension Manager.

Unfortunately you will just have to install the extensions again in DMXzone |Extension Manager.
Just find them on "Explore" and click on the install icons next to them.

Sorry for the inconvenience...

Greetings,
George

New version 1.1.1 released now - just do a refresh within the current DMXzone Extension Manager and the inline update will be offered.

After quick install you should see all installed nicely as before.

Greetings,
George

Cleartype was already set, but I went through the steps again. It didn't do anything. I have seen this illegible font issue before, sometimes in software, like the new AVS Document Writer, sometimes in help files, often on web pages, like on Yahoo's financial news pages. I'm not sure what causes it. It used to afflict Yahoo's main news section, too, and people complained about it for years. Eventually that news section got fixed, but the financial news pages did not. I think it comes from some widely used online font library like the one at Google, probably from some variant of the Helvetica fonts, like Helvetica Nueue or Nueue Condensed.

Reinstalling all the extensions wasn't as big a hassle as I thought it would be. Several of the older extensions, like CSS Rotate and CSS Skew, will not install through the Extension Manager, but that is not new. The download just hangs with the extension partially installed, and after that it shows as installed from Extension Manager's panel of installed extension but shows as not installed in its panel of all extensions. Downloading the .mxp file and installing from that works every time, so that is no big deal. Several of the design templates do the same thing, such as the Halloween and Valentine's Day templates, but those also install cleanly from the .mxp files.

I created a new, empty Dreamweaver site and tried adding one of the Bootstrap 3 templates to it. The template complains that the Bootstrap 3 extension is not installed, so it aborts. That is really weird, because Bootstrap 3 definitely is installed. The Extension Manager says it is installed, and it shows up in the DMXZone panel of installed extensions. But the dmx templates based on Bootstrap 3 don't see it.

Addendum: I did just now look at the Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance sections, and the font legibility problem is still there, but only in the Finance section. Both sections use Helvetica Neue for the body type font, but the News section sets the font size differently from the way the Finance section does. The css for the News stories also specifies a property that the Finance stories do not, something like "optimizeLegibility." Also, I seem to remember reading years ago that this issue affects only people who have Adobe's Helvetica Neue font installed, which I do. Adobe's fonts are expensive, and I use Helvetica Neue often, so I am not likely to uninstall it just to read web pages, help files or the occasional software that implements Helvetica Neue in some weird way instead of just using plain old Helvetica, which never seems to cause problems. Whatever the workaround is that Yahoo has in the css on its News stories, it works.

Hi Jack,

You seem to have a bad Helvetica Nueue font on your Windows machine. This font is normally not installed on Windows and is only available on Mac. But some how you have it installed and you have probably the Mac optimized version so it does not display well on Windows.

I advice you to remove it. Just go to the Windows/Fonts folder are remove it from there.
You don't need it on Windows.

Greetings,
George

I tried uninstalling the font. That does not fix it.

Addendum: I brought up a new Windows 10 machine and started reinstalling my ridiculously large collection of fonts a few at a time. Tah-dah, it is not the Helvetica Nueue font that breaks the display in Extension Manager and a lot of other software, help files and websites. It is Adobe's plain old Helvetica, consisting of just two faces, normal and bold. Uninstalling that one fixes the problem; using the "hide font" feature in the Windows font manager does not fix it. So that is what worked for me, get rid of Helvetica plain and bold, but all the rest of the typefaces in the Helvetica family can remain.