Dreamweaver was taking nearly 30 seconds to launch on my Mac mini (and using 56MB of real memory). So I decided to explore Dreamweaver's folders and trim files related to features that I don't use. After finishing, I now have a version of Dreamweaver that has a reduced memory footprint (41MB), and loads in six seconds, both great improvements over the full application.
I decided to trim everything that is useless to me. For instance, everything related to ColdFusion, ASP, and JRUN, as I don't use those features at all. Before I started trimming Dreamweaver, I first duplicated the application's folder. You must do this, unless you wish to reinstall the program again if something goes wrong! After that, I opened the duplicate I'd created, and used the Spotlight search box (in the right upper corner). I entered words related to what I wanted to dump. In my case, I needed to dump everything about ColdFusion, ASP, and JRUN, so, I made three searches: one for ColdFusion, one for ASP, and a third for JRUN. As soon as the search results came in, I selected everything I could find that might be related to the particular case, and moved it to the trash. You can search for whatever you want (i.e. SPRY), obviously.
The process is a kind of learning experience, as you might break the app with something you throw away -- but as you are working on a copy of Dreamweaver, it's easy to reverse your changes.
After the diet, the only problem I have is two warning windows I have when Dreamweaver starts: the first tells me that the Dreamweaver folder was changed, and asks if I want to fix the settings. Always choose 'Cancel' in that window! The second warning is about a function that Dreamweaver is not finding during startup. Beyond that, though, the program is stable and runs fast. Compared to Dreamweaver before trimming, I suppose my copy is twice as fast.
[robg adds: I do not advocate this method of trimming an application -- deleting portions of the code can obviously cause things to break, and very badly. Heed the warnings, and if you're going to do this, only work on a duplicate of your program. Also, make sure your Spotlight search is running only within the duplicated folder. If you accidentally search and delete some files in a higher-level folder, you could possibly break more than just the application you're trying to trim.
I thought about whether to run this one or not for quite a while. In the end, though, the site is about sharing how to do things to your machine. Some of those things, such as this hint, are potentially dangerous. However, hints such as this one do contain useful knowledge -- in this case, a substantial reduction in Dreamweaver's memory footprint and startup time. Proceed at your own risk, and please make sure you've got a current full backup -- and that's just good advice in general!]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070518204728900