[mrfurry]

Hi,

first of all - this is not meant to diss the 15" Powerbook or Mac's in general. I asked a question in this board a couple of days ago about using Dreamweaver on the Powerbook, and you guys here helped me out a lot. You can find the thread here.

Basically my dilemma was that I needed a laptop to use for my Dreamweaver work, and I really (really!) wanted to give Mac's a shot. My thread actually received wuite a few replies indicating that I would be better off using Windows. But I took a trip to my nearest Mac dealer, and had yet another look (been there wuite a lot lately...). This time was different though. I asked if there was any chance that I could try a 15" Powerbook with Dreamweaver installed. Believe it or not, he said yes! Or he agreed to let me put down a deposit and take the machine home (they actually keep demo machines that they let customers borrow!). And if I wanted to I was welcome to download the Dreamweaver trial. Man, I just love dealers like this!

A couple of hours later Dreamweaver was up and running (the latest version, with the "fix"). Sort of. Well, to be honest, it was crawling. Here I was, with a 15", 1,33 GHz G4 and 768 MB of RAM, trying to use Dreamweaver - and it was painful. Everything was slow. Typing, opening windows, switching between code and design, saving files, importing pictures, previews. I couldn't believe it... I've read about this on forums, but here I was experiencing what a total POS the Dreamweaver/Mac combination was.

After having a coffee I decided to play around a bit more, in OS X. And this was a total thrill. This machine is the best I've ever seen! The build quality, the design, the weight, the size - all excellent and stunning! And OS X? I actually understand what you guys are talking about - Panther is waaaaaaaay beyond Windows. It's a different ball game.

But, unfortunately, the one program I have to use is crap on this machine, so today I will have to return it. It's sitting here now, in it's box, ready to take the trip back to the dealer. And I will have to go looking for a Windows machine...

Just wanted to post this here, to give some feedback.

Damn Macromedia!

[mdc]

that is sad, i am sorry. i don't know what i would do if i was _forced_ away from a mac.

[mitchell_pgh]

That stinks. I use Dreamweaver 2/3 days a week and find it OK for what I do (general web editing). I wouldn't call it a total POS, but I do recognize that the Windows version is considerably faster.

That being said, I still feel more productive on my Mac. While speed is important, it's not the end all be all for me. Slugishness as compared to the various windows problems I deal with on a regular basis is fine with me.

[philzilla]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
That being said, I still feel more productive on my Mac. While speed is important, it's not the end all be all for me. Slugishness as compared to the various windows problems I deal with on a regular basis is fine with me.

i find myself in the strange position of agreeing with you. no more Windows for me. and i'll keep my nice anti-aliased text too, thanks.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by philzilla:
i find myself in the strange position of agreeing with you. no more Windows for me. and i'll keep my nice anti-aliased text too, thanks.

It's a hard pill to swallow. Buying a laptop and having it seem "slow". I have found that I can also work longer on my Mac before freaking out (I think it's the inner child thing).

With Windows, it's around 2/3 to 1/2 as long.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Well, Macromedia has apparently made major improvement in DW from 7.0 to 7.0.1

The reviews in the forums forestalled my upgrade to DW 2004 until the 7.0.1 patch. With this upgrade I'd have to say that DW 2004 is *not* a POS -- compared to DW MX. But it's not much faster. I guess performance is good only compared to the POS 7.0 version.

They've come a long way with the 7.0.1 efforts (which their article describes as involving MAJOR reworking).

But it's obviously still not getting the attention that their Windows products do.

Same old story Microsoft itself does not neglect Mac users this badly (at least in regard to Office).

[NeXTLoop]

It may be too late for this bit of advice, but there is an often overlooked step that you can take which significantly speeds Dreamweaver up. Dreamweaver has the ability to integrate with BBEdit (for mrfurry this is a text editing program on the Mac). Unfortunately, that integration option reallly slows Dreamweaver down. And worse yet, its enabled by default.

To disable it, just go to the Preferences. You may have to search a bit for it, but you'll find it. This won't necessarily make Dreamweaver as fast as the Windows version, but it will definitely go a long way toward making it an acceptable speed.

[Macola]

I use DW MX (not MX 2004) a fair amount on my PowerBook 867 and I actually found it to be better in performance than the 2004 version, which is why I haven't upgraded. It's still slower than the Windows version, though.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
It may be too late for this bit of advice, but there is an often overlooked step that you can take which significantly speeds Dreamweaver up. Dreamweaver has the ability to integrate with BBEdit (for mrfurry this is a text editing program on the Mac). Unfortunately, that integration option reallly slows Dreamweaver down. And worse yet, its enabled by default.

To disable it, just go to the Preferences. You may have to search a bit for it, but you'll find it. This won't necessarily make Dreamweaver as fast as the Windows version, but it will definitely go a long way toward making it an acceptable speed.

Never heard that before, where is that setting in preferences?

[AU_student_iceBook]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Never heard that before, where is that setting in preferences?

I have heard that having this setting on really slows things down:


Maybe that is what he meant.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by AU_student_iceBook:
I have heard that having this setting on really slows things down:


Maybe that is what he meant.

Interesting, thanks... I'll try it out and report back later...

[clam2000]

actually it's under the "File Types / Editors" category. I didn't notice that big of a change after I unchecked it, but it's nice to know about.

--will

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by clam2000:
actually it's under the "File Types / Editors" category. I didn't notice that big of a change after I unchecked it, but it's nice to know about.

--will

That's where the option is that I was referring to. I personally noticed quite a difference. Like I said, it didn't make the speed of DW on par with the Windoze version by any means. But I didn't experience nearly as much lag when switching between windows, typing text, or anything like that.

BTW, I believe I originally got that tip from the Web Developer section of the forums.

[jasong]

Well, I don't know what kind of Uber-PC you are running Dreamweaver on, but as I said before, with the 7.01 patch there is a negligible speed difference between MX 2004 on my 2.8 Ghz P-IV with 1 GB of RAM, and my 1Ghz TiBook with 512 MB of RAM.

Oh well, sorry it didn't work out for you, I'm the first to admit that a Mac isn't the right tool for everyone. Hey, I love my Mac, and I am in the market for a Tablet PC for school. Of course if Apple made a tablet, I wouldn't be doing that . . .

-- Jason

[mrfurry]

Originally posted by jasong:
Well, I don't know what kind of Uber-PC you are running Dreamweaver on, but as I said before, with the 7.01 patch there is a negligible speed difference between MX 2004 on my 2.8 Ghz P-IV with 1 GB of RAM, and my 1Ghz TiBook with 512 MB of RAM.

Oh well, sorry it didn't work out for you, I'm the first to admit that a Mac isn't the right tool for everyone. Hey, I love my Mac, and I am in the market for a Tablet PC for school. Of course if Apple made a tablet, I wouldn't be doing that . . .

-- Jason

In my case, I'm using Dreamweaver on two PC's: one is an AMD 1,33GHz T-bird (with 256MB RAM) and the other is a 2,4GHz P4 (with 512MB RAM). Both of these can run Dreamweaver to my satisfaction. But from my experience, all I can say is that Macromedia has done a bad job. I'm not a speed freak, by no means, but this was was just plain silly. For what it's worth, I could just as well be trying to run the software on a 500MHz Celeron. I constantly had to ask myself "Did I just press a button, or what?"

[selowitch]

Forgive my possibly stupid question, but is there any chance you'd be willing to use another HTML editor and/or FTP client? I get awesome performance from PageSpinner 4.6.1 and Trasmit 2.6.2 in concert with a DSL connection. I can edit my web pages with tremendous speed this way, and I've gotten rid of my DW bloatware almost entirely.

The only thing I keep DW around for is a) if I have to automatically reset a ton of image attributes, which DW does very nicely, or b) I have a particularly troublesome table layout that requires that I preview the page as I'm working.

[mrfurry]

Originally posted by selowitch:
Forgive my possibly stupid question, but is there any chance you'd be willing to use another HTML editor and/or FTP client?

That question isn't studpid at all. In some ideal world I might have been willing to do that, but not at this price point. Dreamweaver is the ONE program I want to run flawlessly. Even though this hardly is Apple's fault, I'm much better off putting my money on a PC laptop - even if it's a Windows one.

[sushiism]

until dreamweaver starts showing css right I'm not bothering to use it again unless i'm lazy when writing a lot of coldfusion. But its not that bad mac side, i dont find it that much worse than the pc version and at least i dont have to stare at that awful mdi mode

by the way while your on a mac download the trails of the following programs
+CSSEdit - heavenly for CSS, beats the absolute **** out of dreamweaver even on a sunday
+subethaedit - rendezvous powered multiuser editor with nice syntax, free
+skedit - autocomplete html editor
+transmit - lovely FTP prog

[workerbee]

Originally posted by mrfurry:
(snip) Sort of. Well, to be honest, it was crawling. Here I was, with a 15", 1,33 GHz G4 and 768 MB of RAM, trying to use Dreamweaver - and it was painful. Everything was slow. Typing, opening windows, switching between code and design, saving files, importing pictures, previews. I couldn't believe it... I've read about this on forums, but here I was experiencing what a total POS the Dreamweaver/Mac combination was.(snip)

Slow, you say?! Well, you haven't seen anything yet if you haven't tried DW 7.0 without the magic .1. That was slow. 7.0.1 is... acceptable.
Anyway, if Dreamweaver is all you care about, then going the Windows way probably makes sense.

[Love Calm Quiet]

NeXTLoop:

Thanks so much for pointing out the advantage off turning of the BBEdit integration. How in the world did you discover that? More importantly, with no MX 2004 books out yet, why doesn't MM provide hints about OPTIMIZATION, since they went to so much trouble to explain all the performance-tuning they did in 7.0.1?

(or would I have learned about such things if I took the TOUR that came with my upgrade?)

[zen jihad]

The .1 update did make a decent difference in the OS X version, but sadly there's still a ton of things need doing to get it up to par with the Windows onew. One thing I do wish they'd bring into the Mac version, it's the tabbed document windows. Really handy.

[philzilla]

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
...with no MX 2004 books out yet...

Foundation Dreamweaver MX 2004

[himself]

Dreamweaver is bad, whether you're talking about MX, 7.0, 7.0.1... but as bad as DW is, Flash is absolutely horrid. I've been rebuilding my website using flash, but it is so bad, I have to close every other application I have open to squeeze out every little drop of speed. Macromedia really needs to get it's act together as far as optimizing its apps. I don't have nearly as many problems and speed complaints with the Adobe suite. Granted, I haven't used their other apps, Director, Freehand, or Fireworks, in a while (last time I did, they were just as bad), but I would expect Macromedia to be much more capable than this.

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
NeXTLoop:

Thanks so much for pointing out the advantage off turning of the BBEdit integration. How in the world did you discover that? More importantly, with no MX 2004 books out yet, why doesn't MM provide hints about OPTIMIZATION, since they went to so much trouble to explain all the performance-tuning they did in 7.0.1?

(or would I have learned about such things if I took the TOUR that came with my upgrade?)

Wish I could take credit for that... but I can't. I think I stumbled on that tip in the Web Develop section of the forums. My guess is, if someone went into the preferences and really tinkered around even more, they might be able to achieve some serious speed boosts. I was just always too lazy to be the one to do it. :-)

[RayX]

mrfurry (and other DW users), let us know if Macromedia responds to the feedback that you just sent them about the Mac version...

[Gee4orce]

Originally posted by sushiism:
until dreamweaver starts showing css right I'm not bothering to use it again unless i'm lazy when writing a lot of coldfusion. But its not that bad mac side, i dont find it that much worse than the pc version and at least i dont have to stare at that awful mdi mode

by the way while your on a mac download the trails of the following programs
+CSSEdit - heavenly for CSS, beats the absolute **** out of dreamweaver even on a sunday
+subethaedit - rendezvous powered multiuser editor with nice syntax, free
+skedit - autocomplete html editor
+transmit - lovely FTP prog

I agree 100% - this is a very nice combination of apps (although I found Skedit to be a bit buggy, it's still one of the best HTML editors out there). CSSEdit especially is beautiful.

The best bit is that these are all shareware apps and are either free or cost about $20-$25 each.

Of course, you will have to 'get your hands dirty' and actually edit code, but take the advice of someone who as developed web sites since 1996: this is the best way ! It's the only way you will acheive true web-fu nirvana !

CSS is the future of web layout. CSSEdit makes using it extremely easy

My advice is to keep the Mac and ditch Dreamweaver.

[sushiism]

ah didn't know skedit was buggy, my trial with it was over a period when I didn't really make any websites for a bit but it seemed nice anyway

[superblue]

Originally posted by himself:
Granted, I haven't used their other apps, Director, Freehand, or Fireworks, in a while (last time I did, they were just as bad), but I would expect Macromedia to be much more capable than this.

In my experience, Fireworks is the worst of them all. AN ABSOLUTE PIG - waiting for the properties panel to update to reflect the currently selected item is an absolute joke. And don't get me started on editing text... Such a shame as I love the program itself.

[mrfurry]

I hate you guys Now I'm actually considering moving away from the ONE program that I specifically wanted to use. I find the combination of
CSSEdit/subethaedit/skedit/transmit alluring...

And since I'm buying this notebook more or less to build a content management system (CMS), I will have to get my hands dirty (PHP/MySQL). But this is all new terrain for me, and Dreamweaver's got it all - I can do my coding in a program I know how to use. Don't know, feels a little less scary... When I say "CMS" I mean a small one, not some full featured portal. What I want is to:

1) Build a template
2) Set up a database to store content
3) Use PHP/MySQL to store and retrieve content
4) Use PHP/MySQL to present content on my web site

I just want to build something that will let me publish stuff while on the road, through internet forms instead of having to create a new html page everytime I want to do something new.

My experience with html is rather limited. Of course, I've had to edit code in Dreamweaver, so it's been kind of a learning tool as well.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by superblue:
In my experience, Fireworks is the worst of them all.

Yep.
On my oh-so-slow, ancient, pre-historic 1.33GHz 1GB RAM PowerBook, the entire MX '04 suite just gobbles RAM like there's no tomorrow and otherwise is, well, usable, with FireWorks proudly leading the way. I can't wait to test the next FW, which will not even open an anything below a quad-G5.
But then, of course, one has to remember the unbelievably complicated things it has to do, like change type, or react to what's selected, on big, huge, enormous files like 100 x 100 pixels with maybe 3 frames…

OTOH we can't complain really, as they built in FTP and "Send to E-Mail". Whoopee.

[Macola]

Originally posted by mrfurry:

And since I'm buying this notebook more or less to build a content management system (CMS), I will have to get my hands dirty (PHP/MySQL). But this is all new terrain for me, and Dreamweaver's got it all - I can do my coding in a program I know how to use. Don't know, feels a little less scary... When I say "CMS" I mean a small one, not some full featured portal.

There are many good open-source CMS out there which you could easily adapt for your needs (beats starting from scratch). Check out freshmeat.net or hotscripts.com.

[theolein]

Originally posted by mrfurry:
I hate you guys Now I'm actually considering moving away from the ONE program that I specifically wanted to use. I find the combination of
CSSEdit/subethaedit/skedit/transmit alluring...

And since I'm buying this notebook more or less to build a content management system (CMS), I will have to get my hands dirty (PHP/MySQL). But this is all new terrain for me, and Dreamweaver's got it all - I can do my coding in a program I know how to use. Don't know, feels a little less scary... When I say "CMS" I mean a small one, not some full featured portal. What I want is to:

1) Build a template
2) Set up a database to store content
3) Use PHP/MySQL to store and retrieve content
4) Use PHP/MySQL to present content on my web site

I just want to build something that will let me publish stuff while on the road, through internet forms instead of having to create a new html page everytime I want to do something new.

My experience with html is rather limited. Of course, I've had to edit code in Dreamweaver, so it's been kind of a learning tool as well.

I don't know if you've ever heard of Freeway. It has some really brilliant features, such as automatically compositing transparent images into a single web image, automatic conversion of text into images and it has support for dynamic sites as well (PHP, MySQL). You can download a trial version at the above link.

You could also try JaneBuilder which provides an incredibly easy way to build PHP and MySQL sites.

There are also more complex tools out there that are meant for larger web applications with jsp etc that run on OSX.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by Macola:
Check out freshmeat.net or hotscripts.com.

Don't forget to check opensourcecms.com and oscom.org. And for high-end, free CMS frameworks: bitflux and Apache Lenya.

[DeathMan]

I have PHP/MySQL setup on my ibook, and I use BBEdit for coding. Its not free, but its worth the money you pay for it.

Plus, it has an active community. A guy named John Gruber wrote an applescript that will run your php code through the command line php, and return errors to your normal bbedit syntax checker. So you don't have to flip between text editor and browser to see if your php is clean.

Plus it has fully programmable command keys. You can set up code snippets (I think dreamweaver is like that) and assign them to command keys. Plus it has preview just like bbedit, and lots of buttons for inserting forms, or buttons, or whatever. Its really smart too, cause if you have your doctype set to xhtml, and you drag an image into your window, it will insert well formed xhtml code, rather than just going html.

I realize dreamweaver does this as well. I'm pointing out that if you mostly use the text editor features of dreamweaver, rather than the gui section (which is sort of the way to go now that table layouts are on their way out anyway), this is a great program.

There are a lot of other reasons to use BBEdit. It supports remote editing through its own ftp (which I don't use) or through Transmit (Awesome App). I have really cool auto-complete program someone wrote specifically for BBEdit that is great for programming, especially if you use descriptive function and variable names which tend to get long. You can check it out Here

I think the mac is a great web dev environment. I and I think dreamweaver is over-rated. I don't hate it. I just think its worth using other programs to be able to use the mac. And it turns out, these other programs work better together than dreamweaver does alone.

I also really like CSEdit. Its made by a fellow Macnner, and he's a great guy. Be sure to buy it, if you decide to use it. Its worth it. I love that little app.

Peace