[loren s]

Microsofts Expression
http://www.microsoft.com/products/ex...n/default.mspx

I had a friend install it on his dell a few ago, and now he has really gotten into it.. It has full on css visual editing and a smart interface for the creation and testing of the compatibility.

And what do we have for developers ?
Rapidweaver and Sandvox, And a slew of text editing tools (BBedit, taco css edit.... ) Dreamweaver and golive don't count. Golives dead and dreamweaver is a bloated carbon hog.

Whats the deal ? Where are the slick visual Cocoa designed user/developer artist apps? I get to go on a trip to Parallels land now just to get access to Real smart visual design apps....

This goes further,, like CG cards and the use of them as realtime creation apps.. But thats not for here..

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by loren s

Microsofts Expression
Microsoft Expression - Home

I had a friend install it on his dell a few ago, and now he has really gotten into it.. It has full on css visual editing and a smart interface for the creation and testing of the compatibility.

And what do we have for developers ?
Rapidweaver and Sandvox, And a slew of text editing tools (BBedit, taco css edit.... ) Dreamweaver and golive don't count. Golives dead and dreamweaver is a bloated carbon hog.

Whats the deal ? Where are the slick visual Cocoa designed user/developer artist apps? I get to go on a trip to Parallels land now just to get access to Real smart visual design apps....

This goes further,, like CG cards and the use of them as realtime creation apps.. But thats not for here..

WYSIWYG editors suck. Always will too, just the same as Babelfish sucks at automatically translating our thoughts to another language.

I've heard that the latest version of Dreamweaver is better, but I would still never EVER trust my code to a WYSIWYG editor. I don't see the point in designing something in a WYSIWYG and then cleaning up the code later by hand. Why not just practice a little bit until you can code cleanly by hand?

[loren s]

Aw but you see I do edit by hand ,, purely by hand.. I don't like wysiwyg any more than you do..
But this app, in the great words of Steven 'P' Jobs "boom" it did it. It made the code super clean, and any edit that was made was "just" to that css styles attributes, like left 300px turned into left 340px. Thats it, line height just did just that, edited the line height..

And the second core feature, importing old code in,, "boom" it just worked.. It did not add the style to the html page it only edited the style, and the case here their were two or more same class elements on the page, "boom" it edited all of them by just editing the one on the screen..

It has visual handles for margin, and padding is in the works, you can see it just not edit it by hand in the view.

I was blown away in the fact that. Yes my OLD visual css tweaking idea has come to life, but in the worst way possible. On a windows box.. And ya know the worst part? The developers and users that hate pc so much, won't even dare try the app to see the crazy smart control it has. Thereby never getting it on the Mac side of teh world untill I can code my own,, which does not look liek that will ever happen..

I call out Jan Van Of CssEdit.. But I have already and have already been shot down from Jan Van...

Who else then?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by loren s

Aw but you see I do edit by hand ,, purely by hand.. I don't like wysiwyg any more than you do..
But this app, in the great words of Steven 'P' Jobs "boom" it did it. It made the code super clean, and any edit that was made was "just" to that css styles attributes, like left 300px turned into left 340px. Thats it, line height just did just that, edited the line height..

And the second core feature, importing old code in,, "boom" it just worked.. It did not add the style to the html page it only edited the style, and the case here their were two or more same class elements on the page, "boom" it edited all of them by just editing the one on the screen..

It has visual handles for margin, and padding is in the works, you can see it just not edit it by hand in the view.

I was blown away in the fact that. Yes my OLD visual css tweaking idea has come to life, but in the worst way possible. On a windows box.. And ya know the worst part? The developers and users that hate pc so much, won't even dare try the app to see the crazy smart control it has. Thereby never getting it on the Mac side of teh world untill I can code my own,, which does not look liek that will ever happen..

I call out Jan Van Of CssEdit.. But I have already and have already been shot down from Jan Van...

Who else then?

I'm sure it has some success stories, but it is still an abstraction, and it is still bound to fail from time to time. To each their own, but I'm just not interested in wasting my time with these sort of clicky programming tools that try to do the heavy lifting for you.

[SirCastor]

I would prefer writing my CSS by hand. Visual guides for margins will never be as accurate as I want them. Setting colors by hand will never be as accurate as hex codes, and designing pages will never turn out the way you expect with a WYSIWYG editor.

I agree with Besson, I'd rather just do it by hand.

[loren s]

Ok,, sure editing code by hand is absolute control.. But it takes time, and alot of times things go wrong. And alot of times the client wants something right away. And it's slow. I just don't understand why this looks bad to mac users?

Is it cause of the bad taste Dreamweaver has left ?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by loren s

Ok,, sure editing code by hand is absolute control.. But it takes time, and alot of times things go wrong. And alot of times the client wants something right away. And it's slow. I just don't understand why this looks bad to mac users?

Is it cause of the bad taste Dreamweaver has left ?

With practice it is not slower than using WYSIWYG editors. I can honestly say that I can crank something out by hand much faster than it would take one to use a WYSIWYG editor and clean up its turds. Perhaps WYSIWYG is good for designing very simple pages, but....

It's the same with clicky server admin tools, it is often just more efficient to simply use the primary interface of the product (in the case of Unix, this is the command line).

You don't save time by looking for shortcuts, trust me, I speak from experience

Best to just take care of business rather than looking for the bestest shortcut.

[Chuckit]

I really don't work any faster with WYSIWYG than I do writing my CSS by hand. I doubt anybody does who has good experience with CSS. Maybe WYSIWYG feels more immediate, but there's nothing faster about clicking a box, clicking an inspector and choosing a color than there is about opening the CSS file and typing in a color.

I thought there was a version of Expression for Mac, though. Strange. I could have sworn I had it at some point.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Dreamwaver isn't a WYSIWYG editor. It has a rough preview but nearly all the time previewing is done in an external browser. Same thing with GoLive. Anyone who thinks a WYSIWYG app is better than hand coding needs to find out how to float:left and float:right their left and right brain hemispheres back to the correct place.

[loren s]

Hmm,, It seems you missed the part of where I said it only edits the elements style and nothing else.. There by editing the code the same exact way you would if you just tweaked it in code view..

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

I didn't miss the part where you reckon all that clicking is faster than hand coding.

Hand coding and Dreamweaver rules according to every designer and admin I know or have read.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

Dreamwaver isn't a WYSIWYG editor. It has a rough preview but nearly all the time previewing is done in an external browser. Same thing with GoLive. Anyone who thinks a WYSIWYG app is better than hand coding needs to find out how to float:left and float:right their left and right brain hemispheres back to the correct place.

Doesn't Dreamweaver have a built-in Opera-based full page preview? Useless for PHP/Perl/etc. driven pages, but...

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

I didn't miss the part where you reckon all that clicking is faster than hand coding.

Hand coding and Dreamweaver rules according to every designer and admin I know or have read.

I don't understand why somebody would pay that kind of bread for a text editor? THere are a 230948239048 text editors out there, each with their own virtues, many which are free or substantially cheaper.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by loren s

Hmm,, It seems you missed the part of where I said it only edits the elements style and nothing else.. There by editing the code the same exact way you would if you just tweaked it in code view..

Okay, but it still falls into the category of being a WYSIWYG editor, and it still fundamentally comes with the same set of problems that other WYSIWYG editors come with.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by besson3c

I don't understand why somebody would pay that kind of bread for a text editor?

OK, shows how little you know of what Dreamweaver does and how websites are run.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

OK, shows how little you know of what Dreamweaver does and how websites are run.

Pretty bold assumption that I know little about how websites are run, isn't it?

What features does Dreamweaver have as a text editor that are unique to it?

[Tomchu]

I dare say that if Apple released such a piece of software, announcing it at MacWorld as "iDesigner" or something, you'd all be raving about how awesome it is and how it's made your web design lives so much easier and smoother.

-- But because it's Microsoft's software, it is denounced as just the usual WYSIWYG crap that most of you say you don't need.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Pretty bold assumption that I know little about how websites are run, isn't it?

You're calling it a text editor and asking if it has an Opera powered preview. I'd say go read a book about Dreamweaver instead of criticising what people may assume of you.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

I dare say that if Apple released such a piece of software, announcing it at MacWorld as "iDesigner" or something, you'd all be raving about how awesome it is and how it's made your web design lives so much easier and smoother.

It's called iWeb and it produces bloated crap.

[registered_user]

1. WYSIWYG is for web n00bies. And for web n00bies in denial. deal with it.
2. If every other MS 'creative' app is an indication, this is gonna suck. e.g. Frontpage, Publisher
3. If .NET is any indication, this is gonna suck.
4. If the source code on that page (which doesn't have a DOCTYPE) is any indication, this is gonna suck.

Show me some sample pages made with it. Please. You'll be wondering why there are no good apps for Windows.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

You're calling it a text editor and asking if it has an Opera powered preview. I'd say go read a book about Dreamweaver instead of criticising what people may assume of you.

So my information is a little outdated as of the last version in which it used Opera (now it uses Webkit and IE/Win).

As far as features, I don't see anything that looks particularly outstanding. Should I not be looking here?

Macromedia - Dreamweaver 8 : New Features

[Tomchu]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

It's called iWeb and it produces bloated crap.

iWeb is a drag-and-drop-make-me-a-pretty-photo-rich-site-so-that-I-can-show-my-relatives product. These are different beasts.

Originally Posted by registered_user

2. If every other MS 'creative' app is an indication, this is gonna suck. e.g. Frontpage, Publisher
3. If .NET is any indication, this is gonna suck.

If that reasoning were realistic, then the Mac OS of the 90's would be a good indication of Apple's current OS. Oh wait, it's not.

Silly "M$" troll.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

iWeb is a drag-and-drop-make-me-a-pretty-photo-rich-site-so-that-I-can-show-my-relatives product. These are different beasts.



If that reasoning were realistic, then the Mac OS of the 90's would be a good indication of Apple's current OS. Oh wait, it's not.

Silly "M$" troll.

It's not like there are many modern Microsoft applications that are stellar, are there?

[registered_user]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

If that reasoning were realistic, then the Mac OS of the 90's would be a good indication of Apple's current OS. Oh wait, it's not.

Silly "M$" troll.

You're suggesting that Microsoft will all of the sudden produce a web page builder that doesn't suck based on its glorious history of making creative apps that do suck so I hardly think you're any type of judge of what reasoning is realistic.

[Tomchu]

Percentage-wise? No, definitely not as many as say, Apple ... but they do have a number of great key applications.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Pretty bold assumption that I know little about how websites are run, isn't it?

What features does Dreamweaver have as a text editor that are unique to it?

Most text editors don't allow you to, say, define SQL schemas and automatically generate accessors for your page elements, do they?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Percentage-wise? No, definitely not as many as say, Apple ... but they do have a number of great key applications.

Excel 2004 for the Mac is Microsoft's only great application. Some of Office doesn't suck donkey balls. Everything else does.

[registered_user]

How many of those great key applications are in a 'creative' field like drawing, photo-editing, page design, or web design? None. They have software for those categories, but they all suck.

Did you even look at the source code for the linked page in this thread? Can you identify quality markup? I don't know about you, but I'm of the impression that if you're selling a web design app, your web site better be well designed. Theirs is not. Nor is the ms home page.

So if you have some realistic reasoning as to why this app will be different, I'm all ears.

For the record, I used to work at a .NET dev house, and I'm very comfortable saying .NET sucks, and I can back that up with actual reasons. e.g. .NET barely works without javascript, and it spits out atrocious markup. Consider for a moment ksaria dot com any web guy worth their salt can see where a skilled developer implemented semantic markup and where .NET injected a fat pile of crap.

So again, if you've got anything constructive to add to the discussion, please do. But up to this point, you just sound like a fanboi. Or even better, post a link to a site built with that MS app. I'd love to look at its source code.

edit note: wtf is up with BBCode auto inserting the linked page title? That's dumb.

[Tomchu]

Consider it this way ...

You're hating on Microsoft and this particular product *before* you even see how it does things. Loren S, on the other hand, has used the product, and is commenting on how great it is.

Whose word am I going to trust more? The Apple fanboy with an anti-Microsoft agenda, or the person who seems to use both platforms?

PS: Any tool in the hands of an unskilled worker will produce crap. Da Vinci wasn't a great artist because he used paints and brushes favoured by elitists. Microsoft's products by and large lack vision. Vision is something that only some people have. Do you honestly think that Microsoft has the same old fogeys working for them that they did back in the '95 days? Microsoft hires many young and fresh minds every year, and they put millions upon millions of dollars into research and promotion of interesting technologies.

Have you ever been to the Microsoft Research website? Put aside your hate for a moment and break out Google.

[registered_user]

ok, now I know you're a moron.

A framework, in the hands of anyone, is going to produce similar code because that's what a framework does.

The site itself is coded like a filthy diaper.

Loren S may well be the fanboi, you've no evidence that I'm a fan boy of anything, you've only evidence that I know what I'm talking about and that Loren likes that app.

so whatever guy. enjoy your theory.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Most text editors don't allow you to, say, define SQL schemas and automatically generate accessors for your page elements, do they?

Not to sound beligerent, but why would anybody want to do this? Defining database schemas requires a lot of careful planning, this would be one of the last things I would want automated. Actually creating some sort of database is not difficult, it's the database design that is, particularly when you are talking about complex relational databases.

Moreover, this would only work if MySQL or Postgresql was setup to allow your username from your host to create databases. It isn't terribly secure to just allow anybody with a privileged username and password to create databases from any host, which is probably why many ISPs don't. To assign "create databases" privileges to a remote host, that host would probably have to be assigned a static IP for this to be practical. Perhaps Dreamweaver will generate "create database" statements that can be run the next time you load a particular page - hence being run from localhost, this might work. Perhaps this could happen behind the scenes resulting in them having this part figured out, I don't know. I'd sure hope that the app would only send your database username/password up to the server using a secure protocol.

So, I'll give you this is a unique and interesting feature, but not to sound hard-headed, but I wouldn't pay for this feature, and I don't quite understand the benefit of this.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Consider it this way ...

You're hating on Microsoft and this particular product *before* you even see how it does things. Loren S, on the other hand, has used the product, and is commenting on how great it is.

Whose word am I going to trust more? The Apple fanboy with an anti-Microsoft agenda, or the person who seems to use both platforms?

PS: Any tool in the hands of an unskilled worker will produce crap. Da Vinci wasn't a great artist because he used paints and brushes favoured by elitists. Microsoft's products by and large lack vision. Vision is something that only some people have. Do you honestly think that Microsoft has the same old fogeys working for them that they did back in the '95 days? Microsoft hires many young and fresh minds every year, and they put millions upon millions of dollars into research and promotion of interesting technologies.

Have you ever been to the Microsoft Research website? Put aside your hate for a moment and break out Google.

Microsoft is not in the business to produce great innovative software. There are many many smart people where I work, but when they are surrounded by corrupt or incompetent management, the products being worked on never quite realize their potential. Microsoft's management bases their product decisions soley around profit and ROI. This results in adequate products that Microsoft feels will generate revenue. Microsoft is an amazing business, but in proportion to the size and resources of the company has produced very little great technology.

You can call me a biased Apple fanboy if you want (I'm not BTW), but I think this is a pretty objective look at their make-up. All of this is not necessarily a bad thing either, the stockholders are happy, the owners are happy, Microsoft is sustaining itself. They don't have the same incentive to produce astonishingly great software as several of their competitors. Why should they?

As far as Expression goes, yes I'm prejudging it, because the premise has been attempted over and over and over and over again. The bottom line is, products that add a layer of abstraction that attempt to automatically handle complex tasks based on interpreting user gestures have limited success rates. GUIs that can lock a user into a set of pre-defined variables work. This is why the industry is moving out of WYSIWYG web editors and into web page designers such as iWeb and Rapidweaver - there is a much lower margin of error when the web design app works with a pre-defined "cookie cutter" template and just worries about the text formatting.

Maybe somebody with a stronger computer science background than myself can better explain what I'm trying to say, but I guess my point is that this app can be prejudged based on its fundamental approach to solving a problem.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Not to sound beligerent, but why would anybody want to do this? Defining database schemas requires a lot of careful planning, this would be one of the last things I would want automated. Actually creating some sort of database is not difficult, it's the database design that is, particularly when you are talking about complex relational databases.

Moreover, this would only work if MySQL or Postgresql was setup to allow your username from your host to create databases.

It can create the database too, if I recall, but I actually meant you can describe the schema and database info for the program and it will handle all the busy-work of writing the code to use the database. I was just illustrating that it's not just a text editor, but more of an IDE.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

It can create the database too, if I recall, but I actually meant you can describe the schema and database info for the program and it will handle all the busy-work of writing the code to use the database. I was just illustrating that it's not just a text editor, but more of an IDE.

Ahhh... so it will automatically assist with creating a form-driven interface for your database? If so, interesting idea...

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by besson3c

So my information is a little outdated as of the last version in which it used Opera (now it uses Webkit and IE/Win).

As far as features, I don't see anything that looks particularly outstanding. Should I not be looking here?

Macromedia - Dreamweaver 8 : New Features

First, It doesn't have an Opera or Webkit preview. The preview is a rough, really rough, design view. Users are encouraged to choose two external browsers in the prefs for true previews.

You don't see anything outstanding about Dreamweaver because from what I know of you you're not a serious designer and don't use it. What text editor has file management and caches your site so that if you change the name of a file or link the editor will update the links to it across the site? Which text editor can help you work with MySQL databases and define schemas? Which text editor has autocomplete, error check and validation tools? Which text editor can keep assets and snippets for you? Which text editor has a tag inspector? Which text editor can help you code web based applications? Which text editor can convert a table based layout to a css layout? Which text editor can also be used as an FTP/SFTP/SSH app so you can work remotely? Which text editor can clean up your code or do site wide find and replace? Which text editor can convert a webpage's doctype declaration to another doctype and then check compliancy and do validation?

The answer is Dreamweaver. It does it the best.

[Macola]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

F
You don't see anything outstanding about Dreamweaver because from what I know of you you're not a serious designer and don't use it. What text editor has file management and caches your site so that if you change the name of a file or link the editor will update the links to it across the site? Which text editor can help you work with MySQL databases and define schemas? Which text editor has autocomplete, error check and validation tools? Which text editor can keep assets and snippets for you? Which text editor has a tag inspector? Which text editor can help you code web based applications? Which text editor can convert a table based layout to a css layout? Which text editor can also be used as an FTP/SFTP/SSH app so you can work remotely? Which text editor can clean up your code or do site wide find and replace? Which text editor can convert a webpage's doctype declaration to another doctype and then check compliancy and do validation?

Bingo. Try maintaining a 3,000-page website with a text editor and you'll see why Dreamweaver makes sense (although, to be honest, i preferred GoLIve's site management tools).

[registered_user]

I have Dreamweaver 8 at work and where I used to work. I loved it at my old job on Windows. It was fast and the built-in reference from O'Reilly was awesome. I never used design view though, I stayed in source view all of the time.

I didn't get into the site management and ftp though. That's not what I want in an editor.

Now I'm on a Mac, and I hate it. It's painfully slow to use. All of the features are still there, I just can't tolerate how slow it is. (I have a 1.2 or 1.3 GHz G4 -- I'm not sure -- at work). And while Dreamweaver is definitely better than GoLive, from my perspective, it's just too frustrating. I have used it to 'rough out' conversion from Word Docs. That is, I'll paste a Word doc into the design view, then copy the source. It still needs clean up, but it saves a lot of time on long documents.

skEdit has built in FTP now, but I seldom use that anymore either. It also has nice snippets and auto complete, and it even displays your directories in the side bar. It's a fine text editor, but v3.5 left me a little cold due to an undo bug, I should try the latest version. I couldn't get into Textmate either. Truthfully, I use TextWrangler the most. It also has ftp built-in. It has a regex enabled Find and Replace that works on entire directories so if I change the name of a file, it's a quick find and replace to change an entire site. (though that's not something that happens often when we plan ahead)

I would never trust a WYSIWYG app to help design a database schema, though FileMaker Pro does a pretty good job of illustrating it. I might build a database and if Dreamweaver can do it allow Dreamweaver to rough in a scaffold (Rails term there) to begin working on it. I've seen the javascript that comes out of DW, and frankly, it's frightening. I can only imagine the php it would create.

I don't know what a tag inspector is, but I'm pretty certain I can inspect my own tags since I work in source code. I also don't need an app that converts tables to CSS because I can open the page in the browser, copy the text and paste into a document. Semantic html is painfully easy to write and the file sizes are trim and nice. From there, it's just creating css. And to be honest, I can do a better job at that than Dreamweaver can. Dreamweaver might do it good enough for n00bies, but it can't touch hand-coded css or xhtml.

I guess what I'm saying is that if Dreamweaver works for you, then great. By all means use it. But it doesn't create accessible pages, it doesn't necessarily create semantic pages, and it never builds the most efficient pages. But it keeps you from having to know how CSS, XHTML, Javascript, and even php work. That's worth it to some people, but those people are not typically professional web developers -- at least not for very long. The pros need more precise control, so we very often code by hand. We're thinking about much more than how the page looks, we're thinking about efficiency, semantics, accessibility, and ease of maintenance. I hope that someday there will be a tool like Dreamweaver that can do what I do because it would save me time, but in the meanwhile, it's just a crutch... it'll get you started and hobbling along, but you're gonna have to let it go and walk on your own eventually.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by registered_user

Dreamweaver might do it good enough for n00bies, but it can't touch hand-coded css or xhtml.

WTF are you talking about? You're supposed to use Dreamweaver to take advantage of all the features it has but whatever your output is it always has to be a product of your own hand coding no matter what app you use.

Duh........

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by Macola

Bingo. Try maintaining a 3,000-page website with a text editor and you'll see why Dreamweaver makes sense (although, to be honest, i preferred GoLIve's site management tools).

What Adobe really has to give us is a site manager that blends in with the Finder and Spotlight.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

First, It doesn't have an Opera or Webkit preview. The preview is a rough, really rough, design view. Users are encouraged to choose two external browsers in the prefs for true previews.

Read that in the comments here:

Scott Fegette: FOTD 24: Dreamweaver 8 - CSS Improvements

You don't see anything outstanding about Dreamweaver because from what I know of you you're not a serious designer and don't use it.

Please stop insinuating things you know nothing about, especially considering my signature links to one of my sites where you can see for yourself my design ability. I don't want to start measuring dick sizes, but let's say that I developed several custom CMSes, working on completing one and releasing it as open source, and have created several sites in my time (some which are linked to from NetMusician). I would assume that this qualifies me as a serious designer, but if you disagree let's just dispense with the insults and move on.

What text editor has file management and caches your site so that if you change the name of a file or link the editor will update the links to it across the site?

Possibly NVU, but I just use multi-file search and replace techniques to do this. Since I have SSH access to my server, a simple:

perl -pi.bak -e 's/some_string/new_string/g' dir/*

Is extremely fast. BBEdit also has multi-file search and replace built in.

Which text editor can help you work with MySQL databases and define schemas?

Discussed this already. Perhaps neat for some people, useless for those that need to work with more complicated relational databases.

Which text editor has autocomplete, error check and validation tools?

Several, including BBEdit, have validation and error check tools. I believe TextMate has autocomplete. NVU has validation.

Which text editor can keep assets and snippets for you?

Text Edit, VoodooPad, whatever.

Which text editor has a tag inspector?

BBEdit, possibly NVU, probably several others... This is more of an interface mechanism, there are several editors that assist with creating code - that is generally the point of them in the first place.

Which text editor can help you code web based applications?

What do you mean by "help"?

Which text editor can convert a table based layout to a css layout?

None, I hope, if you don't want the job to be botched.

Which text editor can also be used as an FTP/SFTP/SSH app so you can work remotely?

BBEdit, Textwrangler, NVU, Emacs.

Which text editor can clean up your code or do site wide find and replace?

Discussed multi-file search and replace already.

Which text editor can convert a webpage's doctype declaration to another doctype and then check compliancy and do validation?

BBEdit

The answer is Dreamweaver. It does it the best.

Some interesting features listed here. Which editor costs $400? The answer is Dreamweaver. BBEdit is $200. Is a site manager worth $200?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Macola

Bingo. Try maintaining a 3,000-page website with a text editor and you'll see why Dreamweaver makes sense (although, to be honest, i preferred GoLIve's site management tools).

Why would one create a 3,000 page website with either tool? Wouldn't at least part of your site be database driven if it grew to this size?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by registered_user

I have Dreamweaver 8 at work and where I used to work. I loved it at my old job on Windows. It was fast and the built-in reference from O'Reilly was awesome. I never used design view though, I stayed in source view all of the time.

I didn't get into the site management and ftp though. That's not what I want in an editor.

Now I'm on a Mac, and I hate it. It's painfully slow to use. All of the features are still there, I just can't tolerate how slow it is. (I have a 1.2 or 1.3 GHz G4 -- I'm not sure -- at work). And while Dreamweaver is definitely better than GoLive, from my perspective, it's just too frustrating. I have used it to 'rough out' conversion from Word Docs. That is, I'll paste a Word doc into the design view, then copy the source. It still needs clean up, but it saves a lot of time on long documents.

skEdit has built in FTP now, but I seldom use that anymore either. It also has nice snippets and auto complete, and it even displays your directories in the side bar. It's a fine text editor, but v3.5 left me a little cold due to an undo bug, I should try the latest version. I couldn't get into Textmate either. Truthfully, I use TextWrangler the most. It also has ftp built-in. It has a regex enabled Find and Replace that works on entire directories so if I change the name of a file, it's a quick find and replace to change an entire site. (though that's not something that happens often when we plan ahead)

I would never trust a WYSIWYG app to help design a database schema, though FileMaker Pro does a pretty good job of illustrating it. I might build a database and if Dreamweaver can do it allow Dreamweaver to rough in a scaffold (Rails term there) to begin working on it. I've seen the javascript that comes out of DW, and frankly, it's frightening. I can only imagine the php it would create.

I don't know what a tag inspector is, but I'm pretty certain I can inspect my own tags since I work in source code. I also don't need an app that converts tables to CSS because I can open the page in the browser, copy the text and paste into a document. Semantic html is painfully easy to write and the file sizes are trim and nice. From there, it's just creating css. And to be honest, I can do a better job at that than Dreamweaver can. Dreamweaver might do it good enough for n00bies, but it can't touch hand-coded css or xhtml.

I guess what I'm saying is that if Dreamweaver works for you, then great. By all means use it. But it doesn't create accessible pages, it doesn't necessarily create semantic pages, and it never builds the most efficient pages. But it keeps you from having to know how CSS, XHTML, Javascript, and even php work. That's worth it to some people, but those people are not typically professional web developers -- at least not for very long. The pros need more precise control, so we very often code by hand. We're thinking about much more than how the page looks, we're thinking about efficiency, semantics, accessibility, and ease of maintenance. I hope that someday there will be a tool like Dreamweaver that can do what I do because it would save me time, but in the meanwhile, it's just a crutch... it'll get you started and hobbling along, but you're gonna have to let it go and walk on your own eventually.

I think what you are getting at is one of the fundamental differences between many Mac and Windows users and many Unix users. Many Mac users enjoy using products that intend to automate, and in doing so create several layers of abstraction. Many don't mind working with (and against), and struggling with these point and click tools to make things work.

Most Unix users and developers I know prefer to be in full control of their own code, and don't trust an automated GUI tool to get it right.

In my opinion, the idea of having any sort of assistant to help you design websites (or databases, CMSes, etc.) always breaks down as things become more complicated or more flexibility is needed, just like Babelfish breaks down when you need it to translate an entire English sentence. I think we are far off from perfecting these sorts of tools, and may never without developing complex AI. Therefore, I'll continue to propose just cutting to the chase and taking care of business. There are tools that can *assist* with creating code (e.g. auto-completion is cool), but I don't ever want to trust the control of my project to some dumb piece of software.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

What Adobe really has to give us is a site manager that blends in with the Finder and Spotlight.

What good would that do? Designing static .html pages is generally a thing of the past these days. This approach will not help in generating database driven content.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by besson3c

BBEdit does this, Text Edit does that, VoodooPad does this, whatever does that.

Right so go ahead and spend a minimum of $200 (BBEdit) and lots of time switching between each app while many many others go about happily using all of those features and saving time in one app like Dreamweaver.

You don't come across as half as clever as you proudly think

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by besson3c

What good would that do? Designing static .html pages is generally a thing of the past these days.

LOL

Someone never had a directory of images and other files to manage. And you know what, even if static pages are still old hat there shouldn't be anything preventing someone from using them if they want.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

Right so go ahead and spend a minimum of $200 (BBEdit) and lots of time switching between each app while many many others go about happily using all of those features and saving time in one app like Dreamweaver.

You don't come across as half as clever as you proudly think

Mr. Expert Designer, why don't you enlighten us as to which of these features are actually useful in creating sites driven by dynamic content (which is the standard these days)?

- Not the site manager
- Not the SQL thing (maybe useful for mocking stuff up, but inflexible)

Hmmm....


What about pages not created in pure HTML? Does Dreamweaver do validation and error checking of PHP or Perl code? No, it can't. Dynamic sites require a middleware language. How does Dreamweaver add unique benefit to PHP or Perl coders?

What about third-party or homegrown CMSes? Will Dreamweaver help you in maintaining a site driven by a CMS? Not really...

You came in here announcing that I'm not an expert designer in a pretty bold fashion. I have no indication that you are an expert designer yourself, or at least somebody with enough credibility to speak as boldly as you do.

Dreamweaver is still essentially the same product it's been since its inception, still working at that same basic model that was all the rage in the late 90s and early part of this century. The world has moved on to dynamic and CMS managed content.

Why would somebody pay $400 for Dreamweaver to use it as a text editor in developing anything other than old school static .html pages?

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by besson3c

What about pages not created in pure HTML? Does Dreamweaver do validation and error checking of PHP or Perl code? No, it can't.

Uhh...Dreamweaver does. It uses color coding to tell you when code is invalid or has an error. And it has whole reference manuals built in for learning and checking code. Do you know how much it would cost to buy those reference manuals alongside your $200 BBEdit and other apps? You'd pay a lot.

Who pays $400 for Dreamweaver anyway? They buy Studio 8 and gets lots of apps for a better collective price. I'd like to see how that can be beat.

How does Dreamweaver add unique benefit to PHP or Perl coders?

Download the full functional demo. Hit New Document, choose dynamic page, start coding and see.

What about third-party or homegrown CMSes? Will Dreamweaver help you in maintaining a site driven by a CMS? Not really...

A friend had just had a custom CMS built for his site with Dreamweaver. The Macromedia Studio 8 suite also comes with a CMS called Contribute.

You came in here announcing that I'm not an expert designer in a pretty bold fashion.

And just made you look like an ass........again.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

LOL

Someone never had a directory of images and other files to manage. And you know what, even if static pages are still old hat there shouldn't be anything preventing someone from using them if they want.

Umm... you don't need a $400 tool to manage a directory of images. Really. No kidding.



Sorry dude, I think you should exit this particular debate. It seems like it is you that doesn't know what he is talking about.

Sorry to be so abrasive about this, but in my defense it was you that started laying these sort of accusations and assumptions on me. Let's just move on, okay?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

Uhh...Dreamweaver does. It uses color coding to tell you when code is invalid or has an error. And it has whole reference manuals built in for learning and checking code. Do you know how much it would cost to buy those reference manuals alongside your $200 BBEdit and other apps? You'd pay a lot.

Ohhh.. color coding! Am I being punked? Seriously, you have to be kidding me.

emacs and vi will do color coding, BBEdit does color coding, a ton of editors do color coding. Reference manuals? WTF? PHP and Perl are open source languages, there are plenty of free reference materials online. PHP's site includes the best reference material I've seen for PHP.

You're really reaching here...

Download the full functional demo. Hit New Document, choose dynamic page, start coding and see.

What is dynamic content? What are relational databases? How is dynamic content generated?

A friend had just had a custom CMS built for his site with Dreamweaver. The Macromedia Studio 8 suite also comes with a CMS called Contribute.

Yes, I've literally taught several classes at the University how to use Contribute while I was a student there. I've also built a CMS to work around a large multi-section course the school offers that includes using Contribute in the curriculum. I still do some consulting for them.

Contribute sucks ass. Really. I could go on as to why it does, but frankly I think you're just continuing this argument because you don't want to back down. Contribute is the crappiest CMS in the entire industry. No serious designer would use it.

Do you know what a CMS is? How it works? Please do share.

And just made you look like an ass........again.

It's a shame that you have no clue as to how little you actually know. I'll be waiting for some answers to my questions, otherwise, I'm done continuing to argue with you just for the sake of arguing. Sorry dude, you don't know what you're talking about.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Umm... you don't need a $400 tool to manage a directory of images. Really. No kidding.

Why not stop being selective and manipulative in your "I'm so superior" arguments and cut to the point you really want to make: "Allahu Akbar! I want my software for free because I'm so useless at this web design thing I'll never make a profit.......and I have paying for software or keeping the employees of big software companies in their jobs"

Nice job, keep it up loser