Another Dreamweaver alternative
Yesterday I mentioned RapidWeaver, a HTML editor worth taking a look at. In the past, I’ve mentioned NVU, an open-sourced clone of DreamWeaver. While NVU is nice, it hasn’t been updated in well over a year and is still missing some niceties.
Another new option I just ran across is aptana. Aptana is still in beta, but already looks quite promising. It’s an open source port of the Eclips JAVA IDE designed specifically for ‘web 2.0′ HTML, CSS, and Javascript, with PHP support coming.
5 Comments
Hi, Darrel,
Though it’s not open-source, what are your views on Freeway, from Softpress? It’s a WYSIWYG, but it writes solid CSS/XHTML. Seems like quite a coup for visual designers who aren’t strong coders (like myseslf). Using it is like using Quark or InDesign, and when it publishes, it writes the most efficient code for the situation.
A few quirks are that you have to pick up an additional plug-in to access the code (it touts the fact that you don’t need to touch the code). It also does in-line style sheets by default, and you have to get another plug-in to consolidate and create an external css file. But other than that, I’ve been quite impressed.
It’s 100 bones cheaper than DW, and about 100 times easier to use.
Hey Tom…how are things?
A friend of mine (web saavy, but has no interest in learning CSS) tried it out and was asking me what I thought of the code.
While the code might be valid in terms of meeting the W3C, logically and semantically, it still looked like quite a mess of extra arbitrary SPANS and various absolutely positioned DIVs. I wouldn’t use it for production work at all.
HTML simply can not be created well with a WYSIWYG tool unless the end-user has a full understanding of HTML to begin with.
To be fair, the same is true with print design as well. No matter how well you understand Illustrator, if you don’t have an understanding of CMYK, trapping, bleeds, paper, etc, you’ll have problems.
You touch on the kind of things that web saavy, non-developer types wouldn’t notice (the extra spans and div tags). I’ve gotten better at looking at and manipulating code, but I’ve got a long way to go on the nuances. As long as I don’t see a bunch of nested tables all over the place, I feel pretty good about it
I’m not planning on touting myself as a web developer anytime soon, but it has been nice to develop some smaller or more personal projects more quickly than before, knowing that at least the code is valid, if not semantically acceptable. My ideal situation is working with a top-shelf developer (or becoming an HTML stud myself, which always seems daunting).
Well, the best way to get familiar with HTML is to not use an application that hides the HTML from you. ;o)
That’s the nice thing about Dreamweaver. Just open the page, split the view between code and WYSIWYG and you can see changes made to one side affecting the other.
HTML isn’t really that complicated. You just have to dive in and get your feet wet. ;o)
Well, the best way to get familiar with HTML is to not use an application that hides the HTML from you. ;o)
Sighhhh, yeah, it did seem to good to be true. Did your friend use the “code snooper” action at all? Maybe that helps.