Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX With CrossOver Office

AstroDrabb writes "It seems that CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office 2.1 now supports Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX. So for those who have been waiting to ditch MS Windows because of these two apps, now is your chance. The announcement from CodeWeavers can be found here and the changelog can be found here. The list of supported applications is also getting pretty impressive."

Can I sync my IPAQ?

iIs it possible to sync a ipaq using codeweavers? I tried multisync but it is still buggy.

I am stick on win4lin now, but I have to admit that cw seems impressive.

G.

all good but...

not to put down their achievement, but how is this any functionally different than running said applications in vmware/bochs/plex86? share a network drive, and you still have access to your filesystem(s). it's not like you need huge hardware accelerated performance (ie, running directx) to run flash authoring tools.

that said, this is pretty cool. my design windows using buddies all think flashmx is the de-facto standard app to know for getting hired as a designer these days. yes, it's lame, but it's hard to be elitist when it comes to getting paid.

Re:all good but...

not to put down their achievement, but how is this any functionally different than running said applications in vmware/bochs/plex86?

It's very different. I suggest you try their trial version and see. For starters, you get practically 100% performance, there is no slowdown due to emulating a CPU or holding an entire copy of Windows in memory. Secondly, you get much better integration - apps appear in your Linux menu system, they use your native window manager (so they support virtual desktops etc), you can copy and paste between native and emulated apps ... the list goes on and on.

Hold your horses about switching

Both of the apps only have a bronze medal From the crossover site [codeweavers.com] :

Bronze Medal The bronze is awarded to applications that install and run, and that can accomplish some portion of their fundamental mission.

However, bronze applications generally have enough bugs that we recommend that our customers not depend on their functionality. The most important aspect of a bronze application is that CodeWeavers makes a firm commitment to bring all bronze applications to the silver level in future releases of CrossOver.

You can't have that if you want to switch and are highly dependant on it. Users will just get frustrated. Both of the apps only have a bronze medal

Re:Hold your horses about switching

We have a policy to always start an application at Bronze level.

We know the reality of Wine - it can be very promising, but fail in important ways. So, we try to help our customers be cautious in their adoption. For example, Photoshop, which actually is one of the very best performing applications in CrossOver (it is in heavy use to make major motion pictures), started at Bronze, and is now only at Silver.

With that said, we have found Dreamweaver to be very complete, with only a few remaining bugs. And we have yet to find a bug in Flash... (but we didn't try as hard there).

Cheers,

Jeremy White CEO CodeWeavers

IE

Running Internet Explorer on Linux?
That's pretty impressive/terrifying indeed.

Re:IE

What is the earthly point of a bank having a web site? There are only two reasons I ever set foot anywhere near a bank.

- To pay in a cheque through the hole-in-the-wall.
- To draw out some cash from the hole-in-the-wall.

Unless someone has come up with a new killer application that lets me scan a cheque at home and pay it into my account, or print pound notes on my own printer {actually, I have done the very next best thing, but that's another story}, I have absolutely no use for internet banking.

You're kidding, right? Either you're trolling or your bank is still in the stone ages. I pay all my bills online from my bank's website. That's phone, internet, health, credit cards, insurance, etc. Bill comes in the mail, I go online and pay it. I can also schedule payments in advance so that they're made exactly on the due date, or schedule automatic monthly/weekly/whatever payments. I also transfer amounts between accounts (personal and business) online as well. I can pay other people online at no cost, if they are using the same bank as I do.

The earthly point is that I hardly ever set foot near a bank these days, and that's on the odd occasion that I need to deposit a che[ck/que] or money order myself, rather than having it direct deposited. If your bank doesn't offer this, maybe you should look around for a new bank?

excellent - but note it's only bronze support

along with photoshop, macromedia products have been the most requested for codeweavers support, bar none, so this is excellent news... (btw, all you dreamweaver-bashers; yes, flash is often a bad idea, but no dreamweaver doesn't produce bloated code unless you have no idea what you're doing ;-) )

however, note that dreamweaver/flash are only at 'bronze medal' status

bronze applications generally have enough bugs that we recommend that our customers not depend on their functionality.

still good, as they promise to bring all bronze apps up to silver in future versions, but don't all you web designers delete that windows partition quite yet ;)

Just as they release

Dreamweaver and Flash MX 2004, we can run the previous version on Linux. These are big commercial apps - their availability on Linux would be a great boost to the OS, but only if they arrive with Macromedia support.

Some smaller developers may well take up the older versions under linux - certainly there could be benefits for testing on a local machine that's already running Apache, PHP & mysql, but bigger developers will want latest releases to stay up to date in the marketplace.

impressive list?

I dunno - the list of supported apps includes a lot of "known to not work" apps in it.

call me stupid, but, if they don't work how the heck
can you say they are supported?

looks like somebody was just trying to fluff up the list so they could get attention.

ttwisi

- jeff -

Good, I suppose

I don't know if this is god or bad.

It's good as it allows people to use a popular windows app in Linux x86. But it's bad because now there is less pressure on Macromedia to develop a native port or for somebody else to write a free Dreamweaver killer.

I personally would have preferred if some good programer had enhanced Mozilla composer to the same level of feature richnes as the Macromedia suite. That way not only x86 Linux users would have a content development tool but also users of other Linux platforms would have a good content development tool. Not to mention that it would also likely have run on Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, MacOS-X and windows.

Re:Good, I suppose

It's good as it allows people to use a popular windows app in Linux x86. But it's bad because now there is less pressure on Macromedia to develop a native port or for somebody else to write a free Dreamweaver killer.

I think this argument is rather academic. Being able to use popular apps in Linux is undoubtably good, however the "bad" arguments rely on two flawed assumptions:

1) Macromedia might one day do a native port. Not going to happen anytime soon guys. Dreamweaver is a huge app, and I'd be willing to bet that (as with most apps) the majority of the code is platform specific GUI and graphics calls. It would take a truly astonishing amount of manpower to port it to say GTK+, make it fully integrate and so on, and it just isn't economically viable while Linux has only 1% of the desktop market. Even if we had 5% or 10% we'd still be pushing our luck - a port in this sense often means a rewrite.

2) That we'd have an open source dreamweaver killer anytime soon. Quanta is about the only thing that comes close, and while a great effort, is not a Dreamweaver killer. It might be one day, but that's yet another long term dream.

Basically, the best way out of a bad situation here is via emulation, which is exactly what we're doing.

We really need a Dreamweaver under GNU/Linux !!!

Our free and open GNU/*nix world is really missing some kind of Dreamweaver. As a Web developer I have not found something similiar in the free software and open source world. As the Dreamweaver/HomeSite/TopStyle pack is the one and only, there is still this big gap in the free software world. I would really appreciate a free software alternative before using any emulation.

Please developers of free and open software here is a great work to do for your fellow hackers!

Dreamweaver MX has been running under Wine before

I can't recall exactly when, but I remember setting up dreamweaver MX under Wine [winehq.com] a while ago (let's say about a year). It is listed in the Wine Application DB [winehq.com], It worked pretty well back then, the only problem was that it crashed when you used the color selection box. I no longer use it now, I've come to my senses and use VIM.

Some people dropped Windows long ago

and bought a Mac... and never looked back, but it's nice to hear that support for these useful tools is coming for the alt-OS X86 crowd.

Cygwin

Does it support Cygwin?

Supported = stable?

Does 'supported' to them mean as stable as on native windows? Or do i have to expect increased peroidic crashes..

This isnt accpetable in business ( though how microsoft gets away with it, ill never understand. )

Hmm... where is the demo, or bit torrent to try it out for myself with MY applications? Or do they just expect me to take a leap of faith?

Lotus Notes for Linux... when ?

It's a shame that we need to use tools like CrossOver Office 2.1 to support the Lotus Notes R5 client under Linux. With a company like IBM pushing Linux, it seems to me that getting a Notes client would be the obvious choise... (Lotus Domino servers already run on Linux).

What about IE 6.0

Any idea when IE 6.0 will be supported by CodeWeavers ?

Better choices

Look at how viruses spread. Then compare to flash. If one additional box had been included on the popup that asks you if you want to install flash, that says, no, and don't ask me again (instead of asking every time your mouse passes over an imbedded flash file), it wouldn't have spread so far so fast.

Flash is simply an animated gif enhancement for viewing more annoying banner ads. And for locking out users from web sites designed by designers that think it is more important to show off their flash programming skills than capturing a greater percentage of users through a more user-friendly site for the business or individual that the site is promoting.

As for Dreamweaver, regardless of the naysayers, it's bloated, not stable, and it still is not fully w3c compliant, even if you do know what you are doing. There is still non-compliant code that is inserted into source code, regardless of the settings.

For those who aren't chained to cold fusion, a better, more w3c compliant, and freer solution (as in freedom, and as in beer) is Quanta+ [sourceforge.net]. While wysiwyg [members.shaw.ca] is not in the stable release, it is in the cvs tree, and will launch when the new kde launches very shortly (check the mailing list for more updated info on the feature). And the other features are numerous, but the support for xml, and other technologies is all there. And the response from developers on the mailing list is fantastic, in features, in bug fixes, in help, and in just about everything else. I once thought I couldn't leave windows solely because of Dreamweaver, but Quanta+ enabled me to move to a much more stable and less restrictive operating system.

Sun [newsforge.com], Adobe, and Macromedia, among other proprietary companies [newsforge.com] are the old guard. And they are the future SCO's of the tech world. The future is gpl'd source code for all applications. The rest of the world has already realized this, small businesses [slashdot.org] are catching on fast, and anyone looking to stay competitive and productive needs to admit this to themselves or they will be left behind, just like Sun, Adobe, and Macromedia.

Watch what happens to Sun [newsforge.com] in the next 18-24 months. Adobe and Macromedia will follow the same path shortly thereafter, maybe sooner.

And Oracle [yahoo.com] is not far behind...

Its getting there...

Its good to see CodeWeavers adding more application support to their product. I've used it for a bit but had a lot of trouble with applications simply vanishing (I assume they crashed) while working with them, or just had very slow performance. Its fun to play around with, but I'd be hung from the nearest rafter if I tried instituting this in a corporate environment.

unbelievable

Just downloaded the beta -- worked great and now I can write my coldfusion code on my linux laptop at home!

Why crossover only works on the converted:

Option 1:

• Linux - say, $50
• Crossover Office - $59.99
• MS-Office - $400

Option 2:

• WinXP Home Edition - $120
• MS-Office - $400

is this worth a saving of $10 (~2%) ? Or even $60 (~12%) given that, whatever you say about MS, Office (and all the other applications) are highly more likely to work better on XP than any emulated environment?

Maybe for some corporate customers, but I doubt it. Even as a small business owner, I wouldnt take the risk.

And the point is??

Suppose I was buying a new computer on which I wished to run a wide variety of Windows applications. I could buy an OS-free PC, install Linux and then work out how to install Crossover Office in order to be able to run "most" of the functionality of a small number of applications. For only slightly more than the cost of a Crossover license and at considerably less trouble, I could buy an OEM edition of Windows and have access to a complete range of fully-supported Windows applications on my new PC and some reasonable level of commitment to keep them working.

Or, perhaps I buy a PC with Windows and an OEM version of Office pre-installed and save some time and money.

There are some niche applications for this product, but if you want to run a lot of Windows applications, running Windows seems like a more obvious way of doing it...

Random comments on this

1. CrossoverOffice is significant because it allows migration of even dedicated Windows users, people who are inevitably tied to specific applications rather than the OS as such.

2. There is a Linux distro, Xandros, that comes with CrossoverOffice as a preinstalled component (at least in the deluxe Xandros). The combined package is cheaper than the two apart.

3. It becomes possible with this to create enterprise packages consisting of a bootable Linux CD with all the applications the users need, and all their data on network drives. Take random PC, insert USB identity module (/home on flash drive) boot from CD, and work.

This last one is IMHO a killer application since it removes the entire PC administration burden from large businesses.

CrossoverOffice is a significant product, a key part of Linux's inexorable drive to eliminating all other OSes from the commodity IT market.

My prediction: by end-2006, in three years' time, Windows will be in a significant minority position and Linux will be preinstalled on most or all PCs sold to home and business. Microsoft will either have embraced this and discovered a whole universe of new Office licensees, or will suffer a crash much like IBM suffered in the face of the PC's original success.

Visual Interdev

If I could get Interdev to run and be able to interface properly to FPSE enabled webservers on linux I'd be happy.

This is one of my big stumbling blocks to moving to linux...

My main concern

Is that they use Tcl/Tk. Hey, it's a neat widget set, but I've not been seeing a hugely stable API for it, and it's a rather Motif-ish system. It also lacks some of the capabilities of more modern toolkits.

Tcl/Tk is great for whipping up a GUI-based application or applet, and it works fine in most academic or scientific environs, because you don't need fancy features but you do often want a solid, blocky, clearly-visible system.

They claim to support the Office 2000 features, and I've no reason to doubt them, so they've presumably been doing some serious work outside of the Tcl scripting language. OLE2 in Tcl would be frightening, for example.

The use of Wine is presumably to provide a lot of the capabilities of Windows. However, many of these can now be found in purely native Linux toolkits. As such, Wine is unnecessary overhead. Office apps are notoriously heavyweight, so excess is really not a good idea.

Having said all that, the concept of a power app is a good one, and all power to Codeweavers for the work they've done. If it inspires other app writers for Linux to go the extra mile, then it'll be worth every byte.

Is this a "Good Thing"

As a professional web deveolper, and self confessed Linux junkie, I just have to ask myself, is this a good thing?

I use my Gentoo Linux partition for just about everythnig, but have to reboot to windows when I need to get some work done and work with Macromedia Studio 2004. I know I'm not the only one who has repeatedly e-mailed and faxed and called Macromedia about Linux versions of their programs. I'd buy them in a heartbeat, and I know I'm not the only one.

Now that the MX versions of Flash and Dreamweaver can be run on Linux what incentive does Macromedia have for porting Stuio 2004 to Linux? While I compliment the Wine and Codeweavers teams in their effort, I wonder even how possible it will be to continue the progress they have started. MX 2004 comes everyone's favorite "feature," activation which will be a big hurdle for the Wine/Codeweavers team. They will either have to re-enginer the activation code (Hello DMCA) or work around it which will may further incite Macromedia reducing the chances it will get ported.

P.S. if we are going to have to go the compatability route, wouldn't it be easier/better to create a compatibility layer with OS X? This would open not only the Macromedia apps, but also the Adobe apps.

good css editor for linux?

This announcement is excellent news, but as I do more coding, html editors seem less important than css editors.

Does anyone know good style editors for linux?

I've been using Top Style on Windows as well as Mozilla plugins like editcss. (I think Morphon has a (free) css editor, but I can't remember how well it's integrated into its xml editor.

Great news for teachers

Sketchpad is an application my wife (a high school teacher) uses ALL the time.

Now if Grade Machine worked under Wine...

Why Use Dreamweaver?

Ok, here's a question.

Until relatively recently I was a windows client programmer, and worked with HTML etc only occasionally. Several times now, I've had a chance to start completely new website projects from scratch. Each time I've thought I'd give Dreamweaver a try and I have eventually always dumped it and used a cgi script to dynamically generate pages with Perl or PHP.

Once I'm past the prototyping phase, it seems easier to use Javascript and Perl (or something) to build dynamic pages rather than code static pages with Dreamweaver. (Besides I make better HTML than it does anyway! --- yeah right)

I'm wondering what boat I'm missing about Dreamweaver and similar sorts of tools. What should I be using them for? Is it a coincedence that my projects tend to involve content that changes frequently, and it would work better for content that is more constant?

Codeweavers vs Wine

Can someone explain the difference between the wine from winehq and the codeweavers product? Is codeweavers a fork of wine? Or is it more of branded version of wine like netscape/mozilla?

what about mac?

Has anyone pointed out that both of these apps run great on OS X? I don't need to ditch windows, or use codeweaver. I just click the icon in the dock.

Must have product

Having been a user of both CrossOver Office and CrossOver Plugin for quite some time now, these 2 products IMHO are must haves if you Linux guys/gals do any kind of Windows/Linux.

In my case, Office comes in handy when other researchers send me Excel spreadsheets with macros. OOO and StarOffice simple do not support Excel macros. The other case is for PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft uses the Microshaft java VM and simple will not work correctly with Sun's java and other browsers. Office offers me a choice to install IE 6. In this case, I don't have to dual boot Windows or have an open VMware windows install to use our PeopleSoft programs

Plugin comes in handy for personal surfing use by letting me see (on the web) information I can't see because its either in a plugin that is not Linux supported or will never be supported in Linux, i.e. Quicktime.

And yes you can setup mplayer to play Quicktime/ASF streams, but I simply don't have the time and energy. Install the Plugin package, install Quicktime program, bingo, I see videos.

Great News

This is great news, but I'm still stuck until Fireworks MX will run under Linux. I was able to get Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX to run under Wine to some success. But both where some what unstable (Enough to be unusable) and looking at the bronze rating it was given, Codeweaver states not to "depend" on a program with this rating, so I will wait a little more... Fireworks on the other hand, I never could get running. And searching the web could never find anyone that got it running under wine. Codeweaver if you are listening. Most developers/designers who use Dreamweaver or Flash also use Fireworks, and it would be great if you could work to get that working too.

Interesting, what kind of "switch" would that be??

I mean, you are switching from an unstable, propietary shit from microsoft in which you run propietary software from macromedia, to an unstable and propietary shit from Crossover in wich you run propietary software from macromedia??
If you want to switch to GNU, then run Free Software, if you just care about performance, then you are forgeting the free of speech part, and getting it more like in free beer (and if you are going to need shit like crossover, it will even be worse in performance, not to mention completely unethical, since Crossover is no more that Wine with a few stupid patches).

P.S: Don't get ofended, but it should be just vi, and if you want, you can add a few pngs to your webpage. If you feel like filing the allready messed up web with more flash shit, you really deserve to be stock at windoze95.

Fireworks. Fireworks. Fireworks.

In fact, I'd say Fireworks is *more* important than Dreamweaver on Linux -- certainly it would be to me. Because the strength of Dreamweaver centers around two things: (1) It makes it easy to design/edit web pages when you don't know HTML and (2) It makes it easy to futz about with design before you've settled on one.

Thing is, for most Linux users, #1 isn't going to be much of an issue. And #2 is better done in a graphics program suited to it. Which is exactly what Fireworks is. It's *much* better than Photoshop, because of the wide variety of vector oriented tools, better slicing facilities, all while having a good set of raster/bitmap tools and effects as well.

I'd also imagine this wouldn't be too hard for Macromedia. Their products seem to give the impression of a unified underlying toolset/library, though I couldn't speak authoritatively to that.

Cross-Over

Now that these two apps are supported, ill contemplate the switch over. The reasons that i havent gone to linux is because the lack of support for games, and the lack of support for dreamweaver. Gaming is my biggest computer use, but i do use dreamweaver for coding html. Its a good prog b/c it does all of the "bitch work" of coding. I can code a lot faster with dreamweaver than with text editor. I tried the wysiwyg part of dreamweaver, and i wasnt too impressed. The css support isnt that great.
Oh yeah, i dont like windows at all, i cant wait until linux supports more games.

Why ditch Windows?

This seems to be the same kind of discussion as the Canadian company which manufactured the layer for win32 drivers to work under Linux.
Given that I call myself a supporter of open source why would I pay a 3rd party to use closed-source plugin for closed-source applications on an open source platform?

It smells hypocrisy and the crossover folks should bankrupt.

Slightly OT: How good is Access under Crossover?

Excellent news on Dreamweaver.

My question is how good is Access nowadays under Crossover. I see on the list that it can open the sample .mdb file, but I want to know if ODBC works. (It would seem to be a rather hard thing to do, but then again, so is WINE!) This is particularly important for a lot of companies that have software packages from vendors that use Access as a front end to a bigger DB.

Crossover:Linux - Classic:Mac OSX

I see this as an excellent effort to help the spread of Linux in corporate and industry environments. No, some of these apps have missing functionality and the range is limited, but this is almsot exactly what Mac users went through for around two and a half years before Macromedia, Adobe and Quark ported the major applications. Up until then quite a lot had to done in the Classic Mac OS9 environment running in OSX as a process, and a lot of the applications weren't perfect. There were some crashes and some things that didn't work any more but the admittedly loyal mac users put up with this because no one wants to dual boot all the time and they didn't want to forgo the advantages of OSX.

Crossover Office brings that very same functionality to Linux. It means that large corporations with loads of Office 2000 Licences and knowledge who are tired of Microsoft highjacking fees and changing licencing can use their legacy documents along with all the macros and VBA add-ons that they have on a platform that they can better control and customise, which is more secure (no VBA virus is going to trash their Linux system even if it trashes the Office installation) and far cheaper to maintain and purchase. The advantages are enormous. And Munich obviously knew this, since this is what they are doing.

Equally web designers who want to design with powerful tools and test on the end users platform no longer have to have two platforms or dual boot in order to serve on the same platform that their site will finally be hosted on.

Even all those movie studios who use Linux and Cinepaint will appreciate being able to use Photoshop as well.

I see advantages and good times ahead for codeweavers.

what about wine?

From what I understand, regular Wine seems work with just about any standard application. I've played around with it for some time, and almost everything works, *assuming* the registry is configured correctly. Most strange glitches in Wine just go away if you fine tune your configuration.

I've used Wine for many obscure applications, including: Nero, PowerDesk, LC2 Assembler/Simulator, and ePSXe. All applications worked with varying degrees of glitches, but I think if I extracted the registry entries from windows natively, most of those issues would not be present.

I'm not certain if Crossover Office this has any direct relation to the regular Wine codebase, but to me it sounds like a "Wine plus support" release.

Documentation is another story. Frank's Wine Corner is a good start though. Among other things, he documents how to get Office 2000 and Baldur's Gate working. Also, I found a howto for Photoshop, which I've heard works quite well. When I get around to it, I would like to start a similar howto site with full registry tweak details.

--Tim

HALLELUJAH!

HALLELUJAH!
HH-AA-LL-EE-LL-UU-JJ-AA-HH

Finally, Now I have no reason to use Windows anymore and can switch too...oooh hay look at Panther that's pretty cool and already runs everything Windows does...

Sorry Redhat guess your gonna have to be pretier and as useful as OS X now....

my favorite foo bar

Apple iTunes
iTunes currently does not work in CrossOver Office.
found at page 5 of the SUPPORTED apps section [codeweavers.com]

Re:I'll ditch windows

In all fairness, that's never going to happen.

Personally I'll be happy to move when there's a viable alternative for all the applications I run. Except there already are...so I guess I'm just idle.

Anyway the point is, or at least how I read your comment, that you aren't looking to ditch Windows because it suits your needs. I am, I just need the push. This could be it.

Re:Dreamweaver == bloat

Obviously you know nothing about what CSS is, or are just stupid. Let me enlighten you.

In the beginning, there was the Web.

All was good. Bandwidth was, on average, low, but sites were small and to the point, and loaded quickly.

People began to use frames and many other things, marring the content with style.

But then, in this dark hour, when web pages loaded slowly and all hope was lost, a light appeared in the darkness.

It was CSS.

CSS is based on the idea that content, which is the actual information of a web page, should be entirely seperate from the style of a web page, which is defined by the CSS. If you disable CSS, the webpage should load as plain text and pictures and form elements, no spiffy navigation bar here, no sidebar here. Something that text-readers can understand and that loads very quickly. The CSS file also loads quickly, and by combining the two into one a web page can be made small, while still full of content and aesthetically pleasing.

Re:Dreamweaver == bloat

down by the Flash/custom tags/CSS/ECMAScript crap that pollutes the Information Superhighway these days.

you're either missing the point of CSS, or you've never really seen what it can do. CSS is great for trimming _down_ the size of a page. instead of having font tags everywhere, you can easily assign blocks of text that behave according to the specification. color, font, style, alignment, etc. instead of having tons of nested tables to make sure everything fits, you can do it all with a few blocks of css.

now if only IE supported css correctly, we could actually see some cool uses of it that aren't broken to be compatible with IE.

while i'm probably going to get my head chewed off for saying this, flash has the same value. when you really need to have a multimedia presentation up, it sure beats having to write a java app. you don't necessarily need to make your whole site out of flash, or having stupid flash ads. doing things like 3d-models of cell phones or is perfect for flash. it used to be that you used quicktime vr for that, but why have a bizillion different plugins for doing tons of stuff that one flash plugin can do?

Re:I'll ditch windows

Remember to have an open mind !

Try others applications, try many applications ! Never say "I wan THIS application" or you will maybe loose a better apps.

I you want to run Outlook, Internet Explorer and MS office, I don't see why you would switch to another OS ! !

There' two kind of people :
- people that want to STAY ! Those people are static. They think that it can be worse. They just follow others people...

- people that want more. They think that it can be better. Those people always look for the best.. Those people SEARCH !

So, if you want to search for better thing, say "I want to switch to another OS than Windows but I cannot since I use this and this software". Maybe someone know an answer or mayber someone will work on it.

If you want to stay, please don't post to say it, it's your choice, not the choice of people who are using tools like crossover office.

Re:I'll ditch windows

You'll be wanting to get a Mac, then. In all seriousness, you honestly believe that Windows serves you better? That not having to update your OS's security holes five times a week and constantly sorting out what e-mails are good and what are viruses doesn't count as a beneficial "thing"? What beneficial "thing" do you need?

Re:Dreamweaver == bloat

Hrm, whilst I agree wholeheartedly to the part about Frontpage, I think you'll find that in code view only mode (and a bit of settings tweaking in some cases) Dreamweaver MX can be a very useful tool for creating pleasant, w3 compliant (x)html. I find the site, database and CSS management features really useful, and I'm only a hobbyist when it comes to web design.

I can't really speak for the WYSIWYG mode because I don't think people who can't be bothered learning HTML should be allowed to have websites. :)

Re:Excuse me,

Dreamweaver does not build annoying bloated webpages.

On 'trendy' lower case tags.

4.2. Element and attribute names must be in lower case

XHTML documents must use lower case for all HTML element and attribute names. This difference is necessary because XML is case-sensitive e.g. <li> and <LI> are different tags.

From here [w3.org].

Re:Excuse me,

It sounds like whoever is using Dreamweaver has two problems:

A) Using an old version (newer versions really do check for those multi-tags as you do edits and cleans them up.)

B) Doesn't know what they are doing. Dreamweaver is GREAT, in that it SPECIFICALLY does EXACTLY what you tell it to. It's meant for the person who DOES understand HTML. It is not a true WYSIWYG in that sense. You have you know the different effects that assigning a class to the table, versus tr, versus td, versus the paragraph tag, versus the span means ... and tell DW exactly which one you wanted the class on.
If the person doesn't understand that, you will get crap, because they will be clicking in random spots, and DW will THINK they know what they are doing.

Re:Dreamweaver == bloat

DreamweaverMX was a pretty horrendous application. But Macromedia got their act together with MX 2004 version which was released not too long ago. Old tags were depreciated and new standards took their place, such as complete CSS-based wysiwyg code generation. [table] tags are not default anymore, although I suspect you can revert back to standard HTML 4.1 transitional if you want. It has better integration with FireworksMX 2004, and x-browser compatibility development has greatly benefited.

Now, the bad part is that DW/FW MX 2004 are very unstable and bloated compared to the previous MX versions. Of course, if you're doing serious web development, Dreamweaver is not for you, but for casual users and people who aren't keen with site design and CSS, it could solve many problems.

MM_Script JS was quite possibly the worst thing in Fireworks and Dreamweaver had to offer. I haven't checked for its presence in the new version, but avoid it at all costs if you want your sites to be robust and unbloated.

Also, the content tags you speak of can be easily turned off in the preferences. Both in MX and MX 2004. Your rant about Flash presence is offtopic.

Re:I'll ditch windows

I'll ditch windows when someone comes up with an OS that supports ALL the applications and games I currently run, and is faster or has some other 'thing' that would be beneficial to me.


This [apple.com] did exactly that for me, of course the downside is that you have to shell out a thick wad of cash. These Wine ports are nice if you are doing relatively light-weight stuff but as soon as you are working on a major website or a 100mb+ sized Photoshop document with a few dozen layers it is crash city. I prefer native software any day which is why I bought a Mac. That having been said this sort of software will certainly help generate Linux converts since it will more than do the trick for most people.

Re:Excuse me,

I'll bite. It's a funny thing these days but some people actually get PAID real money to create web media. Hobbyists may have time to hand code everything and don't need anything more than text and a gif or two to communicate but professionals (getting paid $50 - $200 per hour to create) need a little more.

On the other hand pros also know enough to do plugin checks and provide alternative content for those who choose not to use proprietary plugins and can also provide text only versions for alternative browsers, if there is a need. Not all paid developers are pros, unfortunately.

The bigger problem is web developers who use platform specific plugins (anything DirectX essentially) and don't provide alternative content or provide it so poorly that the pages are rendered unusable.

Re:I'll ditch windows

I dunno, but having a built-in Caching nameserver [rpmfind.net] seems pretty useful to me. Makes web browsing faster, more convenient. One click install seems to be pretty much a linux only sort of thing, too. More directly related to the speed issue, the ability to compile everything from source means that you can do a shitload of optimizations to your system, and it'll probably run a lot faster. Plus, if you have a lot of network shares, Samba [samba.org] is faster, and a helluva lot nicer than windows for SMB shares. Plus, Linux has a Far nicer looking, more powerful [kde.org] windowing system than windows, to boot.

Re:I'll ditch windows

You are obviously not one of the people who are waiting to ditch Windows, so I don't understand why you posted this comment. If you expect some other operating system to magically run Windows apps and behave just like Windows "and then some", you might as well go with Windows itself and maybe add some extensions/enhancements. There are plenty of tools out there that add new capabilities, both integrated into Explorer and other parts of Windows, and as separate applications.

If you, on the other hand, are having problems with Windows, or find that it "kind of works", but would love to find something better, you should be more open-minded and realize that you probably won't be able to use all your apps on the new OS. And why should you? It is good for you to try out alternatives to the applications you are currently using if they do not suit your needs. But if they do, feel free to stick with them. Whatever suits your need.

CrossOver tries to run Windows software under Linux, which is probably useful for those who really want Linux but also would like to run certain Windows applications. Nothing wrong about that of course, as the Linux environment is quite different from Windows.

But in the end, is it really necessary to post trollish remarks like yours? I cannot see how it could possibly be useful. Then again, looking at your posting history, the comment does not surprise me :)

Re:I'll ditch windows

Actually, if I had any mod points left, I'd mod him up.

Why? Because sometimes it's necessary that someone comes and rains on one's parade, just to remind one that reality is that-a-way. Otherwise, if all posts are along the lines of "woohoo, now we emulate Mini-Notepad-Lite v0.01, so Linux is ready for the desktop", some people might actually start believing it.

The reality, however, is more complex than that.

For the vast majority of people, an OS is just a funky loader for the applications they need. The _only_ reason to have an OS at all, or to have a computer at all, is to run those apps. That's all.

Real users (including corporate users) are really never Windows fans or Linux fans. They just have needs along the lines of "but I need a spreadsheet which can run all those macros and stylesheets we already have". (Something where, incidentally, OpenOffice fails miserably.) Or "but I need something which still runs all those ActiveX and Flash games on the MSN site." Or whatever.

Having Windows or Linux or OS/2 or even SCO Unix on their machine is _not_ their goal. Being able to keep hanging around with their buddies in EverQuest or with their ActiveX Backgammon buddies on Microsoft's site, on the other hand, might just be.

Normal users also don't like to learn new stuff or experiment. "Change" almost means "trauma" for the normal user. You have to give them a damn good reason to go through it. "You sorta can run some of your old apps" isn't even starting to cut it. They can run their apps without switching, too. Now if you gave them a killer app that they _can't_ run without switching, _that_ might count.

The normal user sees no thrill in experimenting. They don't want to try a car with the pedals in completely different position every week, and sometimes with a joystick or gamepad instead of a steering wheel. Same here. Ideally they'll want to learn once where the buttons are, and then find them in the exact same position in every single app, from now until doomsday.

I.e., again, you have to give them a damn good reason to switch to another OS.

Incidentally, it's another reason why Linux is still utterly unfit for Joe Average's desktop. Each app coming with a different set of widgets, and its own completely original interface, is _not_ what Joe Average wants. You can talk about the greatness of the Bazaar model and the advantages of free experimenting with new ideas all you want, for normal users all that's just unneeded stress. But that's a whole other topic.

Incidentally, the same applies to the browser flame wars. Same as Joe Average doesn't really care about the OS, only about the apps, he also doesn't care about the browser. He cares about the web sites. The browser is just a window to see the web through. It's just a tool, like his TV. And just like his TV, he'll not switch to another one, as long as the old one works reasonably well. But that's again another topic.

Basically all I'm saying is that the Real World (TM) works by completely other rules than the code-centric "woohoo, look at what cool gimmicks we've coded" view that's rampant on Slashdot. And sometimes someone has to come and rain on your parade. Call it trolling if you will. Personally I call it a "reality check."

Of course, that's not to say that I don't admire the work of the Wine coders. Damn impressive achievement, from a coder point of view. But also far from the point where it'll get Joe Average to switch. That's all I'm saying.

Re:I'll ditch windows

So basically, you won't use Linux until Linux supports all the viruses Windows gets?

Debuning Legends and truth

browsers actually support css now - a thing _nobody_ _ever_ thought would happen 3 years ago

He's a nobody [zeldman.com], she's a nobody [backupbrain.com], wouldn't you like to be a nobody [webstandards.org] too?

In the days when css was synonym for the crappiest implementation of cross-plattform standards ever,

History lesson: the CSS recommendation we all know and love started life as a proposal to the W3C [w3.org] by Microsoft Corporation. In about the same time frame, Netscape Communications made their own proposal: JavaScript [w3.org] StyleSheets (JSSS). MS naturally implemented their own proposal, NS implemented theirs. Shortly before Navigator 4 was to be released, the W3C settled on CSS and JSSS became roadkill. NS hastily retrofitted Navigator to translate CSS rules into JSSS rules that their style engine could understand, but of course the capabilities of the two technologies were different and so the result was less than whelming. Point: CSS suffered not because of a lousy cross-platform implementation, but because Navigator never did grok CSS; it just translated it (badly) into JSSS.

Flash was the *only* way to make a good visual appearance and be truly cross plattform. In fact, you'd be more compatible and accessible with Flash than with anything beyond "table" and "href".

Oh dear.

Setting aside questions of taste (and grammar) inherent in the 'good visual appearance' portion, 'truly' cross-plaftorm compatible' is a load of horse manure. A great many browsers/platforms didn't support Flash until well after the advent of Netscape 6.2. Many still don't. And as far as accessibility goes, ever try to access even most recent Flash movies with a screen reader? Rotsa ruck.

That has changed since then, with the appearance of NS 6.1 came a whole bunch of browsers that manage css in a way that is fairly acceptable.

Any 6.x version of NS you care to name was released weeks or months after the corresponding Mozilla version. IE 5/Macintosh offered far and away the best CSS support of any browser when it was released in '00--well ahead of NS 6.0. While it may be a bit dodgy by today's standards, even the original release of IE 5 for Mac is better than even the latest IE 6/Win.

Likewise, Opera 4.x sported a very solid CSS implementation--better than IE 5.x/Win, at least, and arguably on a par with IE 6/Win. That browser was out well before even IE 5/Mac.

Netscape 6.2 was a pretty good browser, particularly from a standards perspective, but it hardly broke new ground in that area.

Back in the we-don't-give-a-f*ck-about-webstandards time Dreamweaver was the _only_ tool that would make webdevelopement possible.

Bullshit. I've been doing web sites since 1996 for large and smal companies (Kaplan, Inc., APBnews.com [if anyone remembers them], GovWorks.com, Eureka-GGN CTW and Insignia Financial Group, to name a few). I've not used Dreamweaver for any of those clients. Not one.

Nobody would handcode anything for NS 4.7, trust me on that one.

Hi, I'm nobody.

Matter of fact, I did several sites for Aktion Mensch (3rd most recognized brand in Germany) that used CSS for layout and had to look 'right' in NN4.x. I did 'em by hand.

no matter what VI zealot keeps bullshitting about on /.

Vi? Never touch the damned thing. Used BBEdit and HomeSite or HTMLKit mostly.

Re:Legends and truth about Dreamweaver and Flash

I don't use Dreamweaver any longer, for the simple fact i code just as fast or faster by hand with a text editor. But it is the tool i suggest to everyone else when they are designing web pages. Out of all the WYSIWYG editors, Dreamweaver has been at the top for years, and still is. It's the most compliant, produces code that is less bloated than anything else, and doesn't screw up my hand coded pages. No other editor I know of can do that. As far as flash goes, I never considered it to have a language of its own until flash 5, that's when it began to be usable for web applications. Flash MX furthered the standard, and even more was possible, but it still had its limitations. Now with the newest MX 2004, flash has become a very good development tool. With webservice calls built in, xml objects, and form objects, it has finally switched from being an animation tool, to a web development tool. Almost everyone associates flash with short little animations, or annoying ads, but no one has seen the true capabilities of flash yet because there are not many people that use it as a development tool. The majority of people who use flash are designers, not programmers. There is at least one shopping cart where the entire GUI is in flash, and it works great. I myself have written web based graphing applications for oil companies, because they needed something they could print out from the data they receive instead of paying someone to draw it by hand and make copies for everyone else. Flash still has a ways to go before it can be used for mainstream web applications, but it's not far off at the moment.

Re:Still no good

Don't tell the school I converted last week that Linux is loosing the desktop war badly. You are going to see fast desktop penetration at the corporate and business level first. X Windows thin client mode is making this happen. The war is far from over my friend.

Re:I'll ditch windows

has anyone fully tested ms access? do vba modules work? i somehow doubt it, but it'd be great to know.

Re:I'll ditch windows

I'll ditch windows when someone comes up with an OS that supports ALL the applications and games I currently run, and is faster or has some other 'thing' that would be beneficial to me.

You're not that special. Many thousands of volunteer developers don't write an operating system to suit you, they write to suit them. Companies that try and win Windows users over only really target the ones that are tired of Windows. Besides, your reserved position works the other way. I'll ditch Linux and use Windows when:

1. I can open it up and see what's inside.
2. I don't have to rely on MS for patches to come
3. Windows gets rid of product activation keys
4. Is affordable
5. It can run Gnome
6. It eliminates spyware (you wouldn't see spyware on Linux, even IF it traded marketshare with Windows)
7. It eliminates viruses (same deal).
8. When it gets some form of package management
9. Has a decent CLI
10. Ditches the registry
11. Stops mixing actual configuration with advertisements (just try and connect to the internet with their wizard).
12. Supports all the hardware I have (I've got a lot of old stuff I run Linux on).

What, specifically, does one 'hack' in Windows, anyways? :P

Day Late, Dollar Short

I like my Linux computers. But, Flash MX is the OLD version of Flash. Flash MX 2004 is the current version. If you are platform agnostic, and committed to writing the best code possible, why would you do this???

Use Windows for Windows apps, Linux for Linux Apps.

What about 2004?

It says Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX, but the 2004 versions were recently released. Does it work with Dreamweaver MX 2004?

Re:I'll ditch windows

then don't ditch windows. this is about choice. if windows is the best environment for you, then fine. for many of us, it isn't. and for many more, it needn't be either. if i had an ofdice, and istalled say RH9/Mandrake9.X, and had them use OO.org, mozilla, evolution, etc., i would save tons on licensing, tons on maintenance, and tons on virus/trojan worries. and, i doubt i would lose 1 ounce of productivity.

Re:Wow!

See the hoardes of people lining up.

Well I don't know about anyone else, but I'll be in the queue. I've been sending mail to Macromedia for YEARS asking about Linux versions of their apps (and yes, I'd gladly pay to convert). Once Fireworks and PS are there, I'll be ditching my last Windows machine here.

Sure, it won't apply to everyone, but web developers, writing apps to run on Linux servers must see the obvious benefits here!

Re:OpenOffice.org Reader - please!!

I don't know of an OOo reader - 70MB is small enough, but MS and Corel have readers for download on their sites. So, just get a reader from MS.