Ask Slashdot: Best Open Source Answer to Dreamweaver? 300
An anonymous reader writes "I've been looking for an open source alternative to Dreamweaver, and haven't stumbled upon anything that works the way I need. Aptana and Bluefish are fantastic tools, but I cannot work exclusively with them, since Bluefish doesn't have that WYSIWYG functionality that is so important when you're also dealing with design, and Aptana doesn't have classic ASP support. I don't care much about the classic ASP support, but, even though I'm a PHP developer, I give support to classic ASP code on a daily basis. What open source tools are you guys working with out there? I'm really not looking for a Dreamweaver clone, just a tool that gets closer to cover my needs: WYSIWYG, PHP, HTML, CSS support, and less important, classic ASP support."
web development edition of eclipse (Score:4, Interesting)
100% agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who thinks WYSIWYG means anything when dealing with HTML is sadly misinformed.
CSS support has gotten better, but I'd still think this classic sums it up pretty well:
http://www.i-marco.nl/weblog/archive/2006/06/24/time_breakdown_of_modern_web_d/ [i-marco.nl]
I'd link to the original source (http://poisonedminds.com), but the URL no longer works.
Another vote against WYSIWYG (Score:2, Interesting)
While I DO have Dreamweaver at the office, I myself don't use the WYSIWYG portion of it. I have a dev server running that I do all my visual testing on, and do the rest of my coding by hand. I've developed sites for smaller individuals as well as larger clients, such as hospitals. At home I use Geany, and find it's code editor to be superb (and the console integration in the Linux version makes it almost completely unnecessary to alt-tab away from the software).
What you might want to consider is adjusting your workflow; mine works like this:
Mockup in Photoshop
Export graphics, get dimensions and colors
Write template files (just the XHTML)
Write stylesheets
Test templates to ensure layouts are golden
Split out templates into PHP files (or whatever else you're using) for includes
Code back end, working from files loaded onto dev server, and test.
Then, go live.
I've been doing web design/dev for approximately 11 years now. When I started I did use Dreamweaver's IDE and WYSIWYG editor for stuff such as tables, but eventually (about 8 years ago) I made the switch to hand coding everything. Once I got comfortable with it, I found that I was working MUCH faster. It helps if you attempt to visualize your markup while you're doing mockup. Also, ensure that you're only using tables to display tabular data (if it makes sense to put it into a spreadsheet, then it makes sense to put it into a table, typically). Tables for layout create unnecessary headaches and can slow development time down significantly; Good CSS markup can accomplish pretty much anything with a fraction of the code, also reducing load time.
I myself can code the layout for a moderately sized site in a day, typically. The two slowest parts for me tend to be mockup (waiting for inspiration to hit) and content migration (fighting with clients to get content). Also, I don't code the site until I get signed approval for the mockup, to avoid wasting time redoing a layout. Minor tweaks obviously aren't an issue, but many clients have a hard time understanding what's minor and not (not their fault, but a headache none-the-less).
Hopefully this helps. If not, feel free to ignore my ramblings and keep soliciting more advice :)
There's nothing very good (Score:5, Interesting)
Dreamweaver used to be excellent until the CSS clowns went and mucked up HTML. Dreamweaver 3 really was WYSIWYG, worked on pure HTML, and didn't require knowing HTML. Dreamweaver today has a display window and an HTML window, and you need to work in both, plus fuss explicitly with CSS values in other windows. It's still quite useful.
In the post-CSS era, almost nobody has decent round-trip HTML editors. Instead, we have "content management systems" which generate bad HTML in bulk, and can't read what they write. This is the main source of web page bloat.
The open source alternatives listed are far worse. I've tried Nvu. They had the right idea, but couldn't keep up with the changes to HTML. Also, there's a difference between an single-page HTML editor and something like Dreamweaver, which manages files for the whole site.
Re:notepad++ dude. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a dumb comparison.
Dreamweaver is a lot of tools into one.
Most HTML people I know use it as a nice text editor.
I have also seen fresh from school designers use it as a WYSIWYG editor, with awful results.
I don't mean that it's impossible to use Dreamweaver effectively as a WYSIWYG editor, only that it's not its main strenght in practice.
That 's why so many people say that you can replace it by a text editor, because so many pros use it as a text editor.