are you a hard core html person?

[cornnfedd]

so is there anyone here who still uses notepad or similar when designing websites?

i use crimson editor mostly for all my website changes and designing, i prefer the hard coding method.....

[andychev]

Yes and no, the 'best' way to design a html website is a sliced photoshop file saved as html then code/text added in dreamweaver. This is great first time round but after that i find myself just editing the html script in the ftp program.

When it comes to php files then yes, all off the php and html is edited as text.

When you can visulise table layouts and know what # colours are just by looking at code you know you spend to long designing websites!

[bdominick]

I still use Macromedia Homesite+ for all my coding -- HTML, XHTML, CFML, PHP, SQL, javaScript, CSS. I do almost nothing in a WYSIWYG environment, with one exception: I sometimes use DreamWeaver to generate DHTML for things like image swaps or other little functions that are a particular pain to code. But I usually end up finishing them in Homesite anyway. My code is super anal retentive -- it's meticulously neat with perfect accordian style. I'm kind of sick that way.

I've tried lots of other editors, like Notepad++ which I generally like but it just doesn't do the trick for me. Homesite hasn't even been updated in many years, but I still can't leave it behind.

Using straight-up Notepad is too hardcore, though. It only allows one undo step!

[bdominick]

When you can visulise table layouts and know what # colours are just by looking at code you know you spend to long designing websites!

I look at HTML code and I see the page, like the Matrix. LOL, been doing it WAY too long.

[jmarcv]

so is there anyone here who still uses notepad or similar when designing websites?

I use noteTab, a notepad on steroids. Lots of macros, write your own.

My html pages are mainly PHP anyway, so a WYSI editor wouldnt do me much good.

[bdominick]

My html pages are mainly PHP anyway, so a WYSI editor wouldnt do me much good.

Has anyone ever tried writing server-side scripts with Dreamweaver? I know ColdFusion and ASP folks who have done it, or claim to have, and Adobe certainly claims it can be done.

NoteTab is cool -- I think there's a freeware "light" version. Other big favorites (not so much for coding necessarily, but just as alternatives to Windows NotePad) are NotePad2 and MetaPad.

[charlesh]

I've always wanted to explore the features of Dreamweaver and use them more than I do. I've used the rollover function with great sucess, but have found that if I directly add a new link by modifying the code that DW generates, it always comes out with a javascript error. If I let DW do it, it's fine. I've often hit my head against the laptop with that many times, since the code that DW generates is exactly what I had added manually.

The site features of DW are cool, but I test all my code on my local machine (having a copy of all my clients running on XAMMP locally). I find that saving the files to the http root is much more direct than using the site feature. The coolest feature of DW, I think is the ability to search for a snippet of code in an entire directory structure and then replace with what you want. This saves a lot of time in updating sites.

Those features make is a much more worthwhile editor than notepad, I think. As for site management, I just us plain ol' WS_FTP once the site is ready for production.

Every time I'm in a bookstore, though, I see a big, thick book on DW and think, "Gee - I really don't use the software anywhere near its capabilities..."

CharlesH

[bdominick]

I think I've had that same problem with DW's imageswap feature, but not in a while. Maybe it's a version issue... DW's S&R feature is definitely it's top asset -- I forgot about that one. It was taken from HomeSite years back, so the HS search capacity is cool -- but the ability to differentiate between tabs and attributes and such within tags is just phenomenal, and that's a DW exclusive. That has saved my butt I can't tell you how many times! (I even installed DW on a Windows server once and ran a sitewide S&R to save myself from having to upload like 8,000 files that needed to be modded -- ssssshhhhhh...).

Charles, how do you like using XAMMP? I haven't used it yet, even though I really should be, since I'm a WinXP devotee. I've got a CentOS LAMP box on my LAN that is supposed to be mimicking my server for dev work, but it's kind of a mess, and I'm more likely to set up test accounts/dbs on my live server, which is bad, bad, bad, I know.

WS_FTP Pro rocks! I've got like 100 accounts stored in it, and it treats my SFTP connections well -- what more could I ask?

[charlesh]

I've installed "piecemeal" apache, php, and MySQL and remember having a heck of a time trying to get everything to work together. XAMMP takes all that hassle out of setting up a configurable testing server and has everything you'd ever need or want for the basics. Check it out and see how easy it is to install and configure.

It's good to know that I'm not the only one on WS_FTP. Sometimes, it's better just to do what it takes to get the job done - the easier, the better.

CharlesH

[jmarcv]

I use WS_FTP also, in fact, I have a macro in NoteTab that shells the DOS version of WS_FTP and uploads the script I am on to the same matching DIR on the server. Makes things go nice and fast!


Speaking of Javascript - if you haven't already, you may want to check out the yahoo YUI, an opensource JS, CSS framework that takes a lot of the torture out of doing really cool things like popup tooltips, modal dialogs, transition effects, drag & drop.