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[web] Replacement for Dreamweaver?

Started by griffenjam May 4, 2005 at 1:54 PM 19 replies 3.3k views
Original Post
griffenjam
griffenjam
Due to reasons outlined in my most recent blog post I'm a little off Macromedia at the moment. Is there a good replacement for Dreamweaver out there? Preferably something open source? What tools do people here use to make/edit complicated websites?
Evil Steve
Evil Steve
I assume the mighty Notepad is insufficient? [wink] I only ever use Notepad for my HTML. Complete control...
Avatar God
Avatar God
Quote:
Original post by Evil Steve
I assume the mighty Notepad is insufficient? [wink] I only ever use Notepad for my HTML. Complete control...


Same here. I looove notepad.

FrontPage, maybe?
gsgraham.comSo, no, zebras are not causing hurricanes.
benryves
benryves
I use FrontPage.


No, seriously, I do. I love being able to save files straight to a webserver nice and quickly. As long as you avoid the WYSIWYG bit, it's all good.
[Website] [+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++]
griffenjam
griffenjam
Frontpage == teh devil.

This page uses many style sheets and other things I don't know much about. I didn't design the page so much of it uses things that I don't really understand too well. It was also made on a Mac and the formatting is screwy in Notepad (I already tried).

To put it one way I edited a file in Frontpage and reuped to the sever and it displayed differently all of a sudden, even though I only changed the text and not the formatting.
Drew_Benton
Drew_Benton
Quote:
The irony: illegal users have no problem using this software right away, people trying to do things legally have to wait THREE HOURS. Sorry Macromedia, you have things a little backwards over there, I thought customers were supposed to get perks and pirates were supposed to have a hard time using your software, I guess I was wrong.


It's only funny becuse it's so true! Sorry to hear that Griffenjam, you may want to look at this page and see if there is anything of use for you there.
matt_j
matt_j
This might not count, but WOW. MSDev has a nice HTML editor built-in... My poor laptop gets hot running Dreamweaver.

I dunno how hard-core MSDev's HTML editor is, though. I use it for editing simple pages.
Fuzztrek
Fuzztrek
Bluefish, unless you're on windows. If so, you'll have to wait for me to write an uber web developer environment, which will arrive when I have lots of time to work on one.

The annoying thing about MS's webdev is that they don't have support for PHP.
Sander
Sander
I absolutely love HTML-Kit. You might also want to try NVU. Bluefish is okay for Linux, but you'd better get the CVS version because the 1.0 version has some issues with remote files through gnome_vfs.
johnhattan
johnhattan
I've heard that Nvu is aiming to be an open-source Dreamweaver. Myself, I've got Dreamweaver and FrontPage, but I use FrontPage for almost everything because it runs about ten times as fast.
(my byline from the Gamedev Collection series, which I co-edited) John Hattan has been working steadily in the casual game-space since the TRS-80 days and professionally since 1990. After seeing his small-format games turned down for what turned out to be Tandy's last PC release, he took them independent, eventually releasing them as several discount game-packs through a couple of publishers. The packs are actually
evolutional
evolutional
I've had a hard time to get Nvu to even run on my linux box
igni ferroque
igni ferroque
I vote for the text editor route. jEdit is an awesome text editor with syntax highlighting and automatic validation, and I'm sure there are a few others out there.

Might also try Mozilla. It seems to produce some clean HTML (with proper configuration) and it's obviously open source.
Free Mac Mini (I know, I'm a tool)
fraKtal
fraKtal
vim? EMACS? :D

I would honestly suggest getting a quality text editor, and coding stuff by hand. In my (limited) experience it helps you learn what you are doing better, and it reduces the shear amount of crap found in the script code. It also gives you *way* more power over how your page looks. WYSIWYG editors are good for getting mediocre to poor quality pages out fast, but they are no replacement for hand designing and tweaking, IMO.

Text Editors like vim, EMACS, jEdit, Jext, j, pyWord, PHPEdit, EditPlus, Crimson Editor, and Bluefish, just to name a VERY few, may be good choices (depending on what you are doing, and what you like).

There are a crap load of quality text editors out there, all with similar, but quite different features. It's up to you to find the right one!
Feral
Feral
Fwiw, I tend to use a combination of Namo WebEditor 5.5 (commercial, but not too pricy) or VIM depending on what I am doing.
DakeDesu
DakeDesu
Two text editors not on that list that often get recommeneded:

Ultraedit, and Context.
fraKtal
fraKtal
Some good resources:

(just found this one...) http://www.tinyapps.org/text.html

http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/editors.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_editors



and if you're interested in more of the behind the scenes stuff:

http://www.finseth.com/craft/
http://www.softpanorama.org/Editors/index.shtml
http://www.users.qwest.net/~eballen1/perfect.editor.html

and I'm sure there are others,
Justaddwater
Justaddwater
Well after reading you blog thing, I get the impression your not a HTML wiz, and like using the WYSIWYG interface (like me!).

I've tried them all at some point and I keep going back to dreamweaver. It just works, its easy, I can click insert script insert table and go home, and not have to think about it ever again.

My experience with Macromedia is different though, when I had to transfer serial #'s I called them, and they asked for my CD code and gave new a number on phone 10 minutes max later.

good luck
griffenjam
griffenjam
Quote:
Original post by Justaddwater
Well after reading you blog thing, I get the impression your not a HTML wiz, and like using the WYSIWYG interface (like me!).



Actually I'm not bad at HTML, it's just this this site was done in Dreamweaver and has a bit of CSS (which I've never used).


Thanks for all the reccomendations, I'll check some out.

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