Page 2 - Dreamweaver quality editor for Linux

This is take from the Hacker FAQ at
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.

Hackers (and creative people in general) should never be bored or have to drudge at stupid repetitive work, because when this happens it means they aren't doing what only they can do -- solve new problems. This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore boredom and drudgery are not just unpleasant but actually evil.

To behave like a hacker, you have to believe this enough to want to automate away the boring bits as much as possible, not just for yourself but for everybody else (especially other hackers).

(There is one apparent exception to this. Hackers will sometimes do things that may seem repetitive or boring to an observer as a mind-clearing exercise, or in order to acquire a skill or have some particular kind of experience you can't have otherwise. But this is by choice -- nobody who can think should ever be forced into a situation that bores them.)

Yeah, that's why hackers write scripts that write 300 lines of boring reprtitive HTML code instead of using some kind of click'n'drag 300 times.

I see that there still are people referring to the act of marking up text as "coding HTML". Stop it. HTML is *not* a programming language. HTML is a simple markup language and if you're going to write some HTML you use a suitable editor, or else you're just being a moron. (No! you're not a geek or a hacker or whatever!).

Quote:
If I was a good coder, why should I use a WYSIWYG tool anyway?

Get a ****ing clue! Have you ever heard of CASE?!

HTML is indeed not a programming language, but HTML files consist of HTML code (or do you know a better term?). Therefore, writing HTML can be referred to as coding. And since HTML is nothing other than human-readable ASCII, a suitable tool does not need to offer anything else than color markup for the tags, some autoindent etc., perhaps a shortcut for the docs and an option to autoformat the code.

CASE is a nice concept if used in C(++)/Delphi etc. milieu, where it really does the work of days in minutes. But it is unnecessary for HTML. And if writing HTML is not programming, "CASoftwareEngineering" is not really appropiate.

Far from mere drudgery, I consider laying-out a page, writing copy, and developing a set of styles to be a simple pleasure. When you lay out a page with simple structural markup it takes very little time. I used to take my class notes in HTML-by-hand--it was as fast or faster than using a word processor, especially for rearranging things, and more easily shared than a word processor file. When you go back and apply styles, watching your creation spring to life is exciting.

Some things, however, such as laying out forms I find to be the epitome of boredom.

Just my 0.02.

-wg <><

Just to get on topic again-

Bluefish and quanta are both excellent editors, though they are most useful to someone who already has a clue about HTML.

I use them both for different tasks.

What I react to is the claim that you're not a real coder unless you use a text-editor. It's such a stupid thing to say. I write lots of documents using HTML, and Dreamweaver is an excellent tool. If I want a paragraph, it's CTRL-ALT-P, if I want a header it's CTRL-1-6 depending on level. It I want to add some specific tag it's CTRL-T and then I just type in the tag and DW wraps the contents in it automatically. These sorts of things are incredible time savers, and allows me to work much more efficiently focusing on the content rather than the markup. A good developer is good because he knows when to use what tool.

When I hear about people who use Notepad I feel like pulling out a gun and kindly put them out of their misery.

Again, it would be awesome to have a tool which let you code your business logic, then connect this to the presentation (GUI) part. The GUI would be slapped together in minutes using templates and a "WYSIWYG"-like editor.

But sure, you can always work in Notepad if you like. You're even free to write using only one finger if you like, but don't expect to be efficient. And don't expect me to respect you.

I firmly believe in the adage that "a poor carpenter blames his tools," it usually bears out (though, of course, some tools suck).

I use dreamweaver/fireworks at times and then use the parts I want, with hand massaging, in the templates of my applications. It saves me time and gives me great HTML.

I doubt you'll find many talented HTML folks (with jobs, making real websites, not hobby or "academic" sites) who don't use some combination of WYSIWYG and hand coding, making this a moot discussion.

Alright, I know this whole debate is fantastically off-topic, but in response to Hero's assertion, "I doubt you'll find many talented HTML folks (with jobs, making real websites, not hobby or "academic" sites) who don't use some combination of WYSIWYG and hand coding," I want to say:

I'm one. I'm in college now, but I do a variety of freelance work and I do regular web development work over summers. I do HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and ASP (though I dislike it). Last summer I was project lead on this http://www.moffittcancernetwork.org/ and developed most of the functionality of the site personally, though on that project most of the HTML was done by a designer (who didn't use dreamweaver either). I'm responsible for http://www.ffcuvt.com/ and http://www.erskine.edu/virtualtour/tour.launch.html . Other projects are not in a state to be shown at the moment :-). *

I don't doubt that WYSIWYG tools (esp. Dreamweaver - few others are worthy) can be useful. I have tested Dreamweaver as well as others, but I write HTML fast enough that I do not expect to gain much speed from them, and I can hardly stand the thought of actually using one to lay out a design. I lay them out in my graphics program and make them come to life in plain text (with syntax highlighting and tabbed MDI, I'm not a notepad freak). That's the fun of the design for me, and the reason my pages are so efficient. I'm willing to admit that some things take me longer to do, but since I started doing web stuff 5.5 years ago, people have always shaken their heads and wondered how I got whatever it was to download so quickly. It's simply a different mindset from all I've ever seen of the WYSIWYG way (though of course there probably are people who make very good use of Dreamweaver as a tool).

WYSIWYG also seems to strongly encourage very bad design and pratice in people who are not already web experts before switching to Dreamweaver.

-wg <><

* Not trying to show off, just trying to avoid the "sure, he can *say* he's a real web developer" thing.

Show off with three sites?

Again, of the designers I've worked with- who do it full-time and are truly prolific, the really good folks use both- WYSIWYG for certain tasks/design elements (like rollovers and image maps), and handcoding for the overall layout of the page.

On the "fast pages" thing- come on, the bulk of a page is in the graphics, not the HTML, in almost all cases. You're almost always better to spend your time optimizing graphics than handcoding, if you're looking strictly to save on download time.

Oh blast! Look at this bloated HTML! It's so horrible!

of course that's not bloated. if someone managed to bloat a page like that, it would be a terrible thing. Dreamweaver doesn't always produce code bloat, just when you use its javascript or DHTML or text styles or absolute positioning or (worst of all) if you try to convert a page you designed with layers to using tables (document that should be <5k if done right comes out >30k - yikes!).

One thing your Dreamweaver page doesn't do, of course, is validate: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=h...reamweaver.html

:-)

-wg <><

andnaess:
OK, that's still acceptable. However, it shouldn't set bgcolor and text attributes - these, so long as not required for the layout, should be left to the browser that knows the user's preferences (cyan on pink ) better than you.
Btw, I'd write a PHP script for that. Perhaps not really efficient for nine words, but imagine you have five times as much and want to put them in a 3 x 15 table? Then DW wouldn't be as useful, would it?

webgremlin:
LOL, right.

One more thing: in line 4, the <meta> tag isn't closed! So even if DW had given a DOCTYPE, the document could only be HTML 4 or lower, not XHTML and therefore obsolete.