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Dreanweacer vs Other Text Editors

dyrer

dyrer

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 24, 2010
90
8
Greece
Hello,
Am new on Macs and I wonder why apple web designer the don't want DW and prefer other text editors

ps
I use DW since ver 2 on windows
 
At work, we use dreamweaver for all front-end development. I've investigated other options, like Coda and Espresso, and they're good apps, but have less features than dreamweaver.
 
Espresso + CSSEdit for design is unmatched in my opinion. For more heavy coding there is Coda and Textmate.

Dreamweaver is not heavily used in web design/development, though some like it's site management tools. For me it just does not fit into my work flow and is way to clunky and inefficient.

My workflow consists of using Netbeans for the application code usually Rails or PHP and ether making the HTML in Netbeans or Espresso then moving to CSSEdit for styling witch thanks to its real live preview i can style up the data driven pages very quickly.

Try a few of these out for yourself.

IDE's for PHP, Ruby on Rails, Java, etc: Netbeans and Eclipse
Text editors for HTML: Espresso, Textmate, Textwrangler, Coda
CSS editor: CSSEdit
Database management: Sequel Pro
FTP: Cyberduck and Transmit
 
I've heard good things about RapidWeaver. Just picked it up with the latest MacHeist, I haven't really played with it yet.
 
babyjenniferLB said:
Dreamweaver is not heavily used in web design/development, though some like it's site management tools. For me it just does not fit into my work flow and is way to clunky and inefficient.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how you can say that.

First. It is definitely widely used.
Sure, Developers aren't coding in, because tools like eclipse and visual studio are superior for server side development, but that's not what we're talking about here. For front end development, it's very widely used. I don't personally know any professional web-designers not using it. Even the people I interview coming out of college were taught dreamweaver in school.

And beyond it's file management, it's still better than other options. It has code completion for things like ASP.net... Coda will probably never have this. It also supports code reuse through snippets and library items. Again, coda/espresso has no match for this.

I'd love for my team to use something like Coda, but it lacks dealbreaking features that my team needs, and the only place I can find those is Dreamweaver.

Secondly, I don't understand how dreamweaver is clunkier than using two apps to do one thing. Sure css edit is nice, but why use two apps to do what one app does and then some.

I'm amazed at how many people on this board are anti-dreamweaver. Is it the price that turns people off? Because if you're buying the CS suite, getting the Design Premium package with Flash and DW isn't that much more.
 
I was a Dreamweaver user for quite some time but after trying out Coda, I bought a license, switched to it and have not looked back. Now I design in Photoshop and code up the design with Coda.
 
I use Espresso and Rapidweaver (depending on the job), got sick of the Dreamweaver bugs, bloaty code and UI issues so I thought I'd see what else is out there.
 
I used to use DreamWeaver back before it was bundled by Adobe in the Creative Suite. I also picked up Rapidweaver through the latest MacHeist, it's usable, and the price was right, the jury is still out on longterm usage though.
 
Dreamweaver is great for the following things:

- tag-based HTML search / replace
- formatting large chunks of content pasted from elsewhere

Dreamweaver is a passable editor for CSS or scripting languages like PHP, but it's missing some basics, like a function / symbol list, for instance.

Plus it's expensive if you don't have any other reason to purchase an Adobe suite that happens to include it.
 
I use DW extensively and have never used it on the PC -- we're Mac-only since 2001 or so. Before DW, I used HomeSite on Windows.

The templates, snippets, and other features make life easy. I change a template and every page based on the template is tweaked. I make sections outside the template, which are controlled by MediaWiki or Drupal.

I do use other tools for the PHP editing. No problem, though, since I do all the check-in/out via DW to make sure nothing is out of sync.

The speed has been an issue since Adobe took over. The code was already bloated with DW MX. Wish someone would clean up the mess to make things snappier.
 
I use DW for all my web sites (client and personal sites). I'm not a heavy-duty coder - just simple PHP and CSS mostly - and DW handles all of that just fine and is perfect for my level of use.

The only thing that irritates me is that DW doesn't maintain the code as cleanly as I try to create it. It often adds/replaces tab stops on pages, thereby destroying my clean and understandable code hierarchy. This is a pain. The code works fine, but it makes it harder/slower to go in later and make adjustments.
 
I was using Dreamweaver at work for a while & have now moved to NetBeans. I have also been using TextMate for a year at home, but have recently discovered Coda.

The way you have to look at it, is DW is good don't get me wrong, but to me it feels bloated. The main advantage with DW is the Live design view which is perfect for massive projects with pages with a huge amount of code on there which is hard to find in the code but easy to find in the design view?!

Coda, this is brilliant on the eye & works well but I can't get on with the auto complete function. Although that this is a nice feature within the app, similar, if not identical to DW, where it will complete the text to allow you to create your code quicker. Brilliant, & it uses snippets where you can create you're on quick text inputs which are also good, but it's not as smooth as others. It also has remote connection, a css editor, terminal & web preview also along with the svn feature. Everything's really well thought off & the layout is really nice. So a good package all in all & a good replacement for DW.

TextMate, a fantastic product, simple, easy to use, quick & once you start getting into the customisation part of the software it really works well. There is nothing bad about this product, however; this has been overtaken by NetBeans to an extent. They are both as amazing as each other as an editor, however NetBeans has the SVN/ ftp extra compared to TextMate & compared to all other IDE's out there, including DW is that it has an error/ debugger for many Languages including: Ruby/PHP/HTML/C++/Python & so forth... It even has a built in MySQL query browser where you can view the Databases & Tables.

The basis is to try each one, it will become apparent to which one suits you best:

NetBeans
TextMate
Coda

Hope this helps..

smilinmonki666
 
Coda.

So simple and elegant that it just feels natural.

Unlike CS5...

But that is another thread.
 
smilinmonki666 said:
It even has a built in MySQL query browser where you can view the Databases & Tables.
Click to expand...

I recently discovered that textmate has this too. Textmate can be a bit intimidating at first, and even after using it for a while I still feel like I'm only tapping into a small bit of its usefulness, but it's been by far the best text editor I've used.

I'd definitely check out coda too. I haven't spent much time with it, but I've got a few friends that use it and really like it. It certainly is pretty, and panic makes some great software (I use transmit for ftping and it's great) so I suspect coda is superb as well.
 
I didnt like Coda but I havent used it since it first came out, it was kind of half assed in its code coloring and autofilling, I like dreamweaver because it has the most powerful auto-fill that Ive used which saves me a ton of time. I only use the wysiwyg interface for adding and editing text, and for that its pretty good. I dont do any web "developing" so its PHP usefulness doesnt matter to me.
 
panoz7 said:
I recently discovered that textmate has this too. Textmate can be a bit intimidating at first, and even after using it for a while I still feel like I'm only tapping into a small bit of its usefulness, but it's been by far the best text editor I've used.

I'd definitely check out coda too. I haven't spent much time with it, but I've got a few friends that use it and really like it. It certainly is pretty, and panic makes some great software (I use transmit for ftping and it's great) so I suspect coda is superb as well.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean, didn't know about the database side & will look into that, but the other thing I found was that you can edit Apache files directly! that was pretty cool. I did like Coda but I've already paid for TextMate & I feel like I have a loyalty to the TextMate development team. I need to play around with it more but trying to set up my Ubuntu 10.04 Web development Server.Nightmare. Try NetBeans though, its free...
 
Espresso
NetBeans
Coda
TextMate
DW CS5
CSSEdit

I use whatever tools work the best for the specific tasks at hand. All the apps I mentioned above have their +'s and -'s. :apple:
 
I've developed a number of big-name high-traffic sites in Coda with no problems. Everyone I know in the field would laugh at you if you said you use Dreamweaver, including me. Perhaps it depends on your generation.
 
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