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Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 8:14 pm
by feyd
Dreamweaver's an industry standard? ... when did that happen?

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 8:24 pm
by Christopher
alvinphp wrote:I don't agree that IE has a monopoly on browsers with the relatively huge success of Firefox. A few years ago you could just build for IE and get away with it because only the super geeks used a non-IE browser. With so many regular users using Firefox though it has become a requirement that your site also works well with Firefox. Microsoft was so aware of this that they came out with IE7 early instead of waiting till Vista was released.
I didn't say that you thought they were a monopoly -- I said they were convicted of being a monopoly. As you note, they were not to long ago around 95% of the market. As Microsoft loses market share (in more than just browsers) things will improve.

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 8:25 pm
by Christopher
feyd wrote:Dreamweaver's an industry standard? ... when did that happen?
No ... FrontPage is an industry standard...

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:18 pm
by alvinphp
feyd wrote:Dreamweaver's an industry standard? ... when did that happen?
As a WYSIWYG Editor I would say it is the industry standard. This is from my own emperical evidence. I haven't actually researched it.

I have been wondering what the industry standard text/html editor is though.

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:24 pm
by feyd
alvinphp wrote:As a WYSIWYG Editor I would say it is the industry standard.
How many members of the industry use a WYSIWYG editor though?

I haven't personally touched one in close to ten years. I don't think any of the developers I know personally (physically) use WYSIWYG editors, nor have they for a very long time. As a percentage, I have to therefore suspect it to be fairly small.

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:41 pm
by alvinphp
feyd wrote:
alvinphp wrote:As a WYSIWYG Editor I would say it is the industry standard.
How many members of the industry use a WYSIWYG editor though?
I was not talking for development, but for DHTML sites without the need for much (if any) server side coding. In the graphic/web designers world DW seems to be the de-facto standard when they create a site.

In the work environment I will see Frontpage, but it is used by completely clueless people when it comes to web design (no offense to anyone here that uses Frontpage)

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:42 pm
by feyd
The designers I know don't use WYSIWYG editors either. :?

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:06 pm
by alvinphp
IE does have quite a few completely non standard features that you can only use in a closed network where IE is the standard. I worked in this environment once and I have to admit it was pretty nice only having to worry about one browser.

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:38 am
by Luke
I would say that the majority of designers who do web development as a value-added service (but their primary business is design) use Dreamweaver. At least the ones I know do.

Also, every designer in my office uses dreamweaver to put together simple html/javascript sites. I have to say for that type of thing, I like Dreamweaver. It is designer friendly, while at the same time has some somewhat advanced features for the slightly more savvy user. It's nice to be able to create a template that will automatically update the pages that implement it when you edit it. All without any scripting. It's also nice that I can trust that I can send a mocked-up html page back to the designer for final touches/review without worrying about them messing up my valid code too bad.

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 12:36 pm
by RobertGonzalez
I opened dreamweaver once, got dizzy and closed it. I used it at work once. It did things to my markup that made me want to eat lunch, so I closed it and left for the day. I haven't used a WYSIWYG since.

I seriously use notepad++ or Notepad2 to write all my markup and CSS. I can't stand WYSIWYG editors. But that is me.

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 2:08 pm
by Luke
I don't use the WYSIWYG part of it. I close the preview pane at all times. I just use it for templating w/out scripts and because it fits well on our business. For anything other than static sites, I use Eclipse w/ Zend's PHPIDE.

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:57 pm
by seodevhead
I've been designing websites since the birth of browsers. First I went to FrontPage back when it was first released... that was one hot piece of software back then.

Then after a year or two of Dreamweaver, I made the switch over to that. After the first couple days I couldn't figure it out in the "Design" WYSIWYG mode, so I turned it off - switched it to "CODE" mode and have been hand coding ever since.

I think Dreamweaver is a great little editor for hand coding. I have never tried Eclipse or Zend Studio... but have used EditPad Plus (which I liked)... but all in all I'd have to say Dreamweaver still is my favorite as far as a pure code editor. It handles everything well as far as color formatting and such.. very pleasing to the eye. PHP, CSS, XHTML, etc... it all works.

What is the advantage of using an editor like eclipse or zend studio? Are the features they offer over dreamweaver stuff like switching between class files quickly or something? I never could figure out what made one 'leaps and bounds' better than others.

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:29 pm
by Luke
code hinting, advanced find and replace, branch folding, umm... lots of stuff really.

If I have a class called Foo in my include path that looks like this:

Code: Select all

<?php
class Foo
{

    /**
     * Holds a bar
     * @access private
     */
    private $_bar = null;
    /**
     * An array of fooeyness
     * @access public
     */
    public $fooey = array();

    /**
     * does foo
     * @param array $withBar
     * @param string $andFoo
     */
    public function doFoo($withBar, $andFoo = '')
    {
        // Do foo with bar and foo
    }

    /**
     * does foo
     * @param array $withBar
     * @param string $butWithoutFoo)
     */
    public function undoFoo($withBar, $butWithoutFoo)
    {
        // Undo foo with bar but without foo
    }
}
?>
and then I type

Code: Select all

$foo = new Foo;
$foo->
Into the editor, it brings up a drop-down menu with the following options:
doFoo (array $withBar [, string $andFoo])
undoFoo(array $withBar , string $butWithoutFoo)
... and so on

It also does this for standard PHP functions and anything else in the include path. I'd suggest downloading Eclipse and giving it a try with the Zend PHPIDE... you'd be surprised how many features it has. Now that I've used Eclipse, I could never go back to Dreamweaver as a PHP editor... it's a joke as for as a PHP Editor.

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 8:17 pm
by seodevhead
Wow... you've convinced me... I'll download it tonight and I'll update you on my thoughts after this weekend. I'm trying to learn everything I can that will help make me a better developer.

If money were no issue.. would you rather have Zend Studio over Eclipse... or would you still prefer Eclipse?

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 8:23 pm
by seodevhead
Hey Ninja... which file do I donwload from Eclipse's website? They have multiple distro's and things called PDTs for PHP? I don't see anything about the Zend IDE one you referred to.... just want to make sure I am getting the same thing you have :).