Namo or Dreamweaver?

[gidgit]

haha, I have to agree with you Dave, it can get pretty ugly when people start bashing sites... constructive criticism is great when asked for...but to viciously rip a person's site apart or throwing insults around etc.is a sign of other problems non site related... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

a new release of NOF? thanks jon I will be sure to check it out...

[This message was edited by gidgit on June 07, 2002 at 09:46.]

[stlewis]

I am a DW user (HotMetal until a couple of years ago) but I drop into an editor (TextPad) a lot of the time.

TextPad (or similar) is indeed great for replicating minor changes, but the DW template is the easiest way to rebuild a site quickly. The new MX release will improve on that further with parent and child templates - a site template and a section template, for example.

I also use MS Access and VBA to generate html (not dynamically), and PHP for dynamic pages. For both of these, hand-coding skills are essential.

I agree with this coding and design split - too often you see a book called 'web page design' which turns out to be html only. And perhaps all about jpg compression. Yes, the designer needs those skills - just as a system designer needs to understand something about programming and databases. But to me design is a different beasty.

And I agree with the views on the difficulty for us techies to come up with something good but original and not either over or under designed.

www.bricksandbrass.co.uk

[kennybeat]

Im a Cartoonist and Web Designer and Ive used Dreamweaver and frontpage and I do html to but when it come raw power of performance and ease of use check out Photo Webber you can do all the stuff that they mentioned Flash Javascript Xml Dhtml rollover popups E commerece and works with photo shop dreamweaver Xara PaintShop.I understand were your Coming from when you said so much to learn so little time.But you allready got the clients and if you want to keep'em make sites with good taste not that taste good!In other words if an't broke don't fix it.Thats progress [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] photowebber home page

kenneth bernardo

[gidgit]

200 bucks for Photo Webber? Not likely...

Namo is cheaper, and has much more to offer...much more...

[pknair]

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Well, entering into the debate outta nowhere, I'd have to say that hand-coders do have a bit of an edge, AS LONG AS THEY'RE OPEN-MINDED ENOUGH to make sure they can use the WYSIWYG editors as well. I've always been a hand-coder (seeing as how I started out in x86 Assembler, Machine Language, punch cards (man, I'm dating myself here, huh?) and so on. But I've also taught DreamWeaver and FrontPage. I'm still the sort to stick with UltraEdit or TextPad, or even PICO or vi, but I've always made sure I've kept up my abillity to jump into a WYSIWYG editor if needs be.

Now, if you're a hand-coder who summarily dismisses these tools, you're quickly heading to a pit of despair when you look at code generated by these tools. Sure you can understand it, work with it and use it, but the whole time you'll be grumbling about how crappy it is. I know, cuz I do that all the time. The fact, though, is that it's NOT necessarily crappy - it's just different. DW, for example, tends to optimize its code to work with its many other features - and if you never use those features, you're ending up with heavy code. It also tries to match whatever browser config you tell it you're targetting. Well, a hand-coder may not get into such heavy-handed coding, and they may bend the rules of a browser to favour formatting in another browser. Put it through Weblint and Weblint will scream. Put it into a browser, and the browser happily chugs away. Now, the person who only does hand-code will know these tricks, but will scoff at someone who doesn't. The person who WYSIWYGs it won't know these tricks, but will be able to pump out craziness in half the time, with one-eighteenth the effort. That person will laugh at the hand-coder, while the guy sits there and works on properly abstracted code, mixed with his crazy cross-browser compatibility issues and so on. And both will happily grumble about the other all the way to Tuesday.

Frankly, both sides make me wanna puke from time to time. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

The reality of it is that both have advantages and disadvantages. I, myself, have always found hand-coding to be easier because I can use a lot of tricks that a WYSIWYG editor (yes, even HomeSite/DW) will bark at. I can also integrate my code well with things like Struts or PHP or what-not, without much problem. If I build a page right, then I don't have to worry about updating issues cuz I can use a search-and-replace tool like BKReplaceEm or just grep it. I've spent the time and learnt the tricks.

I could tell a non-hand coder to do the same thing, and the really good ones would be able to do it - no prob. And they'd be smart enough to know how to make their code act the way they want it to, even if they're not going in there by hand.

It's the people who don't take the time to get to know WHAT the WYSIWYG editor is doing that make hand-coders itch (and as a result, most of us bark at ALL WYSIWYG folk - which is wrong of us, and I apologize on behalf of us all). And it's hand-coders who fail to realize the power of these apps which make WYSIWYG folk scream in frustration and want to throw a Sun server out the window. I think at the heart of the debate, people have to keep this fact in mind.

I have people who work under me who would cry murder if they didn't have a DW license. I have others who turn red with rage whenever they see the DW icon. They all work together, and do it well, because we insist that they are familiar with each others way of working. That way they can give each other code that they can work with, or at least give each other a heads-up if there's a problem. If someone creates a custom JS function which is 10k lighter than the same thing put out by DW, they let the WYSIWYG developer know, so that they use that function, instead of the native DW function. If a DW developer denotes a dynamically inserted section of the page, they make sure they are aware of what the code looks like in order for the hand-coder to make sure he doesn't kill it or is very careful when working around the includes. It's not hard, folks - it just takes patience.

But getting back to my original point - the reason I feel that hand-coders have a bit of an edge is that we HAVE to do it the hard way. We have to take the time to figure out all those little things that a WYSIWYG editor will do for us...especially when it comes to those little undocumented tricks. I've learned a lot from teaching DW - there are a lot of things it can do which I wouldn't have even bothered thinking about doing. But once I realized it could be done, I went out and tried to figure out easier, cleaner ways to do it - basically, I rewrote the code to scale it down to what was needed. Sometimes it's a good thing to have code that's bare-bones. I once created a DW page that was 47 KB and did the same thing by hand in under 10 KB. Then again, I once coded a site by hand in one week, and did the exact same site in less than half that time with DW. Where the edge comes in is that if I were to do that same site again now, it would take me just over a day by hand...and still just under half a week with DW. Mainly because it had a lot of little tricks I used, and the site had to be integrated with a PHP back-end, and so on. Each of these things would have to be done, tweaked, integrated, then re-tweaked with DW, then tested. By hand, it's just a matter of build, integrate, test. The first time around, it's freakin' annoying. The second time around, it's simple. The first time around with DW is simple. The second time around it's simple. But the ramp-up is scary.

In the end, I'll stick with my hand-coding. But I'll keep up with WYSIWYG editors, as well. And I'll never crap on a WYSIWYG person for his/her preference - I'll just hope they're enterprising enough to want to truly understand what's happening behind the scenes as well as they understand the interface of their app.

Anyway, now that I've sounded like a pompous ass for long enough, I'll let the debate run its own course. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]


hth,
Deep (just a guy)
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