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Anyone still hand-coding web sites?

I date back to the early days of the web when HTML was limited
but very managable, and have always maintained that hand-coding
HTML gives you far better control and cleaner HTML markup than
any WYSIWYG editor.

But all the sites I created and manage are small sites (<50 pages).
And I've been out of the loop in terms of what's new in
methodology and with the specifications for the past couple
of years.

I need to get back into web design and am having to catch up
with a lot, as I find that most of the stuff I knew and did
is probably considered "archaic" and tedious.

It will just take me some time to familiarize myself with the
newer specs, but I can't decide if I should stay with hand-coding
web pages, or move to some kind of pre-packaged management
system.

I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?
Jul 20 '05 #1
102 7454
rf*****@go.com (RFox) writes:
I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?


See *multiple* threads in the google archives on this subject.

However, in summary, people are still hand-coding. There's no 'newer,
more efficient method', but the use of preprocessors or server-side
scripting can make it a lot more efficient.

--
Chris
Jul 20 '05 #2
RFox wrote:
I date back to the early days of the web when HTML was limited
but very managable, and have always maintained that hand-coding
HTML gives you far better control and cleaner HTML markup than
any WYSIWYG editor.
Of course it does. AI isn't good enough to understand what you _mean_ when
you present with a picture.
I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
<shiver>

It's HTML is just about tolerable (providing you don't let it use anything
that's deprecated), its CSS is awful, and its JavaScript is worse.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?


For large sites, I'd suggest picking some form of templating tool (I like
wmake), then either hand coding the HTML, or using something like Textile
for the content.

--
David Dorward http://dorward.me.uk/
Jul 20 '05 #3
RFox wrote:
I date back to the early days of the web when HTML was limited
but very managable, and have always maintained that hand-coding
HTML gives you far better control and cleaner HTML markup than
any WYSIWYG editor.


It's still like that. Especially if you want to manage 10,000s of
pages, you need to hand-code every line you output. Ideally, it's all
done with some server-side scripting. And really simple HTML. Maybe the
content is in the database. But there's no WYSIWYG tool that does this
job well (creating the CSS, database structure, strict HTML, CMS,
forms, etc.)
As soon as you touch "WYSIWYG", a single page may take less time, but
the underlying approach is awful. Some programs may be good at handling
templates, but you might as well script this yourself. Or use CSS.

--
Google Blogoscoped
http://blog.outer-court.com
Jul 20 '05 #4
In article <2a**************************@posting.google.com >, RFox
<rf*****@go.com> wrote:
I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?


I was using Dreamweaver for a while, but I've stopped. The reason is
that I stopped using table-based layouts, and switched to CSS-based
positioning. Now that my code is free of the clutter of dozens of empty
table cells, I can read the code at a glance.

It's irononic -- I started by hand-coding, but switched to a graphical
tools because richly-formatted sites were becoming too complex to
handle in a text-based editor. Now, thanks to CSS2, the complexity of
the code has dropped once again to the level it was when I started
years ago.

--
Jim Royal
"Understanding is a three-edged sword"
http://JimRoyal.com
Jul 20 '05 #5
RFox wrote:
have always maintained that hand-coding HTML gives you far better
control and cleaner HTML markup than any WYSIWYG editor.
There's really no such thing as a WYSIWYG html editor.
I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
When I see sites created with Dreamweaver, I see a mess. Some here
say it is quite good, as long as you stick to code view and avoid the
WYWSIWY mode (see above). But if you're going to do that, why pay the
money? After all, there are freeware text editors with html macros
built-in.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should I
move to a newer, more efficient method?


Preprocessors seem like a good idea, but I cannot for the life of me
get one to work. NB: I'm on a windoze system, so my options are more
limited than the Linux folks.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

Jul 20 '05 #6
On 9 Sep 2003 08:06:10 -0700, rf*****@go.com (RFox) wrote:

I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?


Take a look at Namo WebEditor. It's easier to use than Dreamweaver,
much cheaper and was once rated better by CNet.
http://www.namo.com
Jul 20 '05 #7
>From: rf*****@go.com (RFox)
Are people still hand-coding web design
and web pages, or should I move to a >newer, more efficient method?


Hand Coding is still the best way, and using Copy and Paste techniques,
you can build pages quite rapidly when you get going.........>

Web Design-Magic-Painting-Junking-Games
INFO 2000 For You
http://www.davmagic.com
See how your webpages look on a MSN-TV Browser:
Download it here: http://developer.msntv.com/Tools/msntvvwr.asp

Jul 20 '05 #8
I use Macromedia Homesite 5... and have been using it since it was Allaire
Homesite. It's superb. It's not a WYSIWYG editor, it's more of a toolbox for
quickly creating HTML. It's packed with features and comes with "Top Style
Lite" which is a CSS creator that self-validates. All in all, I highly
recommend it.

"RFox" <rf*****@go.com> wrote in message
news:2a**************************@posting.google.c om...
I date back to the early days of the web when HTML was limited
but very managable, and have always maintained that hand-coding
HTML gives you far better control and cleaner HTML markup than
any WYSIWYG editor.

But all the sites I created and manage are small sites (<50 pages).
And I've been out of the loop in terms of what's new in
methodology and with the specifications for the past couple
of years.

I need to get back into web design and am having to catch up
with a lot, as I find that most of the stuff I knew and did
is probably considered "archaic" and tedious.

It will just take me some time to familiarize myself with the
newer specs, but I can't decide if I should stay with hand-coding
web pages, or move to some kind of pre-packaged management
system.

I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?

Jul 20 '05 #9
RFox wrote:

I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?


the most efficient method for large sites is usually to use PHP...for
smaller sites it's still easier and more effective to do the mark up by
"hand" [1]...with html 4 and beyond most of the layout can move to
stylesheets, at which point the WYSIWYG html editor becomes useless,
though css generators such as Top Style become potentially very useful

[1] I use the quotes because a number of WYSIWYG jockeys seem to believe
that hand coding means typing each individual character in order, when in
fact it generally means cutting and pasting from a library of ,ark up
snippets

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"Hey Lord don't ask me questions
There ain't no answer in me"
Jul 20 '05 #10
rf*****@go.com (RFox) exclaimed in <2a**************************@posting.google.com >:
I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?


The newer, more efficient, method is hand-coding, in combination with
templates (whoever needs to write the basic HTML document more than
once ?) and offline pre-processing tools.

I'd venture to make the claim that all professional web implementors
use a variety of that method.

--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
ti**@greytower.net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905
Jul 20 '05 #11
RFox wrote:
I date back to the early days of the web when HTML was limited
but very managable, and have always maintained that hand-coding
HTML gives you far better control and cleaner HTML markup than
any WYSIWYG editor.
Oh yes. Anyone who knows how to write HTML should be able to do a much
better job of it than any WYSWYG program.

I've given Dreamweaver MX a quick spin and it seems to produce much cleaner,
more efficient HTML than any other tool I've tried, but I still prefer
writing by hand.

But all the sites I created and manage are small sites (<50 pages).
And I've been out of the loop in terms of what's new in
methodology and with the specifications for the past couple
of years.
I work for a large UK ISP, and we hand-code all our stuff (using some PHP to
automate common items of our template, and PHP or SSI (depending on the
area of the sites) to include header, footer etc.

It will just take me some time to familiarize myself with the
newer specs, but I can't decide if I should stay with hand-coding
web pages, or move to some kind of pre-packaged management
system.

I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?


Personally, if you want to save time by using a WYSWYG proggie, I'd say you
still need to brush up on your HTML and CSS code to clean the code up and
tweak things afterwards.

CSS is your friend - forget <font> tags etc!!

Cheers

Dave P
--
David Precious
http://www.preshweb.co.uk/
Jul 20 '05 #12
Brian wrote:
RFox wrote:
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should I
move to a newer, more efficient method?


Preprocessors seem like a good idea, but I cannot for the life of me
get one to work. NB: I'm on a windoze system, so my options are more
limited than the Linux folks.


I've been using gtml on Win for a couple years now. It's small, pretty
flexible, and easy to use. It's just a perl script, so if you know perl
you can modify it as you see fit, too.

<URL:http://www.lifl.fr/~beaufils/gtml/gtml.html>

If you don't have perl installed, get it at
<URL:http://www.activestate.com/>

--
To email a reply, remove (dash)ns(dash). Mail sent to the ns
address is automatically deleted and will not be read.

Jul 20 '05 #13
Tina Holmboe wrote:
I'd venture to make the claim that all professional web implementors
use a variety of that method.


So long as you don't define "professional" as someone who gets paid for what
they do... (sadly)

--
David Dorward http://dorward.me.uk/
Jul 20 '05 #14
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 00:13:40 +0100, David Precious
<pi******@preshweb.co.uk> wrote:
I work for a large UK ISP, and we hand-code all our stuff (using some PHP to
automate common items of our template, and PHP or SSI (depending on the
area of the sites) to include header, footer etc.


Out of interest: why do you use both PHP and SSI? I've used PHP a
little, but not SSI. My understanding was that PHP could do everything
SSI could do, and the only real reason for using SSI was if either PHP
wasn't available, or one didn't have the time to learn it. But I gather
you have found a reason?

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/
Jul 20 '05 #15
On Tue, 09 Sep 2003 18:43:01 GMT, Brian
<us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote:
RFox wrote:
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should I
move to a newer, more efficient method?


Preprocessors seem like a good idea, but I cannot for the life of me
get one to work. NB: I'm on a windoze system, so my options are more
limited than the Linux folks.


Outside of exotic things needing QT or other visual libs, just about
everything compiles under cygwin with just the normal configure make
dance, I'd certainly be willing to bet html preprocessors fall under
this category.

Jim.
--
comp.lang.javascript FAQ - http://jibbering.com/faq/

Jul 20 '05 #16
Thanks for everyone's responses.

Looks like I can dismiss the Dreamweaver route :whew!:
It just seems like I see it everywhere and I see it listed
a lot in web design job listings, that I thought that's
what everyone was using.

What I'm trying to find out is what methodology most
people are using to design and maintain web sites other
than by hard coding everything into a static HTML doc.

Two troublesome areas I have with this is:
1) When you make a layout or navigation change, you
have to manually change every single web page it's on.
2) It would be more efficient, but not essential, to
have a system where the content provider (who knows no
HTML) to be able to edit the content material themselves.

I can live with having to make all the content updates
myself, but area (1) is what really bothers me.
I've always been a proponent for separating content from
formatting. And from people's repsonses, it looks like
people are using either SSI or PHP to do that.

Problem with that is that I have limited server Administrator
privileges. That and the fact that I have no idea how
to implement them, which will just take time to learn,
but would seem difficult to do if I don't have server
access to install stuff and play around with it.

I've never heard of pre-processors.
Yes, I know I can look it up on the net, and I will
to learn about them, but can someone provide me
with a quick and simple explanation of what they are
and how they would differ from other things like
SSI or PHP?

Thanks for everyone's input.
Jul 20 '05 #17
I think most would agree that CIY is vital, you simpley cannot create a
good site with WYSIWYG tools without a firm CIY understanding. But,
they are good, espesially for a table. They will create, in my
experience, a nice template and if you need to tweak bits by hand they
fair play, it still took you less time. WYSIWYG has its place, but it
will never replace colour-coded CIY conpletely.

RFox wrote:
I date back to the early days of the web when HTML was limited
but very managable, and have always maintained that hand-coding
HTML gives you far better control and cleaner HTML markup than
any WYSIWYG editor.

But all the sites I created and manage are small sites (<50 pages).
And I've been out of the loop in terms of what's new in
methodology and with the specifications for the past couple
of years.

I need to get back into web design and am having to catch up
with a lot, as I find that most of the stuff I knew and did
is probably considered "archaic" and tedious.

It will just take me some time to familiarize myself with the
newer specs, but I can't decide if I should stay with hand-coding
web pages, or move to some kind of pre-packaged management
system.

I hear Dreamweaver is very popular, but have never used it.
Are people still hand-coding web design and web pages, or should
I move to a newer, more efficient method?


Jul 20 '05 #18
Another thing I forgot to mention in regard to using CSS
is that I've always limited it's usage to mainly text
styles rather than positioning and layout because I still
have to make everything compatible with Netscape 4.x
(which tends to corrupt almost every CSS attempt I make).

It's just painful to watch CSS layout come out exactly
how I want it in every browser I test EXCEPT Netscape 4.x.
But that's a different rant for another thread.
Jul 20 '05 #19
RFox wrote:

Two troublesome areas I have with this is:
1) When you make a layout or navigation change, you
have to manually change every single web page it's on.


find/replace...any decent text editor has one...takes seconds...though for
large sites it may pay to have the navigation done through an include

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"Hey Lord don't ask me questions
There ain't no answer in me"
Jul 20 '05 #20
RFox wrote:
Looks like I can dismiss the Dreamweaver route :whew!:
It just seems like I see it everywhere and I see it listed
a lot in web design job listings, that I thought that's
what everyone was using.
Its the least crap of the graphical HTML generators. Most people here don't
respect it though.
Two troublesome areas I have with this is:
1) When you make a layout or navigation change, you
have to manually change every single web page it's on.
As I said -

| For large sites, I'd suggest picking some form of templating tool (I like
| wmake),

http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?Incl...ile_in_another
2) It would be more efficient, but not essential, to
have a system where the content provider (who knows no
HTML) to be able to edit the content material themselves.
Again -

| using something like Textile for the content.
I've always been a proponent for separating content from
formatting. And from people's repsonses, it looks like
people are using either SSI or PHP to do that.
It tend to avoid them if I can as it puts extra load on the server. With a
preprocesser that generates static files I can more easily handle things
like gzipping and cache control headers.
Problem with that is that I have limited server Administrator
privileges.
That's the other advantage of preprocessors :)
I've never heard of pre-processors.
Yes, I know I can look it up on the net, and I will
to learn about them, but can someone provide me
with a quick and simple explanation of what they are
and how they would differ from other things like
SSI or PHP?


PHP is a full blown programming langage. Web pages with the apropriate
indicators (typically a .php file extension) are parsed by the PHP engine
for PHP code delimitators (typically <?php and ?>). This code is executed
and the output returned to the webserver (typically the output is HTML).

SSI is similar, except it inserts the results of an external process or
variable rather then being a programming langage.

Preprocessors typically generate static files, and can be happily run on a
machine other then the server (e.g. your workstation).

http://www.html-faq.com/utilities/?htmlpreprocessor

--
David Dorward http://dorward.me.uk/
Jul 20 '05 #21
RFox wrote:
1) When you make a layout or navigation change, you
have to manually change every single web page it's on.


Search & replace. Search for a good one with multi line S&R with regexp
option (Homesite for example).
Headless

--
Email and usenet filter list: http://www.headless.dna.ie/usenet.htm
Jul 20 '05 #22
<Enter Your Full Name> wrote:

Please don't top post.

[WYSIWYG]
But they are good, espesially for a table.


A good editor will allow you to create a table by displaying a graphical
UI including specifying colspan and rowspan.
Headless

--
Email and usenet filter list: http://www.headless.dna.ie/usenet.htm
Jul 20 '05 #23
RFox wrote:
Another thing I forgot to mention in regard to using CSS
is that I've always limited it's usage to mainly text
styles rather than positioning and layout because I still
have to make everything compatible with Netscape 4.x
(which tends to corrupt almost every CSS attempt I make).


Make sure you use HTML appropriately and forget about styling for
NS4/IE4 by hiding your CSS. NS4/IE4 users will get a fully functional
site.
Headless

--
Email and usenet filter list: http://www.headless.dna.ie/usenet.htm
Jul 20 '05 #24
On Wed, Sep 10, David Dorward inscribed on the eternal scroll:
Its the least crap of the graphical HTML generators.
Any views on Mozilla Composer? Gives access to both preview and
source code.
Most people here don't respect it though.


I think the problem with us is we know what the logical structure
needs to be, and we want to make it that way. When well-intentioned
point and click tools get a hold on our hand-optimised markup and spit
out stuff that we wouldn't be seen dead writing - my colleague
recently showed me a page reworked with DW, it had outbursts of

<br><br>
<br>

all over the place, Lord knows what it wanted those for, he says he
certainly hadn't asked for them - then we start to think that overall,
these tools cause more extra work cleaning-up the mess after them,
than they save in convenience of composition. We look for a "fix it
once and then it's done" solution, whereas with pointy-clicky
composition tools every page cries out for being tidied-up separately
- and tidied up all over again after every redesign.
Two troublesome areas I have with this is:
1) When you make a layout or navigation change, you
have to manually change every single web page it's on.


As I said -

| For large sites, I'd suggest picking some form of templating tool (I like
| wmake),


Some form of that has got to be the right answer for sites that are on
any significant scale, and updated with any significant frequency,
indeed. And don't forget the ease of doing a site-wide make-over of
the site cosmetics by deploying a new style-sheet without any need to
mess with the HTML files, if they've been done well.

Jul 20 '05 #25
"RFox" <rf*****@go.com> wrote in message
news:2a*************************@posting.google.co m...
Thanks for everyone's responses.

Looks like I can dismiss the Dreamweaver route :whew!:
It just seems like I see it everywhere and I see it listed
a lot in web design job listings, that I thought that's
what everyone was using.


The only people who dismiss Dreamweaver are the
one who don't know how to use it. In the right hand,
you can create a site much faster than by hand with
html that is just as clean.
Jul 20 '05 #26
In article <6o********************************@4ax.com>,
Headless <me@privacy.net> wrote:
1) When you make a layout or navigation change, you
have to manually change every single web page it's on.


Search & replace. Search for a good one with multi line S&R with regexp
option (Homesite for example).


Or BBedit for on the Mac. 'it doesn't suck.'
http://www.barebones.com/

--
Kris
kr*******@xs4all.netherlands (nl)
"We called him Tortoise because he taught us" said the Mock Turtle.
Jul 20 '05 #27
In article <2a*************************@posting.google.com> , RFox
<rf*****@go.com> wrote:
1) When you make a layout or navigation change, you
have to manually change every single web page it's on.


Not true. A simple little trick called Server Side Includes takes care
of this for you. It allows you to embed one HTML document inside
another. Typically, the embedded document is a non-changing element
such as a header, footer, or... a menu.

SSI is a process that takes place on the server. Thus, you need a
functioning web server in oder to preview your pages. If you're using
Mac OS X, you already have Apache installed. If you're using Windows,
you can download and install Apache for free. I don't believe the
personal web sharing built into Windows does SSI.

It should be noted that using Dreamweaver alleviates the need for
installing a web server on your desktop computer. But if you haven't
ponied up for a DW licence yet, Apache is the cheaper way to go by far,
and has other advantages.

--
Jim Royal
"Understanding is a three-edged sword"
http://JimRoyal.com
Jul 20 '05 #28
In article <2a**************************@posting.google.com >, RFox
<rf*****@go.com> wrote:
It's just painful to watch CSS layout come out exactly
how I want it in every browser I test EXCEPT Netscape 4.x.
But that's a different rant for another thread.


I feel your pain. However, it is possible to structure your CSS in such
a way that Netscape users get a usable page. They don't get an
identical page, but at least they can see all the content.

I think you should read Zeldman's book "Designing With Web Standards"
before you go much further. A good read.

--
Jim Royal
"Understanding is a three-edged sword"
http://JimRoyal.com
Jul 20 '05 #29
Mark Jones wrote:
The only people who dismiss Dreamweaver are the
one who don't know how to use it. In the right hand,
you can create a site much faster than by hand with
html that is just as clean.


The only people who dismiss hand coding as being slower than WYSIWYG
lack proper hand coding skill/experience/tools.
Headless

--
Email and usenet filter list: http://www.headless.dna.ie/usenet.htm
Jul 20 '05 #30
Mark Jones wrote:

The only people who dismiss Dreamweaver are the
one who don't know how to use it.
My problem with Dreamweaver is the muck it produces in graphical view,
which, AFAICS, claims to be a WYSIWYG[1]. Admittedly, this is what I
see after others have updated an html file that I created. It *was*
html 4/strict, but after the Dreamweaver treatment, I see something like
<tr><td align="center">
<font face="arial"> <font color="blue">&nbsp;C Print &nbsp;
</font>
</font></td>
</tr> </table>

<div align="center"><div align="right>
<div align="center"> &nbsp; home</div></div></div>

Very discouraging.
In the right hand, you can create a site much faster
than by hand with html that is just as clean.


And how does one do that? This is not a smart-a%# question, I'm
really wondering? Must one stick to code view? That would be
perfectly sensible, but then why pay the money for Dreamweaver when
you can just get a good text editor for much less money -- in many
cases free -- and edit in code view all the time. ;-)

And even if it's true that Dreamweaver is capable of delivering good
code, I can see no excuse for the sort of code that it produces in
graphic mode.

[1] As I said earlier in this thread, there is no such thing as a
WYSIWYG html editor.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

Jul 20 '05 #31
Mark Jones wrote:
"RFox" <rf*****@go.com> wrote in message
news:2a*************************@posting.google.co m...
Thanks for everyone's responses.

Looks like I can dismiss the Dreamweaver route :whew!:
It just seems like I see it everywhere and I see it listed
a lot in web design job listings, that I thought that's
what everyone was using.


The only people who dismiss Dreamweaver are the
one who don't know how to use it. In the right hand,
you can create a site much faster than by hand with
html that is just as clean.


there is simply no way that can be true

DW cannot produce mark up that is anywhere near as clean as I
demand...so...either you mean that it can be used effectively as a text
editor, in which case it isn't particularly great compared with some
others, or you have no concept of the process that actually goes into
creating mark up "by hand"

I've used Dreamweaver...it's got NOTHING that a decent text editor hasn't
got except the WYSIWYG view and one or two site management tools that
there are freeware alternatives to...what it can't do is create halfway
decent mark up...of course it can't, it's software, it doesn't understand
concept or context...it is possible to do stylesheets effectively with
software (and Top Style gets close) Dreamweaver doesn't even manage that
effectively

what you can do with Dreamweaver is slap together a visual layout and then
claim that nobody could actually have done it cleaner...since the chances
are that nobody any good id going to bother to show you how much more
cleanly exactly the same could be done without being paid to do it...the
very fact that a number of us have, at times, made a decent living simply
cleaning up the mess made by WYSIWYG editors ought to give a clue as to
how much tidier it is possible to get

I've yet to see a Dreamweaver produced page that I couldn't knock at least
25% off the size of...I've yet to see one where I couldn't improve the way
it is "perceived" by search engines...I dismiss Dreamweaver because I've
tried it and I'm better off without it

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"Hey Lord don't ask me questions
There ain't no answer in me"
Jul 20 '05 #32
Jim Royal wrote:
I don't believe the
personal web sharing built into Windows does SSI.


I'm not sure, but IIS does (comes with some versions of Windoze).

--

Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au
Jul 20 '05 #33
"Headless" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:h5********************************@4ax.com...
Mark Jones wrote:
The only people who dismiss Dreamweaver are the
one who don't know how to use it. In the right hand,
you can create a site much faster than by hand with
html that is just as clean.


The only people who dismiss hand coding as being slower than WYSIWYG
lack proper hand coding skill/experience/tools.

I can hand code very quickly, but Dreamweaver
allows me to do complex layouts more quickly
than doing it by directly editing the html. For
more simple designs, I do almost all of the work
in the code view window of Dreamweaver and
just use the design window for visual feedback.

I still do most CSS by hand as it is easier to get it
to do what I want when no "helpful" editor is getting
in the way.
Jul 20 '05 #34
"Brian" <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote in message
news:gOK7b.409279$Ho3.64402@sccrnsc03...
Mark Jones wrote:
In the right hand, you can create a site much faster
than by hand with html that is just as clean.


And how does one do that? This is not a smart-a%# question, I'm
really wondering? Must one stick to code view? That would be
perfectly sensible, but then why pay the money for Dreamweaver when
you can just get a good text editor for much less money -- in many
cases free -- and edit in code view all the time. ;-)

And even if it's true that Dreamweaver is capable of delivering good
code, I can see no excuse for the sort of code that it produces in
graphic mode.

I never use it in full layout mode, but rather the simpler
standard view. I always keep the code view window open
so I can see the html that is being generated. Years of
experience is what allows me to avoid doing many of
the things that Dreamweaver isn't good at.

Remember, the code view window is your friend and
should be used as much as possible. Use the design
view window primarily for visual feedback and you can
very quickly get a page designed the way you want it.

I still frequently open pages in Notepad for quick changes
when I do not want to wait for Dreamweaver to open.

Dreamweaver can be a very bad tool to use if you are
not very experienced at hand coding. It can leave all kinds
of garbage behind as you repeatedly edit the same section
of a page. It isn't smart enough to remove nested tags that
have no effect at all on what the page looks like.
The "clean up html" command has to be applied way too
often, and it doesn't clean up all of the empty tag pairs.
Jul 20 '05 #35
"Eric Jarvis" <we*@ericjarvis.co.uk> wrote in message
news:MP************************@News.CIS.DFN.DE...
Mark Jones wrote:
"RFox" <rf*****@go.com> wrote in message
news:2a*************************@posting.google.co m...
Thanks for everyone's responses.

Looks like I can dismiss the Dreamweaver route :whew!:
It just seems like I see it everywhere and I see it listed
a lot in web design job listings, that I thought that's
what everyone was using.


The only people who dismiss Dreamweaver are the
one who don't know how to use it. In the right hand,
you can create a site much faster than by hand with
html that is just as clean.


there is simply no way that can be true

DW cannot produce mark up that is anywhere near as clean as I
demand...so...either you mean that it can be used effectively as a text
editor, in which case it isn't particularly great compared with some
others, or you have no concept of the process that actually goes into
creating mark up "by hand"

I've used Dreamweaver...it's got NOTHING that a decent text editor hasn't
got except the WYSIWYG view and one or two site management tools that
there are freeware alternatives to...what it can't do is create halfway
decent mark up...of course it can't, it's software, it doesn't understand
concept or context...it is possible to do stylesheets effectively with
software (and Top Style gets close) Dreamweaver doesn't even manage that
effectively

what you can do with Dreamweaver is slap together a visual layout and then
claim that nobody could actually have done it cleaner...since the chances
are that nobody any good id going to bother to show you how much more
cleanly exactly the same could be done without being paid to do it...the
very fact that a number of us have, at times, made a decent living simply
cleaning up the mess made by WYSIWYG editors ought to give a clue as to
how much tidier it is possible to get

I've yet to see a Dreamweaver produced page that I couldn't knock at least
25% off the size of...I've yet to see one where I couldn't improve the way
it is "perceived" by search engines...I dismiss Dreamweaver because I've
tried it and I'm better off without it

You have to be very experienced with Dreamweaver to get
maximum benefit from it. I have been building web sites
for over 7 years and one of my early sites was over 1300
pages that was built using Windows Notepad.

I have seen people create garbage with Dreamweaver
simply because they had no idea that it would create
a bloated html file with empty tags thrown in all through
the html. I told one designer many times that she needed
to keep the code view window open and clean up problems
as they occurred. She wouldn't listen, so the site ended up
being launched with lots of bloat that served no purpose.

I gave up trying to get her to change because I believe
she didn't really understand hand coding html and how
to clean up Dreamweaver's bloated html.
Jul 20 '05 #36
"Mark Parnell" <we*******@clarkecomputers.com.au> wrote in message
news:3f***********************@freenews.iinet.net. au...
Jim Royal wrote:
I don't believe the
personal web sharing built into Windows does SSI.


I'm not sure, but IIS does (comes with some versions of Windoze).

I run IIS 5.1 on XP to view pages using html, css, cold fusion and
asp. I have used some SSI whenever I felt it would simplify
maintaining a site. Apache is much faster, but it is hard to get
working with CF and ASP on Windows XP.
Jul 20 '05 #37
Mark Jones wrote:
I run IIS 5.1 on XP to view pages using html, css, cold fusion and
asp. I have used some SSI whenever I felt it would simplify
maintaining a site. Apache is much faster, but it is hard to get
working with CF and ASP on Windows XP.


I run Apache at home, but that's because I have XP Home - can't get IIS.
And that way I can test redirects, etc with .htaccess locally, and upload it
to the server which is also Apache.

I don't use CF or ASP at home, though.

--

Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au
Jul 20 '05 #38
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 13:36:12 -0400, Kris wrote
(in message <kr*****************************@news1.news.xs4all .nl>):
Or BBedit for on the Mac. 'it doesn't suck.'
http://www.barebones.com/


My whole coding toolbox is BBEdit combined with HyperEdit. Can't be
beat.
Instant preview as you type (css included) and validate with a single
command... There is simply no faster way for hand editing html/css.

You can even build your own preprocessor into BBEdit (via AppleScript,
perl or python) and even edit html files directly on the server if you
wish to...

--
J Brady

Jul 20 '05 #39
Mark Jones wrote:
The only people who dismiss hand coding as being slower than WYSIWYG
lack proper hand coding skill/experience/tools.
I can hand code very quickly, but Dreamweaver
allows me to do complex layouts more quickly
By "complex layouts" I'm assuming that you are referring to table based
layouts (because doing a proper CSS layout is a nightmare in DW). Such
(dreadful) layouts can actually be made very quickly with a _proper_
editor, and typing speed doesn't matter (creation of very complex tables
is all graphic).
than doing it by directly editing the html. For
more simple designs, I do almost all of the work
in the code view window of Dreamweaver


I suspect that this is the problem, you've never learned how to work a
proper editor. Don't dismiss what you don't know.
Headless

--
Email and usenet filter list: http://www.headless.dna.ie/usenet.htm
Jul 20 '05 #40
What's the point of fast coding if you waste all that saved time in a
thread like this?
Matthias

Jul 20 '05 #41
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 17:04:44 +0100, Headless <me@privacy.net> wrote:
RFox wrote:
1) When you make a layout or navigation change, you
have to manually change every single web page it's on.


Search & replace. Search for a good one with multi line S&R with regexp
option (Homesite for example).


I strongly disagree. You might be forced to use it occasionally, but
using search & replace is basically amateurish hacking. You are
constantly going to hit problems with false positives and false
negatives in your search strings (unless your site is trivially small).

For a reliable update system you want either preprocessing or something
like PHP/SSI.

Of course if you use CSS properly, quite a few presentation changes will
only need to be done in one place anyway.

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/
Jul 20 '05 #42
On 10 Sep 2003 08:35:58 -0700, rf*****@go.com (RFox) wrote:
Another thing I forgot to mention in regard to using CSS
is that I've always limited it's usage to mainly text
styles rather than positioning and layout because I still
have to make everything compatible with Netscape 4.x
(which tends to corrupt almost every CSS attempt I make).

It's just painful to watch CSS layout come out exactly
how I want it in every browser I test EXCEPT Netscape 4.x.
But that's a different rant for another thread.


In case you haven't already met the concepts of hiding bits of CSS, my
page on Netscape 4 may help:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/netscape4.html

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/
Jul 20 '05 #43
Stephen Poley wrote:
Search & replace. Search for a good one with multi line S&R with regexp
option (Homesite for example).
I strongly disagree. You might be forced to use it occasionally, but
using search & replace is basically amateurish hacking.


I am indeed an amateur, how does that relate to my skills and
experience?
You are
constantly going to hit problems with false positives and false
negatives in your search strings
You might, I don't.
(unless your site is trivially small).


Mwoah, 345 html documents currently on one site.
Headless

--
Email and usenet filter list: http://www.headless.dna.ie/usenet.htm
Jul 20 '05 #44
Matthias Gutfeldt wrote:
What's the point of fast coding if you waste all that saved time in a
thread like this?


You want to decide what I spend my time on?

Here's a hint: if you find certain threads a waste of time then most
news clients offer an option to ignore such threads.
Headless

--
Email and usenet filter list: http://www.headless.dna.ie/usenet.htm
Jul 20 '05 #45
Stephen Poley <sb*****@xs4all.nl> writes:
I strongly disagree. You might be forced to use it occasionally, but
using search & replace is basically amateurish hacking. You are
constantly going to hit problems with false positives and false
negatives in your search strings (unless your site is trivially small).

For a reliable update system you want either preprocessing or something
like PHP/SSI.


Anyone know if SSI is cache-friendly, i.e. it sets the Last-Modified
header to the latest modify time of the files involved? I'm fairly sure
PHP doesn't do this. If SSI doesn't do it either, then search & replace
does have one advantage.

Jul 20 '05 #46
Bruce Lewis wrote:
Stephen Poley <sb*****@xs4all.nl> writes:
I strongly disagree. You might be forced to use it occasionally, but
using search & replace is basically amateurish hacking. You are
constantly going to hit problems with false positives and false
negatives in your search strings (unless your site is trivially small).

For a reliable update system you want either preprocessing or something
like PHP/SSI.
Anyone know if SSI is cache-friendly, i.e. it sets the Last-Modified
header to the latest modify time of the files involved?


Not by default. Look into xbithack:

<URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_include.html#xbithack>

I'm fairly sure PHP doesn't do this.
It does not, it wouldn't make sense for most uses of PHP. Look into "funky
caching" for one method of fixing this:

<URL:http://philringnalda.com/blog/2002/11/halfbaked_and_a_little_fried.php>

If SSI doesn't do it either, then search & replace does have one
advantage.


No more than preprocessing, and it's not anywhere near as maintainable.
--
Jim Dabell

Jul 20 '05 #47
On Thu, Sep 11, Bruce Lewis inscribed on the eternal scroll:
Anyone know if SSI is cache-friendly,
Yes, they do: see the usual Mark Nottingham cache tutorial,
http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/ , in particular the part of
http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#IMP-SCRIPT which deals with SSI.
i.e. it sets the Last-Modified
header to the latest modify time of the files involved?
See in particular the XBitHack variation, which advertises the
last-change date of the main page. If you use SSI to insert the
content of files which are updated more often, you might want to
arrange for your publication process (makefile, whatever) to also
touch the main file.

I did once see a modified Apache include module, which inspected the
dates of all the files used, but this doesn't seem to be maintained or
widely available as far as I can see.
I'm fairly sure PHP doesn't do this.


Not inherently, but I've no doubt you could code it explicitly.

In either case you're not normally going to get an ETag, so a
statically-served page does still have some marginal advantage.

best regards
Jul 20 '05 #48
"Mark Jones" <sp**@block.com> exclaimed in <B7*****************@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink. net>:
the html. I told one designer many times that she needed
to keep the code view window open and clean up problems
as they occurred. She wouldn't listen, so the site ended up
being launched with lots of bloat that served no purpose.


So, basically, you suggest that an efficient way of builing websites
is using Dreamweaver to quickly create a rough sketch of the site,
then the code view window to correct the code manually ?

--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
ti**@greytower.net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905
Jul 20 '05 #49
On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 10:54:40 +0100, Headless <me@privacy.net> wrote:
Stephen Poley wrote:
Search & replace. Search for a good one with multi line S&R with regexp
option (Homesite for example).


I strongly disagree. You might be forced to use it occasionally, but
using search & replace is basically amateurish hacking.


I am indeed an amateur, how does that relate to my skills and
experience?


I was referring to using an error-prone method when more reliable
methods are available.
You are
constantly going to hit problems with false positives and false
negatives in your search strings


You might, I don't.
(unless your site is trivially small).


Mwoah, 345 html documents currently on one site.


Well I guess in your case I'll have to concede and admire your
self-discipline.

I maintain however that using S&R is intrinsically more error-prone than
preprocessing/SSI type solutions, and so is less suitable for the
majority of people (at least the majority of those who take the quality
of their site seriously). This is especially true when a site is
maintained by more than one person.

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/
Jul 20 '05 #50

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