Dreamweaver: An HTML editor. Nothing More
What is Dreamweaver?
For those of you that are not familiar with Dreamweaver, it is an HTML editor that is an Adobe product and it distributed as part of the Creative Suite currently in version four. It is a great tool for a beginning web designer. It allows you to drag things around in design view seeing what it should look like in a web browser. The power of Dreamweaver lies in its integration with other Adobe products (i.e. Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash). Unfortunately, this is where the power of Dreamweaver stops. In today's dynamic web, the use of blogs, a CMS, and lots of database interaction is very common if not almost mandatory. And that is where Dreamweaver sucks.
What is an IDE?
Again, for those of you who do not know, an IDE is an Integrated Development Environment. In short, and IDE is a tool for a developer to develop applications (websites included) efficiently. Do you have to use an IDE to develop web sites and applications? Nope. Is it smart to use the tools available to you to help you work effectively? Yep. An IDE will make your work as a developer 100 times faster and incredibly more efficient. Where Dreamweaver will help a designer visualize what a website should look like in a browser, an IDE will help a developer code his current projects with the help of intellisense, code assist, and code completion.
Where Does Dreamweaver Fit In?
First things first, I am a developer. I love design. I love admiring great designs, and I try to keep improving my design skills. But at the end of the day I like to develop great dynamic apps and web sites that have a pleasing aesthetic quality. With that being said, Dreamweaver does not fit into my work flow. If you are a graphic designer that is all about aesthetics, isn't concerned with usability, and maybe you dabble in a server side language like PHP. Dreamweaver is right up your alley. I prefer to use a full featured IDE for whatever language I am working in to code all the objects, interactions, and programming logic. I can just use Fireworks, Photoshop, or Illustrator to design the site and just slice it up.
Features
What Does Dreamweaver Lack?
Try this. Create a new PHP page in Dreamweaver. What did you get for syntax? All Adobe gives you is an XHTML document, not a PHP tag in sight. Adobe doesn't think it would be relevant to start the PHP document with some PHP code. That makes no sense to me. Sure, many PHP docs mingle in HTML. PHP was created to mingle with HTML. But let's say I am creating a class, or an interface. Wouldn't it make sense for Dreamweaver to give me that option? For that matter, they should even have some code in there. So I should be able to select file->new->php->class. Makes sense to me. And that is my point, this functionality is not a stretch, and it is not hard to implement.
Here's another one, not a major issue, just a time saver. If I create a user defined function, Dreamweaver should finish what it can for me. Every function is going to have parentheses and curly brackets { } (I don't know the correct name of those, although I use them every day). So if I enter public function init, as soon as I am finished typing my function name, Dreamweaver should add two parentheses and two curly brackets, and place my cursor in the parentheses so I am ready to type my parameters. Every function in PHP contains these elements. Should I have to type them every time? This functionality alone would help beginners a ton. I can't count how many times I had to search through code looking for a curly bracket that had been missed.
Ok only one more, let's say I have a PHP interface that many other classes will implement. I create my interface with my functions, save it to my project folder. Now I create and save a blank PHP class to the same project folder. When I enter implements should Dreamweaver give me a list of available interfaces? One step further, when I implement the interface that is in the same folder, why can't the methods that are required be added for me? This would almost make Dreamweaver a must have.
What Does Dreamweaver Lack?
Enter Aptana, a nice alternative for the developer. Aptana is a free open-source IDE built on top of Eclipse. It can be installed as an extension for Eclipse, or as a standalone application. I have it installed as a standalone app. It has a great list of plugins to help the developer. iPhone, Adobe Air(Dreamweaver also has an Air plugin), PHP, Python, Ruby, and Nokia mobile devices. In addition to those, all of the major JavaScript frameworks are supported, inside Aptana just add a reference to JQuery for example, and everything that is available in JQuery is now available to you with complete code-assist, a huge time saver. I have heard that this available in Dreamweaver, but all I was able to find is the Spry framework, which is from Adobe anyway.
Keeping with the "Aptana is not for Designers" theme, there isn't a design view. But it does have browser tabs, mine has a Firefox tab and an IE tab with the option to add more. So now as I am building a website I can view it in Firefox and IE instantly, right in the IDE.
Code Assist is Awesome
The code assist in Apatana is top-notch. To add a PHP class, I right click in the folder where I want it, choose add new PHP class, and I get a form asking me for the class name and any references to superclasses, interfaces, etc. it even has an option to create constructor and destructor functions for me. Not to mention that when I create a plain old PHP file, it uses PHP tags.
I am currently using Aptana with the Code Igniter PHP framework to build a client website and rebuild my own site with a blog and all the bells and whistles. While Code Igniter is not "supported ", Aptana makes it a fairly easy process. I started coding it with Dreamweaver and became quickly frustrated and switched to Aptana. If you work in any form of website creation, you owe it to yourself to give Aptana a test drive.
Comments
By Scott Radcliff on 08/10/2009
I used Dreamweaver CS4 for the comparison, and I am not sure what the last version of Aptana was prior to 1.5, I am assuming 1.0. I have recently moved to TextMate and I am loving it. TextMate seems to fill in the gaps I was complaining about in the post.
The post was written in May of 09. I thought the date was being displayed next to the post, I will fix that now. Thanks.
By Jason Shultz on 08/09/2009
It’d be helpful to know when this was written and what version of dreamweaver you were running. Furthermore, what version of Aptana are you running?