Quanta Gold Reviewed

An anonymous reader writes "Ever wondered how commercial Linux Web development environments stack up against those for other OS's? There's a reivew at Digital-Web of Quanta Gold, the commercial HTML editor from theKompany.com. I've always been a fan of Quanta Plus, but it's interesting to see what the commercial application has (and doesn't have). The full review of Quanta Gold can be found here."

Comments

wondered?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever wondered how commercial Linux Web development environments stack up against those for other OS's

Why no, no I haven't.

No Documentation?

[TaraByte]

Isn't documentation supposed to be one of the big reasons people buy commercial vs. use noncommercial software?

The reviewer doesn't know about kio_fish

[Wee]

From the review:

For example, saving a document while the FTP tab is open actually FTPs the file back to its original location on a defined server, which is a common feature in almost every other Web development environment. It's arrival in Quanta Gold is certainly welcome, but it would be nice if other protocols like SCP, SFTP, or Rsync were supported as well.

The reviewer doesn't know about kio_fish. (He might also be using an older version of KDE. Although it can be used with older versions if you install it yourself, kio_fish comes standard in KDE 3.1 and above.) It essentially does the scp/sftp thing automatically. Start Quanta, go to File -> Open and in the 'Location' box type something like 'fish://example.com/path/to/document/doc.txt'. Then when asked, enter your password for your account on example.com. You file will open just as if it's living on the filesystem of the machine you started Quanta from. You can open additional remote files, save remote files, open local files, whatever without having to worry about moving files between machines.

This works in any KDE app, too. Hit alt+F2 and enter 'fish://example.com'. You'll get a Konqueror window opened to your home directory on example.com. This is an incredibly handy feature of KDE. This basically settled the GNOME vs. KDE debate for me once I started uising it.

-B

Re:The reviewer doesn't know about kio_fish

[primetyme]

Actually, I am aware of kio_fish, and do use Quanta Plus on KDE 3.1. I've had a few other people point out what you did above, so I think I'll respond to it here..

kio_fish is a very handy and nice feature for all KDE apps, I totally agree.

What I was saying in the article though is that there is no built in interface (that I'm aware of) which allows you to browse remote servers from *within* the HTML app itself. Quanta Gold provides that functionality, albeit only through FTP, by including an 'FTP' pane within the application. (This image and this pic (195Kb) for examples of what I mean.

I also realize that one could set up NFS or Samba mounts on the local FS, to achieve remote connections through the application, but that's not something the Application provides *itself*. So while kio_fish is something I really like and use quite often, it would slow development down a lot to have to open up each file individually via File -> Open -> Location -> fish://...

It's a lot faster to be able to view the remote directories in realtime and being able to select which files you wish to open with something as simple as a double-click.

Appreciate the feedback,

Dan

Re:The reviewer doesn't know about kio_fish

[Wee]

It's a lot faster to be able to view the remote directories in realtime and being able to select which files you wish to open with something as simple as a double-click.

Ah, I get what you mean. I've long since turned off the pane on the side. I don't really need to see the file system I suppose. And it takes up a lot of room.

You're exactly right, though: it would be very nice if you could see the remote filesystem through the tabbed window. I'd almost certainly use it again if I could do that. I might go submit this a sa feature request. It shouldn't be so hard it implement (it's essentially the same thing as Konqueror's filesystem tree).

-B

performance in ftp setup

[Anonymous Coward]

while its not recomended to still maintain sites that consist of lets say, thousands of handcoded html files, people like me actually have to work with those. and there comes an aspect of quanta thats not so nice if you deal with such sites.

obviously quanta allways scans the whole site for html files, and the performance loss is ridiculous, having to wait 2 minutes to do something, and updating is equally cumbersome.

it would be cool also if you could create new files on ftp-sites.

another feature i long to see in quanta is that these autocompletion drop downs are actually used usefully when you write "p class=" so it drops down a list of possible classes that are defined for "tag".

btw. yeah no one uses font tags anymore - at least in web development, the reasons are obvious.

Bleeding for WinSCP

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at kio_fish, and tried to get it working on my pre 3.1 box, but I couldn't figure it out. From the description, I thought it was kde/linux version of WinSCP. Apparently, from the description I'm reading here, and from one I read a few days ago, the comparison is not the same.

Take a look at WinSCP, and see if that is what you're talking about.

I have a half dozen boxes running gnu/linux. But my main desktop is dual-booting win98se and gnu/linux because I couldn't give up dreamweaver and WinSCP. I haven't booted into windows now for over 6 months for other reasons, but I finally gave up dreamweaver when quanta plus updated their app recently, and I was able to get it working on kde 3.0.* It works good, and I've finally kicked dreamweaver. But WinSCP is another story.

I have a lot of trouble with scp and the command line because of the router/lan/lan/sub-lan/nat/lan/ setup I have to traverse between my development desktop, and the apache servers. I have succeeded on occasion in the past on moving files in one direction, but I've never been able to get the files to move in the other direction. Using WinSCP, it is so incredibly easy, I can't believe someone hasn't copied it for gnu/linux. I just can't believe it. It's two windows, similar to commander, or a split view of konqueror, and it's drag and drop. That's it. You can specify ssh, login name/pwd, type of encryption, and other basics, but all it is,is drag and drop. Do you want to convert to all lowercase? Do you want to delete files on remote server? Do you want to capitalize first letter of files? Overwrite? That's it. Plain and simple drag and drop. No magic incantation scp command lines. You don't have to memorize a command line, or write it down, or hope it doesn't get bumped from your bash history file.

Drag and drop mouse selected secure file transfers between local and remote servers. Is this too much to ask? If I were a developer or programmer, this would be my first project. But I can't even write a simple Perl program yet, let alone QT/C or whatever else would be used to write the app.

Simple drag and drop, mouse selected, secure transfers. Is this too much to ask? I'll even throw in a dozen 14" monitors to the first guy who copies the same functionality and look of WinSCP. Monitors are available for pickup in NYC. Contact "one name like cher" in a post to any future story on quanta plus, quanta gold, perl, mysql, postgres or similar story. Put the above quote in the subject, include your email in the body, and I'll get back to you. I'll also update this post when I get my mail server running and get a few throw away email addresses. Can't spare any right now.

Outside of New York? I'll donate them to a gnu/linux group I like in the area, in your name, and you will get the tax deduction on a dozen monitors. Or you can arrange to pick them up. Whatever your preference.

Re:Bleeding for WinSCP

[Spy Hunter]

Using kio_fish or kio_sftp along with Konqueror gives exactly the same functionality as WinSCP, only better since fish:// and sftp:// URLs work in any KDE application, not just Konqueror, and KDE can also handle ftp, http, webdav, and a number of other protocols at the same time.

Simple drag and drop, mouse selected, secure transfers. Is this too much to ask?

Not at all, it's a reality with KDE 3.1. I use it almost every day. Why are you using a pre-3.1 KDE anyway?

Bleeding for WinSCP- Update

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried out kio fish with the konqueror split window last night. And I ended up using it. It actually works very similar to WinSCP. Some of the options/controls of WinSCP are not there (change all files to lowercase ((while transferring)), change/retain/remove permissions, and a handful of others I can't remember right now).

This (kio fish) would be a very important feature for Quanta Plus, and one that I'll be submitting as a feature request.

Another feature missing is wysiwyg, which is supposedly in the development tree. That's something else I could really use, and if they do implement that, they will destroy macromedia, except for mac's cold fusion zealots. Actually by the time quanta plus gets around to distributing a wysiwyg enabled version, I won't need it anymore (it would still be great to have for productivity).

The last important feature missing that I can think of is web file/page management. If you've ever seen frontpage, something I wrote my first web site with, they have a great wizard for quickly setting up and laying out a site (patents applied for), and they have a great feature that shows the web site layed out with objects/lines connecting, similar to Vizio (?). Each web page is represented as a small box, with the name of the page, or filename, inside the box. Each box is connected in a tree, by lines, representing the hyperlinks. Don't like where a page is located in the web site? Drag and drop it somewhere else, and ALL the hyperlinks in the page, and the other pages, automatically adjust to reflect the changes. This is a fantastic tool, and absolutely necessary when you start getting into management of a large number of pages. I'd hate to start managing a 100 page web site with Quanta Plus, but I've managed sites with over 100 pages with ease because of this one simple tool. I'm sure it wasn't so simple to create it, but ms had the right idea when they stole it from whomever they stole it from.

I already submitted the visio style feature described above as a feature request to quanta plus's developers, but the response was that they've never seen frontpage, so they didn't know what I was talking about.