Ask Slashdot: Web Site Editing Software For the Long Haul?

MouseR writes "It seems we can't rely on software, in particular Web site editing software, to exist for the long haul. Every time I rely on something, it takes only a couple of years before it gets trashed. I have used GoLive's CyberStudio before it got engulfed as GoLive from Adobe. Both got trashed. I eventually used Apple's .Mac HomePage. It got trashed and replaced with iWeb. I then used iWeb, hosted on MobileMe, and Apple just killed it again, along with the hosting. So, as I'm preparing to move my stuff on various web sites, onto my own hosting server (outsourced), I'm wondering what kind of visual web site editor(s) I could use, for the long haul. I'm rather sick of changing tools every other year and as a software developer, would rather spend my time editing my web site rather than code it. Any suggestions?"

Comments

Notepad

[cgeys]

Before someone comes in putting down all the IDE's and tools for web designing and suggests Notepad, let me just say this - no, notepad is not replacement for a good, solid IDE.

Re:Notepad

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but vim is!

Re:Notepad

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, Notepad++ is.

Re:Notepad

[betterunixthanunix]

ed is an excellent replacement for vim for any purpose.

Re:Notepad

[grcumb]

Before someone comes in putting down all the IDE's and tools for web designing and suggests Notepad, let me just say this - no, notepad is not replacement for a good, solid IDE.

Notepad is not only a useless HTML editor, it's a useless text editor. Use a real one and you'll see the virtue of this argument.

EMACS or vi on a decent Unix/linux workstation is your IDE. I challenge any web developer to keep up with me in site design and updating. You might be able to stay with me on a trivial site with a couple of pages/templates, but I guarantee you that as soon as you start working on anything non-trivial (like the 100,000+ static documents I currently administer), a real text editor and the basic set of *nix utilities will leave any IDE looking weak and impoverished.

Re:Notepad

[jellomizer]

For Web Development a good IDE is actually quite useless. Unless you want your website to look obviously from your IDE your better off using standard text editors. I have had some forced time in an IDE where I needed it to make HTML, I had to spend twice as much time working around it to get stuff done.
That said, a modern IDE is nice in terms that if you don't try to build your html visually, they often have JavaScript or the server side language development debugging. Notepad++ VIM or Emacs with the appropriate modules installed can work quite efficiently

Re:Notepad

[realityimpaired]

Even good coders have off days. I used to prefer writing all the code/scripts in Notepad, but switched to Geany because of the automatic syntax checking and formatting. It's not that I'm not capable of doing it right myself, it's because it makes it easier to find typos.

As for my answer to the OP's question, if he's got database access, he's best off installing a CMS of his choice, and using that to do his website. It'll make updates easier, and he won't have to worry about his program of choice going the way of the dodo, because he can always keep it installed on his system.

Re:Notepad

[twebb72]

Before someone comes in putting down all the IDE's and tools for web designing and suggests Notepad, let me just say this - no, notepad is not replacement for a good, solid IDE.

but I guarantee you that as soon as you start working on anything non-trivial (like the 100,000+ static documents I currently administer), a real text editor and the basic set of *nix utilities will leave any IDE looking weak and impoverished.

What a huge waste of time for a developer to be maintaining 100,000+ static documents, by him(her)self. You can be fast, but sounds like your job is ripe to be replaced by a part time DBA and a bunch of underpaid content editors.

Re:Notepad

[OakDragon]

This.

Re:Notepad

[NateTech]

Jokes are supposed to be funny.

Re:Notepad

[Chas]

Before someone comes in putting down all the IDE's and tools for web designing and suggests Notepad, let me just say this - no, notepad is not replacement for a good, solid IDE.

No. Notepad isn't a replacement for an IDE (of whatever caliber). It is CLEARLY superior.

Most IDEs (and all the PhotoChoppers out there) with their top-down development do nothing but produce reams of hackish code bloat that doesn't work well cross-platform or in terms of accessibility. Worse, these sites consume many many times the bandwidth, load dogshit slow, and tend to look like crap on anything other than the dev's machine.

It's a shitty excuse for NOT knowing how to code the site from scratch (or at least a basic template).

It's a shitty excuse for having zero compliance with accessibility guidelines and using eye-blinding color pallettes and microscopic font sizes and typefaces CLEARLY unsuitable for web presentation.

It's a shitty excuse for having a layout take up a narrow sliver of the entire page canvas (or side-scroll "infinitely" as if everyone had a 2048x1535 monitor like the foofy, brain-dead webmaster).

It's a shitty excuse for having 3 megabytes of markup and images to display 10K in text.

Yes, learning how to do it CORRECTLY takes a bit more time UP FRONT. But it saves effort down the road as your code is portable, maintainable, and can be rapidly and cleanly altered and appended without massive surgery and metric ass-tons of further prototyping.

Re:Notepad

[Gordonjcp]

the only way I know to do it now is to to re-edit every single one of those 100,000+ pages.

This is why you don't write your pages in straight HTML ;-)

That doesn't answer your question, though. So let's go through some possible ways of doing it.

The first, most obvious way is to edit a menu into every single page in the same place. You can do the same with the headers and footers too. That's a lot of copy-and-paste, though. Some editors will let you expand out a macro, so in your static text you'd put some suitably flagged thing like **MENU** that won't appear in real text. You then cook up the pages from tagged body text and upload them. This works, but is tedious. If you change one thing in a common block of text, then you have to recreate and upload the entire site every time. This is how Actinic E-Commerce used to work, I don't know if it still does. It sucks.

Okay, so how about some means of including the menu from a single file? Back in the day, we used to use Server-Side Includes. Rename your page to my_beachball_collection.shtml and stick a line like

<-- #include virtual="menu.html" -->

to insert the menu. This doesn't always work, especially if SSI isn't enabled. There's an excellent chance your host has PHP though, so instead you do this:

<?php require "menu.html"; ?>

Great! But before long you work out that actually it might be easier to just write the body text and have an index.php file that reads it in with a line like

<?php require $QUERY['page']; ?>

and a URL like http://mysite.me/index.php?page=my_beachball_collection - and this works perfectly. Until someone feeds it http://mysite.me/index.php?page=../../../etc/shadow and of course because your misconfigured server is running as root, it serves up your shadow password file.

Or, you could put the pages into a database, and then use a query like

printf("SELECT title, body FROM pages WHERE page='%s';", $QUERY['page']);

. Then you have URLs like the ones before, but you don't let people read files, you feed the content from a database. This works, except you're Sony so someone feeds it http://mysite.me/index.php?page='; UPDATE PAGES SET body="0wned"; and wipes out all your content since you didn't sanitise the database strings, or set up sane database permissions.

At which point, you give up and just install Drupal.

Re:Notepad

[DarwinSurvivor]

Neither would I. They could potentially become WAY to powerful!

Re:Notepad

[Shikaku]

find ~/website/. | sed -i 's/\&copy;2010/\&copy;2011/

Where find ~/website. | wc -l
returns 48109 files.

Please get back to me when you can do that by hand, thanks~

Re:Notepad

[ianare]

Why would you have that on each page ?!? Why not use a footer ?

In my experience, anytime you have copy/paste, you are asking for trouble. Much better to use a modular architecture.

Re:Notepad

[monkeythug]

Biggest problem with sourceforge and has been for ages.

You'll do a search and find a project description that makes you go "Wow! That's exactly what I'm looking for!", then you get the disappointment a few seconds later of realising that writing the description is actually the entirety of the effort ever expended on the project.

Sourceforge really need to purge all these vapourware projects.

Re:Notepad

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Or more to the point why not just use something like:

&copy; <?php echo date('Y') ?>

Then if you are in a high load situation where you don't want the overhead of dynamic pages just cache the output. Doing a search and replace across 10,000 files sounds like a recipe for fail.

Re:Notepad

[angel'o'sphere]

I don't want to desillusion you, however there are plenty of IDEs and also simple text editors that can do that as well. Some even let you preview and later undo such a change ...

Re:Notepad

[angel'o'sphere]

No. Notepad isn't a replacement for an IDE (of whatever caliber). It is CLEARLY superior.

Erm, an editor where you can not "configure" the line ending? Rofl.

All your other points make no sense either. What do web standards or using the wrong fonts to do with the tool you use? Do you really belive that the same idiot, who can not use an IDE correctly, learns "design" by using a text input tool (no notepad is not even an editor)???

Re:Notepad

[darkpixel2k]

but being able to flip between documents

What part of "o <filename>" don't you understand?

use refactoring

Real programmers don't need refactoring....whatever the hell that is.

reformatting

"%!tidy" works for me

class reflection

HTML doesn't have classes. Real programmers don't use JavaScript. My webserver is netcat and my ability to respond to incoming requests at 120 words-per-minute. Typing out a JPG is a bit of a pain though.

Any more complains I can dismiss condescendingly? ;)

Dreamweaver

[sarku]

Adobe Dreamweaver. Been stable for 15 years or more.

Re:Dreamweaver

[PhantomHarlock]

I've been using dreamweaver for a long time now. It has not substantially changed and is good for editing run of the mill static web pages with a template.

Re:Dreamweaver

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Dreamweaver back since it was HomeSite.

All around a very good product that has so far lasted for the past decade.
It is more oriented towards the "I want to code, but see what I am doing" crowd, but it does so very well.

Aside from that, since you are obviously a Mac User, I would highly recommend looking into RapidWeaver, as it is very capable, surprisingly so for a drag-and-drop editing application, and you can post whatever you make on a server very easily as it is just HTML and Javascript.

If you need something a little more comprehensive with server-side scripting support and basic drag-and-drop forms, I would recommend considering a CMS application, such as ModX, Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla (in order of consideration).

Re:Dreamweaver

[tycoex]

Actually, I'd say that the difference between a professional craftsman and a hobbyist who builds stuff in his garage is often largely because the professional has a much larger assortment of tools to use.

Re:Dreamweaver

[fermion]

Dreamweaver is the application that seems to have long legs. it is assumed, that if another commercial application were made available and was succesful,. Adobe would do all it could to kill it as they did Golive. I used Golive, I liked Golive, and it was killed off to encourage the use of Flash. Unforgivable.

There seems to be one other HTML Editor in current version, Anacrophila, but I have never used it and it might go away like all the others, but it seems to be the one and only no cost solution. While I sympathise with the smart asses that suggest Emacs and Vum , and feel sorry for the smart asses that suggest notepad, these clearly do not meet the requirement of an HTML editor. Well, maybe Emacs, but then you get an OS that looks like an HTML editor.

Personally, I am moving away from hand coding my HTML pages of using a WYSIWYG editor. There are enough script packages that do generally what I want that I can just use them. I think this is why the HTML editors development is becoming less popular. The availability of high quality scripts.

Re:Dreamweaver

[JMJimmy]

I completely agree - Dreamweaver is horrid.

For a text editor I would recommend HK Tools (paid - since) or HTML Kit (free) available since 2004.

For a WYSIWIG editor CKEditor would be a good bet. It's far from perfect but there's no such thing as a great WYSIWIG. At least this one is free but with optional paid support, has been around since 2003 and shows no sign of going away.

Re:Dreamweaver

[larry bagina]

On the Mac, CS doesn't stand for "Creative Suite", it stands for "Complete Shit". I like Dreamweaver on Windows (though I liked it better before Adobe fucked it up) and bought it on the Mac but threw it out in favor of Coda. (Another possibility in MacLand is Espresso, too.).

If I was a rubytard, I would probably recommend nanoc or jekyll.

Re:Dreamweaver

[syousef]

Actually, I'd say that the difference between a professional craftsman and a hobbyist who builds stuff in his garage is often largely because the professional has a much larger assortment of tools to use.

There are many differences between hobbyist and professional apart from the tools:
- Professional may spend 10x as long doing the work -> more practice, more experience
- Professional tackles all parts of his job, doesn't pick and choose what he feels like doing -> Wider range of experience
- Professional will avoid taking on the job without adequate tools, whereas hobbyist may try to wing it -> More predictable results
- Professional is held accountable by standards other than his own
- Professional will avoid all work that is not for profit -> Less range in experience

Re:Dreamweaver

[antifoidulus]

Dreamweaver is a tool, not a skill; same as vim, Emacs, Notepad++, Eclipse, or any other editor.

Emacs isn't a tool, it's a sign of either severe masochistic tendencies or a desperate cry for help, because obviously anyone that uses it is a glutton for punishment.

ducks

Re:Dreamweaver

[hazem]

All you need are the BASIC cooking utensils... THEN
all you need are fresh ingredients.

Alton Brown seems to espouse this idea that you don't need lots of fancy gadgets; just a good set of the basics. I've heard him say several times that the only tool in his kitchen that is made for just one purpose is his fire extinguisher.

Re:Dreamweaver

[caution live frogs]

You mean Arachnophilia? I used that ages ago but hated the Java version, so dumped it for Notepad++. These days TextWrangler does everything I need. WYSIWYG editors, feh. If you can't parse the code you shouldn't be building the page. If you are relying on a WYSIWYG editor you are not a designer, you are a hobbyist. And I say this as a definite hobbyist, even though I prefer a plain text editor. I have a site, I get lots of hits, but I know enough to know that I am not a pro. HTML, Javascript, CSS. That's my limit, aside from a few *nix command line tools. I am not fast enough or good enough to make more than a few bucks here and there helping others maintain sites. And I'm that good only because I've been hand-coding HTML since 1995 or so. If I made more money at it I'd be better, because I'd do it more often - but for a full-time research scientist I figure I do OK, and am happy with what I can do.

Re:Dreamweaver

[rtb61]

So the real question is, what software can I use, so that I can pretend to be a web page designer without knowing all that messy stuff like html, css, xml and javascript/perl/php or even that weird server side stuff.

Answer, then reason all those graphical web page designer software falls over is basically because it is crap. People expect to be able to design web pages like all those professional on the web, rather than clunking amateurish single fixed page documents and are unhappy when they can't.

For people who want to learn there is of course notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ and wampserver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WampServer (if you really want to see how your web page will be served).

Re:Dreamweaver

[yomammamia]

DreamWeaver is acceptable even for the professional providing it is used correctly.

In my experience problems are introduced in two ways:
When it is used for important code that needs care and attention (or backend code in general). This particularly applies for large projects. This is symptomatic of the golden hammer approach, where DreamWeaver is used as much as possible rather than as much as is optimal for the entire cycle. The tool is much better adjusted for building and prototyping views. It should not see much use beyond that.
When its output is trusted implicitly along with any actions it might perform. What you see isn't always what you get and what you want isn't always something you can see anywhere else but in lower levels.

True though it may be that DreamWeaver can be used productively in some rolls and situations, what benefit it does bring hardly seems worth it for the price.

Re:Dreamweaver

[CptNerd]

All you need are the BASIC cooking utensils... THEN all you need are fresh ingredients.

I prefer my old FORTRAN utensils...

Re:Dreamweaver

[houghi]

This is because many people think that making a website is one skill. It is at least two. Designing and coding. In general designers are not coders and coders are not designers.

So what happens is that they let the designer do the coding, because it looks great. The result is people asking what tool to use on a technical level.

And often you would also need somebody who understands how humans react to the interface.

Re:Dreamweaver

[trvd1707]

It's just so easy to click a button and see the page on the browser, that I don't miss the wysiwyg feature of dreamweaver. I used both and I once you got used to the html tags, it's way faster to maintain the site using bluefish.

Dreamweaver

[toastar]

Isn't Dreamweaver still around? I seem to remember it doing a pretty good job coloring my code. Plus the instant preview was kinda nice.

Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know im kind of a black sheep around here, but Expression Web & Visual Studio Web combined make a pretty solid base...

vim

[Firehed]

Or butterflies if you've got far more patience than I.

Recommendation

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Bluefish on Ubuntu. It's very functional and has enough longevity as far as I know.

Re:Recommendation

[Scarletdown]

Third it. Feature list.

Oh! I never realized Bluefish was available for Windows as well. This may mean retiring Arachnophilia altogether, if the Windows version of Bluefish is as good as the Linux version.

Granted, there's nothing wrong with Arach, but I would rather standardize on the same app across platforms.

Re:Recommendation

[AliasMarlowe]

I use Bluefish on Ubuntu. It's very functional and has enough longevity as far as I know.

Actually, Bluefish is pretty good; my kids both use it to maintain their pages.

I occasionally use Bluefish, but prefer to use whetever text editor is in front of me - typically mousepad or leafpad, depending which PC I'm on. Indeed, I often have to clean up their page layout a little, but this is more a result of inconsistency in page design (if any) or haphazard formatting (they're kids) than a criticism of Bluefish.

Wrong tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to troll or something, but I think this should be tagged as "designer", not "developer".

NVU

[Lehk228]

NVU / KompoZer, it's been a long time since i used it but it was pretty nice back when i did, and it's open source so it can't ever fully die

Text editor of choice plus knowledge of HTML/CSS

[Anonymous Freak]

Notepad, TextEdit, TeX, emacs, vi, pico, whatever.

Never have to worry about the editor itself going obsolete because of emerging HTML standards, never have to worry about the tool itself disappearing.

Find yourself random web host of choice (I like nearlyfreespeech) that supports direct upload of files, no fiddly web interface forced on you, and voila! Instant future-proof website!

(Yes, I'm going to have to be weaned off iWeb+MobileMe for my personal domain, too. I'm a lazy bastard, and iWeb was too easy. Now I'll have to go back to hand-coding and/or at least find a simple-to-upload-to-from-iWeb host; which, now that I think about it, nearlyfreespeech should do.)

Content Management

[TimTucker]

If you look at the solutions for "editing" sites that scale, ultimately you'll find that what you're really looking for isn't a better visual editor, but rather a content management platform.

WordPress has a pretty decent track record for longevity, but there are plenty of other options out there as well.

Re:Content Management

[spinkham]

I would recommend a static site generator instead.

You get the benefits of a CMS without the server side software requirements, updates, and security problems.

I use nanoc and love it, but there's tons of other choices out there.

Re:Content Management

[LWATCDR]

That combined with nosupportlinuxhosting.com. You have to buy a year at a time but at $12 a year you are all set.

Re:Content Management

[nine-times]

This sounds right to me. Maybe you don't even need to administer the site, but use a hosted solution instead. That way, you can really focus on content creation.

But part of it is also having realistic expectations. It's very likely that in 10 years, the web will be a different beast, and the view of what constitutes a "good website" will change too. As the web changes, the tools used to create it must also change. Whatever you come up with, don't expect that you'll be using the same tools in 20 years. In computer terms, 5 years kind of is the "long haul".

Instead of trying to keep your tools constant, try to keep your data portable. One of the advantages of something like Wordpress is that it's so popular that, when it gets superseded by other things, there will certainly be methods to translate Wordpress into those new forms-- and it's generally easier to pull information from a database in a sensible way than to pull it out of HTML.

So what I'm saying is, don't focus on making sure that you can use the same editor for the next 20 years, and instead focus on trying to make sure you can pull your old content into a new form every 5 years. That's how you future-proof.

Re:Content Management

[spinkham]

http://disqus.com/ lets you do comments very well, and is used by many large customers.

Re:Content Management

[Tridus]

Technically you can tell MS Word to output HTML, but what you get is really bad HTML.

That's the problem with most WSYWIG HTML editors. HTML doesn't lend itself well to WSYWIG editing and so what you always get is really bad HTML. If you want to do it well, you have to learn some HTML and use a good text editor.

If you don't mind shitty HTML then you have more options, but you're not going to find many people advocating them here.

Re:Content Management

[drgould]

Seriously, isn't there anything (cheap/free) out there that will just let somebody edit a web site in WYSIWYG mode?

Nvu (which is based on Netscape Composer, but hasn't been updated for years), KompoZer (which is based on Nvu, but hasn't been updated in over a year) and BlueGriffon (where do they get these names) which seems to be under active development.

The last time I used KompoZer it worked, but crashed every once in a while and wasn't HTML 4 compliant. Maybe BlueGriffon is better.

Re:Content Management

[TubeSteak]

WordPress has a pretty decent track record for longevity,

The WordPress platform has a pretty awful track record for security.
The odds are strong you will get hacked by an automated bot scanning for 0-Day exploits.
Or if you don't patch/update constantly, an automated bot scanning for old exploits.

Re:Content Management

[SageBrian]

I agree with the CMS concept. Though, a static site generator is good also, for security purposes.

Of course, on /. you will be getting a lot of 'code by hand' comments, and those are all true, for people who code by hand. It may be better for them, but not everyone can deal with that.

As the OP mentions, they use software that makes it easier for them to create. GoLive, Apple fisherprice crap, etc. So, they are looking for graphical based software.
As mentioned by someone else, Dreamweaver has been pretty stable for a long long time. If going with a software solution, Dreamweaver may be the way to go.

Long Haul - on the web, especially in web development, long haul is 5 years or less. You have to accept that technology is changing at a blinding pace. It is frustrating, and tiring, but it's the price we pay for progress. It's frustrating when I have to deal with someone that 'does websites' and thinks what they did in 1998 is still valid.

CMS - going with one of the big 3 (arguably Drupal, WordPress, Joomla) is one way to stay focused on content rather than technical code stuff. Be sure to update and patch, and be on a quality server with it's own security. Active opensource projects like these 3 (and others) will help you keep in touch with the changing landscape.

No matter what, try to accept that whatever you are doing now will likely change in 5 years. All around the web we can instantly see when certain sites were created, some vintage 1996, others 1999, 2002, 2007, 2011. FrontPage, GoLive, crappy web templates, straight boring html with ani-gifs.

If sticking with your previous path, Dreamweaver is probably the answer.

Re:Content Management

[spinkham]

Nanoc, jekyll, hyde, staticmatic, webby, and webgen all have decent install base and seem to be under development.

The nice thing about them is

1) Nanoc could not change for a long time, and it wouldn't matter to me.
2) it is easy to fix or build your own plugins for. It's a very simple program.
3) It's easy to change from one of these tools to another. For example. one of my sites I built using webby, and switched to nanoc for a few advanced features I was missing. It took me about 5 minutes ;-)

Just learn HTML.

[Narcocide]

Seriously. You are looking for a solution to an impossible problem, and besides that it is *easier* to learn HTML than it is to learn Dreamweaver. Stop being frightened of the technicalities and just try it with a text editor for once.

Re:Just learn HTML.

[MouseR]

I actually built a complete e-comerce web site by hand something like 13 years ago. With php scripts (or was it Perl?) and some c-based CGIs. The reason I switched to WYSIWYG is because I don't have time to deal with that and that given web site development is a far cry from my regular Application programming duties, would rather spend whatever is left of my "free" time with my kids than learning to deal with CSS.

Utopia Framework

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I had the same problem so I made the Utopia Framework. This is a simple tool which allows you to create website content directly. While not really ready wide adoption, I've been maintaining it (originally PHP, now Ruby) for over 10 years, and it's core ideas are (IMHO) very easy to understand and very powerful. The biggest issue right now is documentation.

Open Source CMS

[dhammond]

Surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but there are many good open source CMS's that allow you to edit your website through browser based tools -- Drupal, Joomla, etc. My company has built our own CMS that allows wysiwyg editing of websites (which I won't plug). The point is, for the long haul and for a lot of reasons a browser-based solution is best. And no matter what happens to an open source project you can always continue to use the code and extend it for as long as you want.

NVU is now BlueGriffon

[roesti]

NVU and Kompozer are being replaced to some degree by BlueGriffon, which is based on the same code.

What about an open source tool?

[drdread]

I use Kompozer myself, but have had reasonable experiences with some of the other tools too. Windows, Mac, Linux...you can get Kompozer for all major platforms.

RapidWeaver

[TimHunter]

Try RapidWeaver http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/overview/. You'll probably want to use the Stacks http://yourhead.com/stacks/ plugin to get flexible page layouts and Collage http://yourhead.com/collage/ for photos.

I'm not connected to RealMac or YourHead, just a happy user.

Re:RapidWeaver

[MouseR]

So that's essentially an iWeb -style tool. Looks promising. Thanks for the pointer.

Aptana Studio 3

[justfred]

As a PHP developer, I'm used to writing code manually rather than trying to use a GUI code creator.

Having been through several editors on several platforms, lately I like Aptana Studio 3 (version of Eclipse), mainly because of its FTP deployment, and the fact that it works identically on OSX and Windows.

(Biting tongue to avoid the troll response, Microsoft Word.)

MediaWiki

[davecotter]

I know the design can use some updating, and you don't have a lot of design freedom, but if your main goal is to just get information out there, update pages frequently, create new pages, and things of that nature, well i totally love MediaWiki. Your web editing tool is your web browser! I've been using it on my site since forever ( http://kjams.com/ ) and i have to say i'd never ever want to use anything else. yeah, maybe it's kindof ugly. but it's so *easy*!

Migrating from visual editing to hand coding.

[JoeytheSquid]

I've been a web designer since 1994. As all of my training was in the arts, not scripting or programming, I stumbled along making sites using visual editors until around 2001. At that point I realized that my various transitions from one visual editor to the next (Cyberstudio > Adobe GoLive > Dreamweaver) could be avoided if I did the proper thing and learned how to hand code HTML and CSS.

So I did. I throttled down my workload and taught myself how to hand code everything. Sure that first year was miserable but I've since put together a rapid development framework that allows me to turn a custom design to a working Wordpress theme in about a business day. The end result is less headaches, a more refined workflow and sites that actually validate.

Sure, I still rely upon an IDE for my development and most of the Mac IDEs are highly imperfect and rarely updated (Looking at you Coda, Textmate and Espresso), but at least my general workflow remains unchanged. Therefore should I need to drop Espresso and move to the (perpetually) forthcoming Coda 2, I'll be able to make that migration without much trouble.

Re:Migrating from visual editing to hand coding.

[wolfperson1]

I've been a web designer since 1994. As all of my training was in the arts, not scripting or programming, I stumbled along making sites using visual editors until around 2001. At that point I realized that my various transitions from one visual editor to the next (Cyberstudio > Adobe GoLive > Dreamweaver) could be avoided if I did the proper thing and learned how to hand code HTML and CSS.

The New York Times agrees with this approach, and they seem to have one of the better websites around: "It’s our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to “hand code” everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results." Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/media/21askthetimes.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

wysiwyg Will Probably Always Have this Problem

[boondaburrah]

Unfortunately, I don't really see any way to get what you want for the long haul. Companies keep changing, and so does the web. Even if you find one, it will produce code that breaks in browsers a few years from now, and sometimes current ones. What I would suggest is (bear with me) hand-coding your layout once, and then working it as a template for a simple CMS. I wouldn't want to hand code an entire website either, and for most a fully blown CMS is overkill (I don't need forums, or accounts at all: my website isn't really social), but there exist CMSs inbetween, and you only have to hand-code a few pages at worst.

I started with WolfCMS or something similar. Make one page, cut the code into snippets, and create a "layout" that includes these snippets. The CMS will fill the content in for you as you create pages. That's all I need, and it still gives me the power/flexibility to form my website into anything I want. Also, I would avoid one that has it's own scripting language. More pain than it's worth, especially for simple websites. You'll need to learn a little web development to get set up, but it should be relatively smooth sailing once installed. Wordpress can also be bent to create a number of different kinds of websites with their template system, though it's a bit more complicated. Handy if you want to include a well-known, well-supported (with plugins!) blog system, though.

As for hand-coding software, I tend to move around. I used GoLive for a time, for the preview, but now I just have some kind of programmer's GUI text editor in one space/virtual desktop, and a browser open in the other. I use Smultron on mac (I think it's been abandoned now though), Geany on linux, and Notepad++ on windows. Geany's my favourite so far.

Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs is the way to go! And as a matter of fact, I wrote a Lisp Script that just creates the webpage for me!

It's pretty slick. See, in my client meetings, I record what they want, I then transfer the mp3 to the machine and the script listens to it and Viola! creates the website exactly the way the customer describes it! I then get a fat check and take off in the Ferrari with my porn star of the day and we shag like Tasmanian Devils - without the cancer - Poor Devils!

At least that's what I remember after I take these cool looking pills and downing them with Scotch while viewing porn ....

BB Edit

[opencity]

hey I like it more than vi ...

Drupal

[Plugh]

Drupal. It sucks less than the other CMS I've played with. I still hate it. Just less.

Why do it yourself?

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

I just drop by the Best Buy and pick up one of those forlorn looking day-labourer devs waiting out front there.

Wow... no Aptana loving?

[Ophbalance]

I'm amazed that in 75 posts, Aptana is mentioned once? They're not pushing hard enough into the market ;). I really enjoy Eclipse because:

• My sites are stored in subversion... use subclipse for that
• My sites are also stored in ftp... use Aptana for that
• I'm looking to branch into android... use the Android SDK plugin
• Use jQuery and other JS tools... there's a plugin for that

• So far, the only thing that Aptana really fails me at is UI design when coding CFML templates. That's the only reason I haul out Dreamweaver anymore. And even that's a rare day as most of my time is spent cutting up templates for CMS integration. Someone else has already done the Photoshop/Illustrator -> HTML work before me.

Management of Adobe?

[Futurepower(R)]

That raises a bigger question: What has happened to the management of Adobe? There are many, many examples of bad management there, in my opinion. It seems that Adobe needs a new CEO.

There are new versions that don't fix old bugs and insufficiencies, but cost a lot. Sometimes when you buy a CD of Creative Suite, you get software on the CD that is many months old, and requires downloading the newest version.

Arachnophilia

[Futurepower(R)]

Is this what you mean?

Arachnophilia

Content Management+CSS editing

[Ken_g6]

Based on "would rather spend my time editing my web site rather than code it", I agree with the parent's suggestion. Drupal comes to mind too.

If you want your site to look a little more original than what a CMS offers by itself, all you need to do is edit the CSS. To do that, I suggest Firefox, Stylish, and It's All Text to give you a nice editing environment (e.g. Vim). Put together, they let you change any or all of your CSS and see results with a single click (well, two clicks if you use It's All Text).

Re:Sorry, but what rock have you been living under

[WillKemp]

Not ideal with dynamic content or frameworks though.

Nightmareweaver isn't ideal for anything other than use by bodgy amateurs who don't know or care that it churns out really bad html and css - plus totally unnecessary javascript.

Re:Dreamweaver and other animals

[WillKemp]

[......] wordpress for a blog, a CMS for a content driven site, Gallery for a photo gallery, etc

Wordpress is actually really good for all of those. It depends on exactly what you want to do, but WP is a good, full-featured CMS. I've used it for quite a few non-blog sites. It's also good for a photo gallery - just install the NextGen gallery plugin.

Identifying OP's Target

[Rie Beam]

I'm a little confused -- are you looking for an online CMS? Or an offline tool for editing? Because that seems to be more than half of the recommendations coming up.

If you're looking for content management, your options are pretty much limited to how much power you ultimately want over your content. Drupal has a little bit of a learning curve but is easily the most flexible options in the pack; outside of that, try browsing a couple of distribution sites, or hell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

Of course, when it comes down to it, just simply learning to hand-code is not going to be the end of the world, I promise. Nothing has changed in the time you've described on the code-side of things except for bolted-on additions, and browsers are still pretty forgiving to older code (programmers could only wish for the kinds of backwards-compatibility HTML has had during its existence). HTML is not that difficult. CSS is not that difficult. AJAX might be a bit of a push, but JQuery is pretty solid for adding a little extra "zing" for not a lot of extra work. Look into it:

http://www.w3schools.com/

Stay with iWeb, upload to your server using FTP

[smurfsurf]

If your are content with iWeb, stay with it. IWeb is not bound to MobileMe, it can just as well publish to your own FTP server. See http://www.apple.com/findouthow/web/ or http://macintoshhowto.com/software/how-to-upload-iweb-sites-without-a-mac-account-iweb-09.html

Re:Emacs

[Scarletdown]

I then transfer the mp3 to the machine and the script listens to it and Cello! creates the website exactly the way the customer describes it!

Fixed that for you. :p

Architecture

[Archtech]

Not enough people ask questions like this, so I'd like to congratulate MouseR for raising the whole issue. When you start a project, all too often "architecture" is understood to mean the design (look and feel) and perhaps what underlying software frameworks and servers you'll use. It's very easy to overlook the fact that development tools are mostly shifting sands - not ideal for building your imperishable monument on top of.

For a start, please note that "classic" HTML is pretty austere. It doesn't really cater for visual design at all, partly because the wise decision was taken to focus on communicating information, and let the client tweak the look-and-feel to his own desires and needs. Thus, the same page of HTML could look entirely different to someone with very short sight, who might choose to make everything look a lot bigger. That philosophy didn't sit well with the commercial brigade who presently set out to extract mountains of money from the Web - nor with artists and all sorts of other folk who want to achieve specific visual effects. But the very simplest way of making sure your Web content remains immune to bitrot is to stick to the simplest possible look-and-feel, which in turn allows you to adopt the very simplest (and thus cheapest and most lasting) toolset.

Re:Emacs

[wertigon]

I know you jest, but seriously, Emacs has a *wonderful* editing tool for webpages called nxhtml. Why is it wonderful? Because it has a sane way of handling inline JS-, PHP and CSS code. This feature alone blows all other editors out of the water.

If you want a WYSIWYG, though, I'd have to reccommend KompoZer.

Re:Emacs

[Cyberax]

Not even close.

Check the http://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/features/ - it has support for inline JS and CSS editing. With inspections, autocomplete and refactorings. There are also nice features like highlighting and syntax checks for regular expressions inside the JS code.

Oh, there are also lightning-fast "Find usages" feature and code navigation for JS and CSS.

It's miles ahead of _everything_ else in usability and features.