[thelist] "Hand Coding" in DWMX2004

[Diane Soini]

On Saturday, August 21, 2004, at 04:10 AM, 
thelist-request at lists.evolt.org wrote:

> Re: [thelist] "Hand Coding" in DWMX2004

Call me crazy but sometimes I feel inferior for NOT knowing how to use 
DW. I suppose that used expertly it could be a big timesaver. I 
wouldn't mind being so good at it I could drag and drop code from a 
snippets library whenever I wanted. But I haven't been able to overcome 
all the stuff that is a barrier to me.

For instance, I have never been able to figure out how to insert the 
content I want into a table cell that has squeezed itself so narrow in 
the layout view that it is impossible to select. Or to select an image 
without accidentally resizing it. And the carpel tunnel I get from 
clicking buttons instead of typing is not fun, either. It can't display 
my content at all if the content is all dynamically done with 
server-side includes that use variables and control structures. I 
always wanted to see if I could make it display jsp includes, but all 
my attempts to hack the js files in the config directory either didn't 
work or broke DW. Finally, it runs awfully slowly the larger the site 
becomes, and on my Mac it's just plain slow no matter what.

Regular text editors can do a lot of handy things that DW cannot. For 
example, BBEdit lets me browse the contents of files without actually 
opening them. It also lets me customize the font and font size of the 
UI. So when I'm doing a find and replace and need to write a regular 
expression, I can write it in fixed-width font at 14 points. (If 
anybody can tell me how to change the font of the UI for Windows apps, 
so I never have to try to write a regular expression, or try to place a 
cursor between an "i" and an "l", in 10pt arial again please tell me.)

Things I do use DW for, however, include image maps. No way am I going 
to make one of those by hand when I can just draw shapes with a GUI. 
And the FTP client is nice.


My BF's job went to China so he opened a T-shirt store:
http://www.cafepress.com/abiegen.13058271