[thelist] "Hand Coding" in DWMX2004

[Burhan Khalid]

Peekstok, Anna wrote:
> Aaron Cole wrote:
> 
> 
>>Why do so many people bash Dreamweaver MX and say that they prefer to 
>>"hand code"?
> 
> 
> Dreamweaver is the best of the WYSIWYG editors and its site management tools
> are great, but I still go back to HomeSite (on PC) or BBEdit (on Mac)
> because Dreamweaver messes with my code. If I so much as open a page with
> Dreamweaver, it changes things to suit itself. I hate that. Therefore, my
> Dreamweaver MX sits unopened on my desktop.

I can relate here. I'm not a designer, but a web developer. Most of my 
days are spent deep inside IDEs and (on occasion) vim.

Once in a while I have the pleasure of working with Dreamweaver MX (I 
have it installed on my desktop, but hardly use it).

A recent example that frustrated me:

The task was to simply replace "Copyright 2004" with "Copyright © 
2004" over a set of 5 files. So, I used the neat 
replace-in-files-in-directory featuere. I chose the text that I wanted, 
and the replacement that I wanted.

On the first try, I got "Copyright © 2004" as the replacement. 
So I figured I must have chosen the wrong thing to search for (ie, code, 
or text). So I decided to search in code. Then I got "Copyright 
&© 2004". :|

Finally -- frustrated with the whole thing, I closed Dreamweaver, opened 
up my favorite text editor (EditPlus), and with one search & replace 
command, all was done correctly.

I'm not saying Dreamweaver is good or bad. I would not be the correct 
person to make that assessment. I *do* know that it has come a long way 
from its older versions, and the improvements are great. I, however, do 
not find it very useful -- even in "code" mode. Another quick example :

While editing text in "design" mode, if you hit more than two spaces, 
the extra spaces are not "visible". As a habit, I type two spaces after 
end of sentence punctuation.  In Dreamweaver, the two space trick 
doesn't work. If you want a deliberate space, say four spaces, you have 
to go into code mode and enter  

Just my experience with the software. My designers find it invaluable 
(and I encourage them to use it -- mainly because its intelligent about 
highlighting code -- and its better at writing code than Frontpage).