Is this cool? Or do I just want too much?

May 10, 2000 6:15 PM

Is this cool? Or do I just want too much? A happy marriage between my geek self and my designer/writer self? Is it possible? Is Macromedia Dreamweaver Ultradev the answer?
posted by tranquileye (13 comments total)

I don't know if my geek self would allow me to give up Textpad or any sort of Notepad replacement.
posted by hobbes at 6:30 PM on May 10, 2000

Hmm. InterDev, Ultradev. I think MS might have a case here.

Just an FYI, Macromedia made similar promises about Drumbeat 2000, which is now being phased out.
posted by ambereden at 7:47 PM on May 10, 2000

Well, I'm for doing things easy. My eyes are getting from staring at plain text. I've been peering at it for almost 20 years in one form or another. It's time to try one of these things. Any suggestions? Who uses what?
posted by Dean_Paxton at 8:28 PM on May 10, 2000

use homesite
posted by corpse at 11:03 PM on May 10, 2000

ultra dev is the final product of macromedia's purchase of Drumbeat 2000. It wasn't phased out, it was re-constructed.
posted by muta at 12:08 AM on May 11, 2000

I use InterDev regularily (workplace standards and all that) and it's a decent piece of software, mostly due to it's integration with the rest of Visual Studio, especially SourceSafe.

When doing stuff at home though, I tend to use Edit Plus which is one of the best Notepad-On-Steroid tools I've ever seen. It's completely customizeable, and comes with text-colouring for HTML, ECMAScript, VBScript, Perl, and Java. And if you want to add your own, the colouring is completely configurable, so you can add in key words, comment indicators, fun stuff like that.

I'm of the belief that if there's only one thing Microsoft does right (and yes, that may be pushing things :-) it's their development tools.
posted by cCranium at 5:56 AM on May 11, 2000

UltraDev looks very promising, whereas you can't say the same for Adobe Golive Dynamic Link, extra for 4.0 and standard in 5.0. Interestingly, Adobe's comparison chart does not list UltraDev yet.
The real plus is that it writes 3 types of code (ASP, CFM, JSP) and it builds on DreamWeaver transparent integration of wysiwyg and code.
I use GoLive and write my own ASP and Informix code, but for simple projects or quick prototyping I'd go with a tool that saves me from coding by hand.
I wonder if Matt used a tool or wrote by hand, or both, as happens most of the times.
posted by pecus at 6:10 AM on May 11, 2000

I outlawed dreamweaver about two years ago when building our web applications because it mangled the server tags, and applets when designers did things, and the developers were having enough trouble not breaking the HTML.

In that environment, I'd bet that designers would take to UltraDev like a duck to water, but it would have to have offer a significant improvement for developers to get them to move to it from established/preferred tools.

(Of course, it would also make it much easier for designers and developers to dabble in each others realms. Your milage may vary as to whether thats a good thing or not...)
posted by julen at 6:25 AM on May 11, 2000

Well, I have been using a "notepad on steriods" (editpad) and this sort of library of code that I cut and paste into sites. It makes doing a lot of pages hard, but there nothing like the control.

Ultradev looks like it will appeal to existing Dreamweaver users. Ones that are documentdesigners by nature and usually have someone else script and build the forms and functions.

I have tried Frontpage, but don't like it very much. I've also tried Netobjects Fusion, that program is... well... Wow, there's a lot to it.

I think I'll give Dreamweaver a try, I think that Homesite 4.5 comes with it. I'm not to terribly anxious to learn Fireworks after spending so long learing photoshop, but if it integrates into Dreamweaver well... what the hell. I'm finding that I'm using Photoshop to do the same simple things over and over anyway. I especially am interested in the components for developing for Coldfusion and Generator. Most interesting.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 8:17 AM on May 11, 2000

I can understand banning Dreamweaver two years ago... I did the same thing. But now I use 3.0 for our CFM pages and it works like a charm. No bending or tearing of the code.

I am sure Ultradev has been conceptualized as a tool to lead "higher-end" Web designers into various application development tasks. I don't have a problem with any tool that allows experts in one area to dabble in another. While Web building has and will become more specialized, I don't see why a smart designer can't construct a simple and functional Web app in ASP or CF using best practises.

posted by tranquileye at 8:31 AM on May 11, 2000

For .CFM stuff, I'm sure we would have been okay, but we were using app servers like NAS, and moving towards building JSPs... I've since left that job (whoo hoo).

Oh I agree with you Tranquileye - this also offers up some really interesting opportunities when prototyping or building a small intranet. I'm eyeing it for my own personal stuff.

I've had good experience with dabblers (including improving our development turnaround time) and bad experience (five days before production, a developer decides to reformat pages to how he likes 'em, not how the client likes 'em), hence my even-handed statement.

posted by julen at 11:11 AM on May 11, 2000

Hm. Is there an app yet that lets you drag frame boxes around and stretch and squeeze them visually?
posted by dhartung at 12:42 PM on May 11, 2000

Dreamweaver lets you fiddle with frame boxes, but it isn't particularly finite, even for pretty simple stuff. I usually ended up going into the html and finessing it.
posted by julen at 3:01 PM on May 11, 2000