We want your ideas for a webpage editor application

[alexandros]

Hello. We are developing a webpage editor application. We want your ideas what features you would like it to have.
It will be Dreamweaver-style but on the first phase it will not have the WYSIWYG mode.

[Vladdy]

Dunno, Notepad works just fine for me ... ;)

[whackaxe]

something i would like, is a browser view that can be set up to go to my home server. what i mean is that when i develop PHP apps, i have to switch to IE and refresh to see my changes. i would like to have the brower to visit 127.0.0.1/script.php for example. i dunno if thats comprehensible or not :p

[Roy Sinclair]

Assuming this tool would be designed for beginners as well as professional users.

1. Make it generate only compliant xHTML code. That means no using deprecated tags. If the competition allows the users to insert fancy geegaws of some sort but they aren't possible without using non-compliant or proprietary code then don't have your product offer them. Beginners shouldn't be given tools that make bad code automatically, you wouldn't hand a loaded gun to a toddler so don't give beginners tools that make bad code.

2. Use CSS but it shouldn't be in-line (place it externally or in the heading) and double especially don't do anything like the dumb tricks I've seen from some of these tools where they generate another set of tags for every attribute that's changed (like <font face="Times New Roman"><font size=3><b><i>.....</i></b></font></font>).

3. Don't do this or any compliant alternative to this:

<font size="3">some text</font><hr><font size="3">more text</font><img ...><font size="3">even more text</font>

That's an especially stupid trick I see some of these garbage er html generators doing.

4. Promote the applying of contextual tags so the content of the page is marked up contextually. Doing this will make #2 above a lot easier since similar items on a single page usually share the same styles (at least when they are in the same division of the page).

5. Allow the user to view/edit the raw html but make sure you display it rationally (use indents to show items contained within other items).

6. Allow the user to publish the page as in #5 above but also have an option to make a data transfer optimized version of the page where all the comments, extra whitespace, line breaks etc have been stripped out. It'll look ugly as sin in a text editor but it 'll make high use pages use less server and may become a selling point you can use in marketing it.

That's enough for now, I may think of more things later.

[liorean]

First off, make it generate well-formed code no matter if the user wants to use HTML or XHTML. Then, see to that it only generates valid code unless the user explicitly turns that off. See to that all styling is made using CSS, either embedded or loinked. Never inline.

If you're going to display the source code, have a dynamic colour coder that does syntax-colouring on the fly.

Other good features are syntax cleaning, autoindentation, source folding, and a validating xml parser.

Also, I'd like to have a good XML handling too.

[shlagish]

Have a large choice of color (not just red, green, blue, orange, yellow, etc...)
I would suggest a big color sheet a bit like the ones found on this site (http://www.btinternet.com/~st_rise/wpcc/wpcc.htm), but with ALL the colors...

[Spudhead]

What Roy said.

In fact, I think that post needs redoing in 48-point bold italics and sending off to Macromedia. They build a windows application that's fast, powerful and stuffed full of useful features, yet churns out HTML - HTML, mind; it's hardly rocket science - so shoddy that thay actually have to build other utilities to clean it up. Un-smegging-believable.

[joh6nn]

<input type="cynical" style="sarcasm: heavy;" value="very little">be sure to put in some rockets. and lasers. lasers are cool. oooh, and a race car</input>


sorry. couldn't help that.

my editor of choice is notepad; i've yet to use any other sort of editor, especially wysiwyg, for any extended period of time. i feel that anything but straight up code, is taking control away from me, and i suspect that there are a lot of people who feel the same. if you wanted to convince me to use your editor, you would need to somehow combine a simple interface ( that is, one that is both easy to learn and easy to use ) with a high level of detail with regards to the code that is being produced. how you might accomplish that, i don't know.

other people have suggested that the code that is generated, should be standards compliant, and possibly well-formed as well. i'll agree that it probably (my feelings on well-formed code are mixed) should be. a handy feature that i'd like to suggest, would be to warn the user when the code generated will result in one of the more common mistakes people make, "brain-farts"/typos people make, or bugs that browsers have. for instance, an empty table cell might prompt the user to make sure it's supposed to remain empty ("would you like to insert a &amp;nbsp; ?"), or adding padding with css might result in a reminder that the css box model differs between IE and Gecko. i would love to occasionally be reminded of things like this, because i occasionally forget. of course, working with anything more than 100 or so of these "brain-farts" would be impractical, but it would be a nice feature anyway.

by that same token, i think that the "what-you-see" part of the editor, should only be very general. how the editor renders the code isn't very important; how the browsers render it is what we're really worried about. i can't speak from experience, but based on the posts of other people in the forums, wysiwygs are only used for preliminary work anyway, and the code is then tweaked by hand. if that's the case, then the rendering engine of a wysiwyg need only give a very general idea of what you'll end up seeing, anyway.


i hope my input is in some way useful to you. good luck with your program, and beware of feature-bloat.

[Graeme Hackston]

I think valid wysiwyg editing of anything other than simple pages is just about impossible. Imagine writing markup in the background of the user dragging and dropping at will. I think it's commendable that these pages even render.

I use FP fairly often. As John suggested I use it for quick IE testing and write the rest in a text editor. My main beef with FP is alot of its auto "features" can't be turned off. I'd like to see an editor that allows for turning off any and all automatic features.

[scroots]

one that i can see the code it is making, and make the code easly modifable.

scroots

[bradyj]

wysiwyg is helpful for people like me, who started out in print design and wanted to make the transition but didn't understand code. It showed me what was what visually, and the basics, and now I've moved on but I still use DreamWeaver MX -- now I just use BBEdit more.

And, as people have said, wysiwyg editors are used as a starting point, and we end in hand coding.

Tool-tips on the fly, an interface that links to forums for the programs-site would be cool, and auto clean-up that knows the difference between javascript and HTML (or XHTML), a menu resources guide that has information for the script tags and css and tutorials. An FTP program that works well (aside from using Fetch or anything) built in would be nice for beginners. And, as everyone has said, please don't follow Dreamweavers coding path -- make it work right the first time.

[MotherNatrsSon]

I wonder why so much harshing on Dreamweaver? I read and use "The Dreamweaver Bible" to set up and change things in it that I do not like. I guess, being a beginner and making very simple web pages is different than some of the "bleeding edge" pages that get created.

I agree with bradyj that WYSIWYG part of it helped me to "see" what the code actually does to a page. I would suggest that the WYSIWYG part be able to be set to emulate a chosen browser so you can see what the page will look like without having to have 4 or more browsers running to preview pages.

I am on a MAC also, and use Photshop7, BBEdit 6, and Dreamweaver 4 to make pages.

If you could also make it an editor for perl for cgi, kind of combining BBEdit and Dreamweaver so you could literally "do it all" in one application would be nice. It should only use and produce valid, up to date code and be updatable when the code guru's(whoever the hell they are) decide to tell us that there is a "new, improved" version out there.

Sounds like you need to determine your audience or users for the app. The "real coders", already seem to code in a text editor of some kind. For the average person with a life away from thieir computer and anything relating to computers, putting out a page that works cross browser with little manipulation is what it is all about. Anyone should be able to build pages in it that work. That is what the internet is about. OPEN ACCESS for everyone and anyone, not job security for coders.

Importing files from ANY application no matter who makes it would be good. Be sure to make versions that work well in older OS systems also. Not everyone is updated up to the minute with the technology.

I am too much of a beginner I guess. I will think about it as I use Dreamweaver 4 and maybe reply again.

MNS

ps. Spudhead...What you have to realize is that all these applications were first created for MAC and only recently became available on PC's so they are still working out the bugs. Not an excuse mind you , but it may have an impact on how applications work on Windoze vs. MAC OS

[shlagish]

lol, windoze

[Graeme Hackston]

The "real coders", already seem to code in a text editor of some kind. For the average person with a life away from thieir computer and anything relating to computers


I'll take that as anyone that knows how to write web code does so by spending all there time in front of a computer, If so, I disagree.

I think there's 2 basic options when first confronted with writing web pages.

1/ Learn how to write HTML. If you can write and understand this your on your way.

<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

2/ Spend a far greater amount of time learning Dreaweaver or whatever and still not know how to write the above

[Graeme Hackston]

Also, if it were possible to import files from any application wouldn't you think that it would be done?

[shlagish]

Yeah, don't get it wrong, it's VERY usefull to write your own code.

[MotherNatrsSon]

No I do not. For compeition reasons I think companies do not so you have to buy more of their software and not get by with the competitions. Adobe vs. Macromedia vs. etc....
Maybe I am just naive.

[MotherNatrsSon]

I am sure it is "useful" to be able to write all the code. Especially if you are attempting to do more complex things. It would be nice to know Javascript and Perl as well. At age 42, I guess I'm a little behind my peers and the "youngsters"........

MNS

[BloodXero]

NOTEPAD ALL THE WAY!! old school baby. let thy notepad be thy friend and led thy way.

[bradyj]

You would not be able to import specific graphics because of the way they are built.

1) Vector graphics such as Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand (which is the same company as DreamWeaver) and Corel Draw creates are only supported file types through flash.

2) Any program like Quark and InDesign are made for Printing layouts, and only are built to understand how use designers use a printer, or a postscript, so that won't work

3) I can open rasterized images (jpegs and gifs) on the fly through DreamWeaver by linking it to Photoshop.

So I don't see how the others would need to be linked. They're different types of files.

And, many people would be right... it took me longer to learn DreamWeaver than it did to learn how to hand code. But, hand coding was a foreign language to me at first -- I'm accustomed to being able to draw and paint my work and see it in action; whether on a computer or with real materials. So, to contradict myself -- it probably saved me time in the end. It made it click so to speak.

[Roy Sinclair]

I'm a hand coder myself but I use UltraEdit or Visual Studio (in the edit code mode) most of the time. Notepad is also acceptable but I like the color highlighting the other products provide. I also understand and accept the fact that others want or even need to be able to "Create a web page" without learning all of the complexities involved in html. The casual users shouldn't need to know the nitty, gritty details of writing html, a good utility will make it possible for those people to craft web pages without that knowledge but it's not a great utility unless it also emits good code. While the users may not need to know how to make well formed html by hand there's no excuse for such a program emitting anything except well formed code.

[whackaxe]

put frikin documentation in the thing as well. i hate undocumented software. also, don't use a long string of &nbsp; for layout like ms frontpage ;)

[STDestiny]

Also, make sure you include line numbers. (It's very annoying to get a javascript or PHP error and have to count down to line 369.

-STDestiny

[mouse]

Colour coding. Line numbers that correspond, even when the code is wrapping (MC Codemeister-stylee ;)).

And how about this; the ability to overlay a page as, say IE would render it, over one that another browser, like Moz, would render it? for pixel perfect alignment.:eek:

Personally I'd not make a full wysiwyg, I'd create a small viewer where the user could align divs, with snap-to-grid functionality. The user would work in the html code, though still be able to format paragraphs as they would in a wysiwyg, ie highlight then select from a menu, that kind of thing.

That way the user should actually understand what they're doing, rather than just seeing the results of what they do.

[wox3-iO]

I use DreamWeaver 4. Why? It's just easier... but I don't edit every single line in the code with it, I mainly position all the elements that I want and then "tune" the code in the code view.
And all style definitions I do by myself. I don't trust DW ;)
I understand that some (ok, many) ppl use Notepad as their editor, but how far can you get with it?
Show me an example of an EXCELLENT website (meaning the look and coding) that has been made with Notepad (if there is one).

And before I leave, I have to mention THIS (http://www.evrsoft.com/) free html editor that I used 2 years ago when I first started coding.

[mouse]

Notepad writes the same code as any other editor ;)

It's just a bit lacking. I couldn't survive without the tabbed view Editpad gives me for example, though I'm fine without colour coding. Personally I think people confining themselves to Notepad, particularly those who do it out of bravado (mes a |337 n073p4D coder :rolleyes: ) should help themselves and look around a bit.

[liorean]

I can find a number of reasons one wouldn't use notepad (but another text editor that is not necessarily tailor made for web development), except for the obvious issue of colour coding:
- If you're on win9x or winnt, it doesn't have any replace facility, only a rather weak search facility. It also doesn't allow you to chose what font to use.
- It doesn't handle [NEL], [LF] or [CR] as line endings, only the combination [CR][LF].
- It is limited to a rather small size for the content document.
- It's replace facility is weak and doesn't allow for regular expressions or anything like that.
- It doesn't have brace matching (good for debugging)
- It doesn't allow you to change encoding (it's locked to the windows charset)
- It doesn't have source folding
- It lacks external application hooks, that can be used to hook into for example HTML Tidy or the browser.
- It doesn't have any batch editing facilities.

[STDestiny]

Notepad is good if you just need to make a quick fix. The reason I keep gravitating back towards notepad is that it loads very quickly.

[shlagish]

NotePad is just longer to use for making a website than an editor, but you have greater freedom to do what you want...

[liorean]

My argument here wasn't as compared to an HTML producing tool such as Dreamweaver or HTML Kit. I meant rather a better texteditor. Both TextPad and SciTE opens without any apparent delay for me, the same way Notepad does. (Actually, Notepad has a delay that the mentioned tools lacks if you use the View Source feature in Internet Explorer, while it hasn't got that delay for opening without a document.)
Dreamweaver, OpenOffice.org HTML Editor, UltraEdit, HTML Kit and NotePad Plus all have a delay, in the first three cases by more than 5 seconds.

In short, comparing another general text editor to Notepad, I find that the time needed to load them as compared to Notepad isn't larger enough to be noticeable. There are also tools to make calls to "%windir%\notepad.exe" silently redirect to SciTE or TextPad so that they open instead of notepad in all cases.

If you compare the loading time to a full-fledged HTML editor though, it will take far more time.

[theabyss]

EditPlus all the way!!! :D

[optimism_]

The one thing ive always wanted on a text editor but have yet to find exactly is complete customisation of filetypes. The filetype masks for the open/save dialog bixes should either be totally generic (*.*) or customisable.
If colour coding is an option, use external definitions for the colours, for different languages, say diff colour coding for c/c++ and html.

If there is an editor that you can completely customise, almost like with profiles for different laguages, you'll probably find the user uses it for everything

[theabyss]

I use EditPlus for everything :)

It's a really great editor with customizable color coding, a user toolbar that's customizable with shortcut features, and multiple window interface that's very easy to switch windows.

Take that Notepad! :D

[optimism_]

closest ive found to what i described up there is crimson edit.

[theabyss]

Pretty good. They have an excellent documentation on their website.

<quote src="http://www.crimsoneditor.com/">
"pressing Ctrl+Tab brings the last accessed document to top"
</quote>

Another great feature! I can give the editor my approval but won't try it just yet. I probably will next week sometime.

Nice info! :thumbsup: