| Product: |
Allaire Homesite |
| Date: |
24.06.01 (238 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Easy to use and lots of functions, For beginners to professionals, Well priced
Disadvantages: None for me!
In my exploits at work as a developer I have used any amount of software. More recently I went on a bit of a dig for decent HTML editing software and Active Server Pages editors. The result is the following opinion on Homesite by Allaire. My opinion comes from personal experience and if you follow my logic you will see why I ended up with this editor as opposed to any other (at this time)…
What I wanted and Why
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I was moving away from Visual Basic and client/server development at work. The idea is to develop quick solutions that can be delivered by the Intranet. The remit (from my point of view) was an editor that was really easy to use on the surface but could also offer a lot more detailed twiddley bits if required.
The interface had to be uncomplicated and reasonably obvious. I don't want to sit there for hours reading a manual or help file. Just want to get stuck in there and get to it (said the actress to the bishop)…
At this point I was not really concerned about Active Server Pages using JavaScript or VBScript because I had discovered ASP Express (a text editor geared towards scripting ASP) and this was proving exceptionally wonderful - not a Microsoftism in sight!
I also was trying to avoid Microsoft (sorry MS) because of the way it ties you into using MS style delivery and content, etc.
What's on the board Miss Ford?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well - here are the packages I played with prior to HomeSite with a brief overview of why I didn't pick them:
MS InterDev: Complex, confusing at times, cumbersome and full of Microsoftisms!
DreamWeaver: This is more like it! Still quite a package to learn straight off and get instant results. I have got this as well, but my aim here is to learn this over a period of time.
FrontPage: No, no, no… not impressed with this. Microsoft made and full of annoying features.
Ok -
brief I know - but I need to chat about Homesite :)
What is Homesite?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Homesite is an easy to use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type tool for Web development. You can add Web page elements in a similar way to which you use other packages, like MS Word or MS Access. You can type some text, for example, and then by highlighting the text, turn is bold, change the colour or the size.
The package also allows you to type in HTML (and scripting languages such as JavaScript) in a traditional way using the familiar Edit Mode. Lovely! What this means is you can broadly create a page using the Design Mode and then switch to Edit Mode to do some more fancy stuff!
Finally you can view your creation in the package itself by selecting Browse Mode. In addition you can kick the current page into a real browser (such as Netscape or Internet Explorer) quite easily to see how it really looks.
That is a broad idea of what it does - very simple and effective eh?
Now - let's have a look at some of the important bits to give a bit more flavour to the pudding!
Starting Up
~~~~~~~~
On opening, you are faced with:
1) A tool bar and menu at the top of the application containing all the functions for Homesite. As with other products, you can tailor this to your requirements.
2) On the left of the screen there is a panel split into two. Along the bottom of this panel there are tabs which allow you to move between options. These are Local Files, Remote Files, Projects, Site View, Snippets, Help and Tag Inspector. Clicking on the tabs changes the contents of the panel. For example, clicking on the Local Files tab shows the directories in the top half and the files contained in the open directory in the lower half. You then have other options such as create directory or delete files associated with this tab. The other tabs work in a similar way with their own options.
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br>3) On the right (which takes up the bulk of the screen) is the working area. This has three tabs linked to it which are Edit, Browse and Design Modes. This is the area where you do all your fancy HTML stuff, either by WYSIWYG or by typing in HTML.
4) Finally (although this is a tool bar option) you can have a tool bar that sits above the working area with lots of tabs on it. This acts like a quick link to most used options such as common HTML expressions, table building, frame building, forms and scripting (ASP). Included on this bar is Cold Fusion functionality.
Project yourself
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The option is there for you to create a project. This allows you to give your Web project a name and then allocate a directory to it. This is where all your project files will be stored and accessed. When you open a project later, you will immediately be shown the directories and files associated with that project (sort of a default directory).
You can just create files without linking to a project. Chose the best way for you!
Ways to Build Your Page
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As I said the Design Mode is great for getting started. As an example, you can type text directly into it and format it in the same way as you might format a Word document. The appropriate HTML is automatically inserted behind the scenes.
If you want to insert a picture, then select the directory in which the picture is located and drag it onto the page you are building and hey presto - there it is! It is visual, so you can see what is going on. The only thing to remember is that the path of the picture will be for example C:\DAVE\PICS\TEST.JPG. When you transfer you page to the Web Server you will need to change the path to something like ../PICS/TEST.JPG (or where ever you store the picture!!!)…
Design Mode has its limitations, but is an excellent way to start to build pages if you not much experience of Web page building.
Edit Mode on the other hand offers a lot more control and shows the page as pure HTML.
For example:
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
These are the bare bones of a page. The text in <> are called tags. In Edit Mode you can right click the mouse over one of these tags and it will bring up a sub-menu with various options. One of these options may well be Edit Tag…
This is where Homesite becomes more complicated but powerful. When editing a tag like this a window opens displaying all the editable properties of the tag. For example, right click on the BODY tag and you can then select background colour, image, text colour, link colour, etc.
The options are geared toward the user. Selection is available for most of these by using drop down menus and colour selectors. It saves time, allows you to experiment and learn simultaneously.
In addition you can design and practice with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) from each tag element. Again the interface is intuitive and you can start to get to grips with CSS and what they do.
As with any editor, you can cut, copy and paste HTML easily and have several files open at once. You can also type JavaScript, VBScript, etc. directly into the pages. However, if you are creating ASP applications, you will not be able to view the results until you send the page to the Web Server - no pre-view allowed!
Browse Mode (as long as you are using pure HTML and no script stuff) allows you to view your page within the Homesite application. You can even change the size of the display to mimic browser sizes (640 x 480, 800 x 600 or fit window). Very useful!
As I said, Homesite will allow you to view you pages in real browser environments like IE or Netscape. It depends what you have installed, as Homesite allows you to add browsers to the list available so you can test in
different environments.
Other Bits of Interest
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is a really good HTML reference onboard, which explains about the tags and HTML format.
As your site takes shape, you can view it diagrammatically using the Site View Tab.
There is a built in spell checker, link verifier and document validator (which checks the syntax of your HTML).
You can FTP (transfer your Web pages) to the Web Server from Homesite. Personally, I use a separate FTP package (WS_FTP) as I find that easier to work with.
There are useful links from the HELP menu to HTML references and, of course, the Allaire Web site (which does contain some useful stuff).
Conclusion
~~~~~~~~
This has been a brief tour of what is involved. There are lots more features (such as CodeSweeper) that I haven't mentioned at all! What this shows is that Homesite is a decent editor for HTML and can be learned by beginners and can be used adequately by professionals.
The environment is well designed and stable and although not jam-packed like DreamWeaver, the options available are useful and easy to get to with a lot of the 'dirty work' done behind the scenes.
Personally, I find it a very useful tool for designing Web pages. I keep ASP and scripting stuff separate by using ASP Express. For pure HTML it is great. You can then shift pages between development tools if you so wish. There is no allegiance to any company or browser, so you have free range on how you create you pages and you can test them in any browser you have installed on your PC (ie. No Microsoftisms!!!)
I can recommend this product safe in the knowledge it does what it is supposed to do and it does it well. Homesite costs under £100. Check out http://www.allaire.com for more details of the product (and others).
:)D
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