Participant

Question

HomeSite vs DreamWeaver

Forum|Forum|19 years ago
April 7, 2006
10 replies
2452 views

Is there any reason why a ColdFusion developer would use HomeSite as a development platform instead of DreamWeaver? It seems the newest Dreamweaver interface would be particularly useful for any ColdFusion developer. Would it raise a red flag for you if a developer said they only use HomeSite? I realize this is a strange question, but please give me your thoughts.

thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Y

yukonzach2

Participant

Two words for HomeSite. Snippets and Projects. As of 2024, I still have not found an IDE that incorporates Snippets (of code) so easily and seemlessly. VS Code doesn't even have a simple way of doing Snippets. Projects in HS are very straightforward and easy to use. No need for "Workspaces" or special locations. Just point your Project at a folder and you are ready to go. I wish that the CF Builder extension for VS Code had the ease of use and customization that HS does, but it just doesn't.

Charlie Arehart

Community Expert

Zach, a couple of things (on your reply to this post from 17 years ago):

1) As for projects, while I agree that the workspace notion (imposed by vscode, not the CF team) can be annoying, note that you can get pretty much all the features of CFML editing and even RDS configuration without needing to setup projects (and therefore workspaces). You can just open a file from the file system or a folder opened within VSCode.

That said, there certainly are powerful features that CFBuilder on VSCode offers that won't work unless you open a file as a project...but those are features you don't get in HS+ or CF Studio (or Dreamweaver), so you're not "missing" those if you opt to work without projects in VSCode. Then again, they are valuable and worth configuring things to support: the security code analyzer, the step debugger, the component browsing integration, sql integration, the PMT code profiler integration, and more.

2) As for snippets, I think the possibilities of easily leveraging them with VSCode may be closer to your hope than you may think.

a) First, just to be clear, creating them is already FAIRLY simple . Here's a good article introducing them, and still another. And those also shows how VSCode snippets also far more capable than was possible with hs+ snippets--though I realize most hs+ would cherish the uber simplicity of what hs+ offered.

b) That said, there are several generators to help building one from scratch, such as this and this.

c) Even so, many HS+ will likely wish they could "convert all their current snippets from HS+/CF Studio to VSCode"...and sadly there is no converter for that. But I will throw out first that for someone motivated, it would take less than 30 mins to create the code to do that. You could even leverage the code that Rob Brooks-Bilson created 18 years go to do that for conversion from such hs+ snippets to the XML file format that the OLD Eclipse-based CFBuilder used. While his blog site (and the post with that code) is long gone, the post and code are available today via the internet archive.

Even more interesting, though, the second of those generators I offered also lets you pass in values as querystrings, which would make it even easier to convert hs+ snippets using just some of that code offered in Rob's post.

d) Lastly, someone may lament that the VSCode way of using its snippets by only keyboard shortcuts or the pallette is less useful than how HS+ offered a UI to find and use available snippets. Good news there, too: there's at least on available free VSCode extension for that. (And once one buys into VSCode snippets, there's even another extension that further super-charges them in really useful ways, one of which is another snippet selector tool.)

Hope that's helpful. If not, let us know where the gaps remain for you.

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)

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yukonzach2

Participant

Fantastic response Charlie. Thank you for taking the time to write it! I will dig through this and give VS Code a second chance.

Actually fortuitous b/c the corporation I work for, just yesterday, is questioning this "HomeSite+" program I have on my system b/c it is not on their 'approved software list'. I am filling out forms to get it on there, but if they shut me down, looks like I will have to spend valuable work time to implement your points to VS Code.

Thank you for continuing to keep the ColdFusion lamp burning. Cheers!

BKBK

Community Expert

It is a pleasant surprise to read my posting of last year. Homesite+ is now in second place. For about a year now I have been using the best development tool so far for Coldfusion MX, namely, Eclipse.

D

dempster

Inspiring

HomeSite was (and is) an excellent editor for people who write their own code, whether it be HTML or CFML. It has a nice set of tools to let you insert or edit tags and insert functions and other components of coding. If a developer told me they only used HomeSite, and if their work was satisfactory, I certainly wouldn't be concerned.

I've been using HomeSIte for many years and feel that it gives me more control over my coding and over the appearance of my pages. I also use Dreamweaver for straight web pages and I've been satisfied with the most recent versions, which are handy for templates and site management.

N

Newsgroup_User

Inspiring

> What I really like about it, is the type-ahead pop ups for tags and
> attributes. There is at least one free html editor that has this for html
> tags, but Dreamweaver has it for Cold Fusion tags. I don't know if other
> software has this or not.

Eclipse does (via a plug-in).

--
Adam

S

Stressed_Simon

Inspiring

I have to give another vote for Eclipse. Once you install the cfeclipse plug in you have an awesome (free) CF editor, that coupled with its ability to work so closely with Subversion you cannot really go wrong. The fact that Macromedia (now Adobe) have started to put their weight behind the Eclipse platform (RDS plugin, Flex Builder, etc.) is a clear indication that they are aware that it is the way forward for the future of CF development. Granted you can write all your code in any text editor, but for speed of development, I couldn't go back.

BKBK

Community Expert

I prefer HomeSite to Dreamweaver, and am curious to experience for myself what all the Eclipse fuss is about. There's little use to go into pros and cons. Those things are so designed that, the more your experience in any one of them, the more skills you acquire that are common to all of them.

My advice to a fellow developer is to acquire a minimum working knowledge of all the current tools, then to specialize in one or two. If you're undecided what to be in our profession, be an octopus. It pays to be four times more skillful than even the ambidextrous.

L

Leftbower

Known Participant

not being able to "fold up" your code was reason enough to pick HS over Dreamweaver, unitl v8 added this feature.

CFC introspection and the debug features of Dreamweaver are pretty nice too. If working in a collaborative environment - eclipse is the way to go.

I've always used HomeSite and I've been "forcing" myself to get used to Dreamweaver because I own it as part of Studio, but I find myself going back to HS for things that need tobe done quickly...

D

Dan_Bracuk

Inspiring

I actually use Dreamweaver and have seen none of the things described by others. Mind you, I only work in code view and have no panels showing (the big white screen if you will).

What I really like about it, is the type-ahead pop ups for tags and attributes. There is at least one free html editor that has this for html tags, but Dreamweaver has it for Cold Fusion tags. I don't know if other software has this or not.

A

Anonymous

Notepad is the best way to code!

N

Newsgroup_User

Inspiring

> interface would be particularly useful for any ColdFusion developer. Would it
> raise a red flag for you if a developer said they only use HomeSite?

It would raise a red flag for *me* if they used DreamWeaver, to be honest.
DW's for fiddling with HTML and CSS files: it's not a developers'
environment.

If I was hiring, I would prefer my developers to have, as an order of
preference:
1) Eclipse
[daylight]
2) Homesite+
3) DreamWeaver

--
Adam

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philh

Inspiring

Many long-time CF developers were raised on the HomeSite/CF Studio interface, and like it just fine, thank you. DW obfuscates the nuts and bolts of a page by default; that's no way to treat someone who's used to coding their stuff from scratch. It also (at least in the versions I used) has a nasty habit of re-writing code. It's difficult to separate the display from the logic (i.e. pure CF processing stuff). The only feature I like is the split window site interface; really handy for comparing dev/sandbox/live structures and objects, and simple to promote/publish.

My US$.02

P

paross1

Participating Frequently

I'm still using Studio 4.5.2 and found Dreamweaver to have too much foo-foo stuff for my taste. Of course, I still use notepad for coding my PL/SQL and SQL*Plus for Oracle access, so old habits die hard.