So... what does Dreamweaver do now?

[evilded777]

Granted, its my fault for not doing my research before I upgraded... but I lost it after I installed CS4 and discovered that .Net support had been removed.

What else is missing? I mean besides all the money I spent to upgrade, and all the money I have spent on extensions since buying DW1 way back when?

Seriously, though, what DOES DW CS4 support? And what tool have all the .Net developers gone over to?

[Nancy OShea]

I assume you're are irritated because DW doesn't support ASP.net programming?  Don't blame Adobe for this.  Blame Microsoft.

ASP.net is MS's brainchild and they do whatever they want whenever they want.  My understanding is that Adobe could not adequately keep up with all of MS's late breaking developments and keep DW current.  So if you develop in PHP, ASP or ColdFusion, use DW.  If you develop in ASP.net environment, use MS Expression Web.

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/overview.aspx?key=web

Nancy O.
Alt-Web Design & Publishing
Web | Graphics |  Print | Media Specialists
www.alt-web.com/
www.twitter.com/altweb

[Lawrence_Cramer]

To elaborate a little bit on what Nancy had to say, the problem with supporting .NET was that Microsoft would never release future versions until they were well along in development, as in late beta. This was far to late to work on Dreamweaver's support for the changes in its next version. Dreamweaver's developement cycle usually runs about eighteen months, so, by design, Microsoft always kept Macromedia and now Adobe nearly two years behind the curve. So any .Net support that Dreamweaver was ever going to have was always going to be poor and behind the times... This is not a position Adobe wanted to be in.  So like many smart business they decides to "do what you do best and cull the rest".

So Adobe has taken what I feel is a pretty good strategy. Let Microsoft focus on Microsoft technology,  Adobe will take the rest. this is a wise move because, in spite of Microsoft's narcissistic view of the world "the rest" is a much larger and faster growing market!

For the .Net developer this may seem like a bad or short sited view, but to "the rest" it's a welcome move. We would rather see the development man-hours be spent in CSS, Ajax, PHP, ColdFusion, Flash platform  ect.ect.ect.

Lawrence   *Adobe Community Expert*
www.Cartweaver.com
Complete Shopping Cart Application for
Dreamweaver, available in ASP, PHP and CF

[tomcausland]

Dear all,

Just following this thread.

I don't know too much about programming; however, when I was looking for a suitable CRM system for my start up the sales people told me that .Net is the way forwards and any programme not supporting it would soon be out of date and need to be rewritten.

Now, I am sure this is because some of their competitors were not using .Net and they were marketing themselves to me with this differentiation.

However, as far as I understand DW authors in HTML, will .Net get rid of HTML? What is this .Net as far as authoring websites go.

I asked the sales people for the CRM systems what .Net was an I have been onto Wiki; however, could someone explain if this will make DW eventually a out of date product?

Best wishes,

[David_Powers]

the sales people told me that .Net is the way forwards and any programme not supporting it would soon be out of date and need to be rewritten.

Sales people often have an agenda, so don't always take what they say as gospel truth. ASP.NET is a sophisticated framework for building dynamic websites. I don't use it myself, so don't feel qualified to comment on its strengths and weaknesses. However, ASP.NET is not the only game in town. Other serious contenders are ColdFusion, PHP, and JSP. PHP, incidentally, is much more widely used than ASP.NET.

However, as far as I understand DW authors in HTML, will .Net get rid of HTML?

No, HTML is the language used by browsers to display web pages. Even if you write programming in ASP.NET, PHP, ColdFusion, or JSP, what's finally output to the browser is plain old HTML.

could someone explain if this will make DW eventually a out of date product?

Any product could eventually go out of date. Dreamweaver is no exception. But the decision to drop support for ASP.NET (and JSP) in Dreamweaver CS4 will not make DW out of date. On the contrary, it puts Dreamweaver in a better position to concentrate on strengthening features to keep it in the forefront, rather than spreading its efforts too thinly.

However, for anyone wanting to build web applications using ASP.NET, Dreamweaver is probably no longer the right choice.

[tomcausland]

Dear David,

Thanks, I think I understand. So, as a for instance, HTML is almost like the machine code and all the languages we are talking about develop software and interfaces that are eventually complied into this code (HTML). So, whether I am writing in PHP... or .Net, for the web at least, it all ends up being the same thing when it is complied online.

I like DW as it is only writing in HTML for the main. I used to write stuff in Flash, however, that was in University and I was more interested in style over substance. I like DW as it is just about writing highly useable sites that operate in the language of the worldwide web.

I need to use other languages such as php, and I have done this before on a email suggestions form I did on a previous site. However, at the time I remember this just being a matter or popping the code in the right place in DW.

Thanks for your answer again!

T.