This is a rant about buggy software. You've been warned.
I hate Dreamweaver. There, I've said it. I feel much better now. I'm sick and tired of hearing about how wonderful it is. Yes, its the de-facto standard in web-page development. That doesn't mean its any good. Internet Explorer was the de-facto standard for web browsing, but even SANS and Secunia (computer software companies) have recommended other products.
The templating system in Dreamweaver sucks rocks through concrete. Who in their right mind designs a system that doesn't allow the data in a template to be stored outside a template? Idiots, that's who.
I followed the recommendations in the Dreamweaver help files, and designed a base template for the entire site. Then I designed four more templates, nesting them inside the base template. About a hundred pages later, I decide to make a small change to the base template. That change gets applied to the four nested templates, then to the hundred pages. One problem: Dreamweaver suddenly doesn't know how to move the data around, because it tried to change the pages, BEFORE it changed the nested templates on which the pages were based! Suddenly, my pages are all borken (borked beyond belief actually -- it made invalid HTML!) and can't be repaired.
Who the hell pays for software like this? UVic does. Its in all the computer labs.
All I wanted to do was remove a row from a table in the base template. I did that just fine in the template, it was perfectly valid HTML. Apply the template? HA! Dreamweaver suddenly had to re-parse the hundred pages to find the data that I'd already put in the pages and figure out where the heck it should go after the change to the template. What a stupid idea. Ever heard of SEPARATION OF DATA AND PRESENTATION? Kinda important, eh? The data shouldn't have been kept in the pages. It would have been easy to store the content of each page in a separate file, then import that data after changing the template.
Screw it. I'm going to code up my own system that stores the data in a database table. Change the template? Ok. Regenerate all the pages based on the template. Changed the content of a page? Ok. Save the content back to the database. Save the template in the database to! Need to back everything up? Ok. Just dump the entire database into a file. Need to publish your site? Ok. You've got everything there already.
Bah. I hate shitty software.
Comments (6)
That sounds like a horror movie. Really.
I hope it all works out ...
Posted by Joy | January 17, 2005 6:47 PM
Posted on January 17, 2005 18:47
Couldn't you keep all your template pages in files instead of database tables? That way you don't have to code up replacements for standard tools like grep when you want to do a quick search for something.
Our company uses mysql to manage the content of our handrolled CMS, and after that experience I'm a firm believer that HTML pages should be stored in files. It's just heaps easier to manage, and you can edit them with a standard html editor rather than having to roll your own editor.
What's ended up happening in our company is the template pages are edited in CreamWeaver or TopStyle (which I highly recommend if you're into CSS) and the source is cut and pasted into the html textarea to be submitted to the database. There's no capablity for searching, and it's tedious.
The content, so long as it's not intended to contain much markup, is a good candidate for the database though.
Posted by Clifford's Mojo | January 17, 2005 10:02 PM
Posted on January 17, 2005 22:02
Ya, Dreamweaver is crap. I write all my HTML by hand... (or let a web app generate it.)
I found that I spent a great deal of time editing the resulting html generated by Dreamweaver.
It *is* still infinitely better than Frontpage.
Posted by Majeric | January 18, 2005 12:11 AM
Posted on January 18, 2005 00:11
Well dear, it's like this:
Any nifty, new software that you use, even Word, especially Visio, but most everything these days, it designed to work a certain way. If you happen to think and act like the software wants you to, you're golden, if not...well, it's like beating your head against a brick wall.
I feel your pain, I really do. I, though, have had lots of luck with Dreamweaver. But then again, that was for lots of simple stuff.
Best of luck dear. You should have seen the hoops I had to jump through to get Visio just to create a proper ER diagram - AND THAT'S WHAT IT'S DESIGNED TO DO! But that's software. That's computers.
I picked the wrong field to work in. ;)
Posted by fly_girl | January 18, 2005 12:11 PM
Posted on January 18, 2005 12:11
A single file for each page wouldn't really be worth it, as each page has a title, keywords, description, and content, as well as optional javascript and style sheets. Some pages have more than one content section too! Each single file would have to be parsed to get the data for the page, then spit out. And there isn't really a gui to make that happen easily.
Instead, I've parsed most of that information from the pages and put it into a database. Editing the contents of the database with a browser is pretty easy, just hack up a couple of quick forms.
Then one trip to the database pulls all the information for the page, including its file path, and I can spit it out as needed.
Posted by michael | January 18, 2005 4:05 PM
Posted on January 18, 2005 16:05
I think software companies make some pretty big bucks on the documentation. I saw about four titles put out by Macromedia on how to use Dreamweaver. There were a bunch of other books, one specifically on how to use templates in Dreamweaver. Thats it, just the templates.
Had they had proper user interface design, usability testing and some quality assurance testing, things would have been much better, I suspect.
Posted by michael | January 18, 2005 4:08 PM
Posted on January 18, 2005 16:08