Re: [RT] do me a favor, don't call them taglibs (Please describe DreamWeaver)

[Tim Larson <ti...@keow.org>]

On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 09:37:10AM +0100, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
> For b), being dreamweaver-compatible would be a big plus, allowing less 
> technical people to create templates themselves. Using Dreamweaver or 
> not, that's not the point: DW-compatibility also means that the 
> templating system is "simple enough" for such people to grasp.

Perhaps I am not the only person on this list that has never
used DreamWeaver...would anybody care to list or describe the
how's and why's of its benefits and limitations?

For context, all I have managed to glean so far from this
discussion is a vague idea that visual people like it, that
it does not work well with namespaced tags, and that it does
seem to work ok with custom attributes.

Not having ever used it, I do not know why visual designers
like it, why it does not like namespaced tags, etc.  Could
somebody knowledgeable on the topic expand on the description?

--Tim Larson

Re: [RT] do me a favor, don't call them taglibs (Please describe DreamWeaver)

[Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>]

On Sunday 05 December 2004 02:00, Tim Larson wrote:

> Perhaps I am not the only person on this list that has never
> used DreamWeaver...

DreamWeaver is loved by many page designers as it manages the various 
resources and on-page placements "well" (seen from the eye of the designer).

The concept is basically like this;
Let the page designer use whatever tool he want, to create a rough mock-up of 
the page with just placeholders for the dynamic data.

Give those to the web developer, and he inserts the hidden attributes required 
to make the dynamic part work. Then the page designer can continue to refine 
the design in his favourite tool, for instance DreamWeaver, while the 
programming effort continues in parallel.

I don't think DreamWeaver is any better or any worse than other tools 
regarding "unknown" elements. AFAIU, you can have special tags in the HTML 
and DW will preserve them, but they will show up as ugly icons, disrupting 
the overall look. <span> and <div> elements is containing the mock-data 
within them, which will display as expected, and just be 'dynamic' in the 
live case.

We occasionally use Tapestry for this type of work flow and it works pretty 
well. For one thing, it is just about impossible to get the artist to learn 
XSLT, HTML and CSS... let people do what they are good at.


Cheers
Niclas
-- 
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Re: [RT] do me a favor, don't call them taglibs (Please describe DreamWeaver)

[Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>]

Tim Larson wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 09:37:10AM +0100, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
> 
>>For b), being dreamweaver-compatible would be a big plus, allowing less 
>>technical people to create templates themselves. Using Dreamweaver or 
>>not, that's not the point: DW-compatibility also means that the 
>>templating system is "simple enough" for such people to grasp.
> 
> 
> Perhaps I am not the only person on this list that has never
> used DreamWeaver...

I've tried it once and I found my text editors to be way more 
productive. And power web designers use text editors too (or DW source 
mode), but that's a minority.

> would anybody care to list or describe the
> how's and why's of its benefits and limitations?
> 
> For context, all I have managed to glean so far from this
> discussion is a vague idea that visual people like it,

What's critical in the discussion is that XSLT is not the right tool for 
content presentation. There are many exceptions but XSLT is a 
programming language with a markup syntax, it looks friendly at first 
and its template declarativity is easy to understand for HTML designers 
because of CSS selectors, but it's extremely verbose and, most of all, 
it's not supported by visual HTML tools (or, it if is, in a very poor way).

What I want is to be able to have HTML people design the template of the 
page in the simplest possible way for them.

> that it does not work well with namespaced tags

One of the problems with any WYSIWYG editors is how to select things 
that don't have a visual representation. Because if you add a visual 
representation to them, it's not WYSIWIG anymore, if you keep them 
hidden, it's easy to screw them (either write inline or to remove them) 
without noticing.

> and that it does
> seem to work ok with custom attributes.

attributes don't have a visual representation themselves, but they are 
always glued to the markup, so they move with them. DW is smart enough 
to allow namespaced attributes and work on the elements without 
disturbing those attributes.

Basically, they are like attached labels that you move on with your code.

The designers love this, because all they have to understand to start 
working on this is "don't touch the attributes which name starts with xxx:"

Let on, they will understand, by try/fail, what these attribute means 
and pretty soon they master the whole template language, allowing the 
programmers to work away from their templates.

> Not having ever used it, I do not know why visual designers
> like it, why it does not like namespaced tags, etc.  Could
> somebody knowledgeable on the topic expand on the description?

DW is as smart with namespaced elements as it is with namespaced 
attributes, the problem is that the workflow of a web designer is a 
continous try/fail of new things and moving things around.

In the process of cut/paste/delete, if done on the WYSIWYG canvas, it's 
almost impossible to guarantee that those invisible namespaced elements 
will remain there after you have moved them around.

Attributes carry their own problems (as Daniel explained very well in 
the other email) but way safer.

-- 
Stefano.