Megan — Wed, 17 Apr 2002 17:45:57 +0000

My favourite is customizable keyboard shortcuts for common tags. That is a must-have feature for me. Homesite also has better support for different scripting languages.

taff — Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:46:01 +0000

I don't use DW enough to be sure what it can and can't do from a coding perspective but I'll try...

Have you ever done any VB programming? My first thought about HS was that it was remeniscent of the VB development environment (VB5+ anyway)

Some of the things I like about HS in no particular order:

- tag insight and tag completion: type out a tag and instantly get a list of attributes/properties to chose from.
- tag editor: right click any tag and get a box of options
- tag selector
- tag collapser
- Built in file explorer
- Built in FTP (which I don't actually use)
- Code Snippets! Build a library of regularly used blocks of code. These can be organized into folders.
- customizable menus
- dockable menus!
- better project management
- better global search and replace
- better html validator
- better and customizable codesweeper
- link validator

Since you've got the software anyway, I'd suggest you try it out.

theprofessional — Wed, 17 Apr 2002 15:51:35 +0000

I got a chance to work with DW a lot last night to find out if it can indeed help me with initial designing. I’m talking about using the layout view. With much more practice and experimentation I have now gotten to a more than comfortable feeling for it interface.

It really does a super job at coming up with some ideas for me just playing around. Put a cell here and a table there; add some color to this and a little to that; now lets preview it and viola. I just created a half-decent layout that gets my creativity going. Just tweak it here and there, save as a template, and now I have a design to use now or later. I’m really glade I got this software. It’ll save me time, increase my skills, and cut out half of my headaches.

I’ve got a lot of PHP’ing to do to a client site so I’ll be layin off the discovery for a few days. Unlike those who say they use Homesite because they do mostly hand coding, I will still be using DW in coding view to do the same. What has Homesite got that DW doesn’t?

Megan — Wed, 17 Apr 2002 02:10:05 +0000

Are you thinking of .wmf ? It stands for windows metafile or womething like that. I don't remember for sure. Flash will read these as well and probably other vector apps.

Suzanne — Wed, 17 Apr 2002 01:54:01 +0000

.swf is just a flash file format

Other vector formats (all proprietary) are:

.cdr (corel draw)
.ai (illustrator -- most other vector apps will open .ai files)

There are also Word format for logos, though I can't recall the extension off hand, and .eps (see above), which is a standard.

theprofessional — Tue, 16 Apr 2002 20:57:42 +0000

Yes I found it in the FW4 users manual that it opens eps.

If it can't do it in vector it opens in a flattened bitmap. It also has an eps dialog box of options when opening them.

Thanks for the info, keep it comming. Your all great.

doublehelix — Tue, 16 Apr 2002 14:49:11 +0000

i used to use FH a long time ago and it will handle EPS files. It is -- or was -- just a vector editor.

I guess I'm the oddball in here because I use the Corel graphics suite. For editing I use Homesite... I don't much like the WSIWIG type editors.

Megan — Tue, 16 Apr 2002 14:39:01 +0000

EPs stands for Encapsulated Poscript - a very common vector format. I would assume that FH can open these - Flash does for sure:) Of course, a web browser is not capable of displaying these, but they are handy for storing and passing around vector drawings.

Here's a list of uses for you - by all means this is not extensive and you will figure things out better as you get to know your software:

Freehand - logos, any kind of complex vector drawings, probably print materials if you ever get into that (I'm really not sure how well FH handles print as compared to Illustrator so I'm kind of guessing here)
Flash - any kind of large scale animation; may be okay simple vector drawings
Fireworks - anything that would be classified as a "web graphic" - navigation buttons, backgrounds, header images etc., simple animations (.gif), you can try letting it generate your HTML code and see how it goes but I would be wary about that. I think we've discussed this sort of thing before. v. 4 is also capable of doing some dHTML drop-down menus that seem to be pretty decent in terms of compatibility.
Dreameaver - bringing it all together to create the HTML. DO NOT use "layers" instead of tables. DO NOT convert between layers and tables. It makes a big mess. Keep an eye on the code using the split window.

I talked before about rollovers - probably doesn't matter if you use FW code or DW - both are pretty messy.

Someone who uses FW & FH more than I do could elaborate on this better. The problem with this suite of tools is that none of them handle photographs very well. FW has a few tools for working with photos but it was not really meant for this purpose. You will probably need to use another tool for photo editing.

I agree about DW's intuitivness BTW. Sometimes options are buried in their menu structure (like merging/splitting table cells) and I often find that it's easier just to hand-code in Homesite (of course, it helps that I know the HTML commands and my customized keyboard shortcuts for them.)

Jack Michaelson — Tue, 16 Apr 2002 14:04:12 +0000

Eps File:

http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/pdfs/tn/5002.EPSF_Spec.pdf

or if u don't have acrobat reader:
http://users.belgacom.net/prepresspanic/formats/eps/fileformat.htm

theprofessional — Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:57:58 +0000

I'll have to get back to you about the eps files on FH. I'll look at it tonight. What is eps files, when,what,why,how?