I was wondering when you (Ben) would get involved in this thread. Good to hear from you and good to hear your points.
I think (I can only speak for myself) people want to "vote with their money" to send a message to MM that they would be willing to buy HomeSite+ alone to reinforce that there is a community of CF developers that want a tool like homesite+. Maybe it is based on a fear that MM will drop HomeSite+ since it is kinda a "freebie" and freebies don't make company money. (I know it is not really a freebie) Now don't get me wrong! I like that DWMX is only $199 and HomeSite+ is included in the deal. I use both DWMX and HS+. I personally would like to see this synergy of the two products continue Or for DWMX to be made into the UBER tool that I have been dreaming of. Just my $0.02 Mark W. Breneman -Cold Fusion Developer -Network Administrator Vivid Media [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.vividmedia.com 608.270.9770 -----Original Message----- From: Ben Forta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2:27 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: DWMX 2004 - Whats new for us? <CFSETTING MMHAT="off"> I've been watching this thread with interest, and have also been forwarding the juicy bits to all sorts of folks within Macromedia. I've stayed out of the discussion thus far, but ... I use Dreamweaver. I also use HomeSite. I also use CodeWrite (which I migrated to after Sage which I migrated to after Brief). I'd love one editor that did it all, it does not exist yet, so I use multiple. It seems that many of you do the same. And no, I do not have to use Dreamweaver, I don't even have to like Dreamweaver, no one (not even my employer) gets to tell me what editor I should use or like. (Anyone who thinks otherwise does not know me). I have been a semi-advocate of Dreamweaver since DWMX (I had been a vocal critic of Dreamweaver prior to that), I have been on the backs of the Dreamweaver team to improve CF support for a long time and continue to do so, I publicly acknowledge what I like about Dreamweaver, and have no qualms about stating what it is that I don't like. I have been very honest in discussing Dreamweaver, and have never positioned it as a CF Studio replacement, and always positioned it as "another tool in the tool box" while stating that the Dreamweaver team had expressed a commitment to continue to improve ColdFusion integration. It's that last point that seems to be the crux of this all. And for those of you who have complained that Dreamweaver MX 2004 does not do enough for ColdFusion developers, well, I agree. It has improved, and some of the biggest complaints from ColdFusion users (including the speed and needing to always define sites) have been addressed. I would really have liked to have seen more, and as much as I don't like the fact that the Dreamweaver team dedicated resources to improving support for ASP.NET and PHP I also understand the economics. This is a business, Macromedia needs to continue to sell lots of Dreamweaver. The product has 2,000,000+ users (or something like that) most of whom do not use ColdFusion, the static page market is saturated and they need to go after where the big bucks are, targeting PHP and ASP.NET users make sense. (Whether or not those users will buy the story remains to be seen, but the Dreamweaver team had to make that effort). It is less "we don't care about CF" and more "we care lots about those massive user bases". Context. I have a laundry list of stuff I want in Dreamweaver (or HomeSite, or any editor). Many of the items are my own wants, others are user suggestions, all are shared by the wider community. I want data awareness in the IDE, I want right click introspection everywhere and anywhere, I want IntelliJ type intelligence so that when I change a CFC method I can keep all invocations in synch, I want speed, I want decent DB integration tools, I want a real debugger, I could go on and on and on ... I'll keep pushing and nagging. So is the new Dreamweaver the ColdFusion aware IDE I wanted? Nope. Is it a useful tool? Yes. It is an improvement over Dreamweaver MX, even for us CFers? Yes. Is it good enough to be the exclusive editor for ColdFusion developers? I'd say that depends on the developer, for experienced developers I'd say no. Is it compelling enough for Studio and HomeSite users to abandon those tools entirely for it? No. Does it have any value at all for ColdFusion developers? Absolutely. I am at least thankful that HomeSite has been given a new lease on life. HomeSite 5.5 is not a major upgrade, but it does add some important enhancements some of which I may want to use. Some of you complained about having to buy Dreamweaver to get HomeSite+, and that one irked me a bit. We seem to have forgotten that CF Studio used to sell for, what was it? $300? $400? I forget. Paying $199 for Dreamweaver + HomeSite+ is less than you paid for CF Studio itself back then. Even if you never ever look at Dreamweaver you are ahead of the game. I think that those comments are more an emotional reaction to having to buy a box with the dreaded D on it, than anything else. Well, get over it. For those of you who question the commitment to CF, um, hello? Did you miss 6.1? I for one think that CFMX 6.1 is a very significant upgrade, you may feel otherwise and are entitled to do so. Regardless, investing as we did in CF and then releasing it as a free upgrade to me spells Commitment (with a capital C). Yes, I know there are other departments and product teams within Macromedia who like to play Switzerland and not marry themselves to any product for fear of alienating users of other technologies, but that is marketing and should be recognized as such. I beat up on them for it, you should feel free to do the same. If you hear nothing from the CF team for a while, get worried, until then realize that Macromedia is a big company (i.e., not Allaire) selling lots of products many of which generate far greater revenue than does ColdFusion. Ok, I am way off on a tangent now, so, back to where I started ... No one is forcing you to use Dreamweaver. I personally will use this new version when it works for me, I have never used any of its design features or CF generation features, and I doubt I'll start doing so now. I'll use HomeSite 5.5 too. And I'll keep nagging the Dreamweaver team to make their product a better option for ColdFusion developers, and you should do so too. Although at some level I think that some ColdFusion users will always reject it anyway, just because. </CFSETTING> --- Ben ====================================================== Ben Forta - Macromedia Inc. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (248)213-0203 Fax: (248)213-0299 Macromedia: http://www.macromedia.com/ Personal: http://www.forta.com/ Blog: http://www.forta.com/blog/ Have questions about ColdFusion? You need the ColdFusion FAQ (now in twelve languages) at http://www.cffaq.com/ - browse, learn, link, comment, and contribute. -----Original Message----- From: Raymond Camden [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2:05 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: DWMX 2004 - Whats new for us? Question - how is CFS 100% ColdFusion? It does RDS and debugging, but everything else is not specific to CF, is it? (And doesn't DW support RDS, or at least remote files.) It seems like the only thing you would lose is debugging... although wait - didn't DWMX support CFMX debugging? I think it did. So I'm not sure I agree with your argument. Now, that being said, I _really_ prefer CFS, but it's more a question of style then a question of functionality. In fact, DWMX has some functions I wish CFS had... not enough to make me switch, but you could almost say DWMX is more CF-centric. ======================================================================== === Raymond Camden, ColdFusion Jedi Master for Mindseye, Inc (www.mindseye.com) Member of Team Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com/go/teammacromedia) Email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog : www.camdenfamily.com/morpheus/blog Yahoo IM : morpheus "My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is." - Yoda > -----Original Message----- > From: dwayne [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 11:51 AM > To: CF-Talk > Subject: Re: DWMX 2004 - Whats new for us? > > > You make some valid points. In fact your points support my > arguments. At the end of the day, we are still left with out > a "ColdFusion Centered" IDE. We still have to make do with > what's available. No doubt Dreamweaver leverages ColdFusion > MX better than every thing else on the market but its still a > 20% ColdFusion / 80% every thing else tool. We should have > to do all this jumping around. Some of use using jedit, > others you dreamweaver, some in HomeSite, and proably most > still in Studio. > > As far as the survey. I would like to see the survey > results. I want to know how many serious CF developers have > completely adopted. I want to see bar charts and pie graphs > and stuff. Are they giving us what we asked for? > > Heck, they can just take the "application" panel in > Dreamweaver, drop it into Studio then Update the Studio > interface to be consistant with other products in the family > and tah dah.. there you have it. > > My point is we need a ColdFusion Centered IDE; one that MACR > should be proud of. > > > > > > >On Wednesday, Aug 27, 2003, at 03:03 US/Pacific, dwayne wrote: > >> About 9 - 11 months ago I spent about 10 minutes of my time > >> responding > >> to a macromedia's ColdFusion survey and I have yet to see > the results. > > > >I would think that Red Sky (CFMX 6.1) was the result, for the most > >part... > > > > > >> Would you all agree, that us ColdFusion developers deserve > some love > >> too!! > > > >Considering Allaire (and ColdFusion) might have withered > away without > >Macromedia's investment in the technology, I'd say that > CFers got quite > >a bit of love... > > > >> Sure ColdFusion MX sports a bunch of new features that are > fantastic > >> and the as for old advanced features - they're tighter > than ever. I'm > >> loving cffunction, I'm all over cfc's, and ColdFusion's ability to > >> integrate with FLASH is the best thing since the last "best thing". > > > >Excellent! Glad you're happy with that at least (especially > since quite > >a few CFers beat on Macromedia over the 'promotion' of Flash > to CFers > >and the whole OO issues around CFCs). > > > >> However, despite all of these wonderful improvements in the server > >> application, I'm still not convinced that they have committed to > >> providing us with a solid "Development Environment" that > supports the > >> work habits of the sophisticated ColdFusion Developer. > > > >I think part of the problem here is that your chosen IDE > becomes your > >second-nature way of working and it's really hard to change. Several > >high-profile CFers have made the jump to Dreamweaver and are > very happy > >- and some aren't. Dreamweaver is certainly a very different tool to > >HomeSite / CF Studio. However, CF Studio used to cost $499 > and now you > >can get it (as HomeSite+) for just $399 by buying Dreamweaver. And > >there's a 5.5 version in the works so it's not like Macromedia's > >abandoned anyone here: > > > > http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/ > > > >Me personally, I tried CF Studio back in 2001 and just couldn't get > >along with it at all. I figured that since Macromedia bought Allaire > >and we'd be using ColdFusion, I ought to use the dedicated IDE. I > >really tried. But I kept going back to Dreamweaver for so > many things. > >And it wasn't really anything specific that I could put my finger on > >and say "You know, if CFS just did 'X' (or didn't do 'Y' > every time I > >try 'Z') then I'd be happy..." No, it was just a general usability > >issue for me - CF Studio just didn't suit me. > > > >So I switched back to Dreamweaver (well, UltraDev 4, actually). Then > >Dreamweaver MX came out and swallowed (the higher-priced) > UltraDev and > >I was still a happy camper! The CFC and Web Service browsers > are very > >useful (I showed how to use the latter to quickly build CF > applications > >that consume Web Services in a BACFUG presentation a while back). > > > >Then I switched to a Mac. Dreamweaver MX (6.0) was not as > good on the > >Mac as on Windows so I struggled for a while and switched to > jEdit. It > >wasn't ideal for me... I found it clunky and ugly and the CF support > >wasn't great but it was faster and more stable than DWMX 6.0 on the > >Mac. Then the 6.1 updater came out and totally solidified the Mac > >version: it was much faster and rock solid. So I switched, > gratefully, > >back to DWMX as my primary CF IDE. > > > >I can't talk about Dreamweaver MX 2004 much (for obvious > reasons!) but > >I'm using a recent (internal) build and I'm very happy with it. > >Site-less editing has probably been the biggest help in my > workflow as > >well as the new Start Page with its list of recently edited > files and > >various common operations. > > > >> Dreamweaver still seems to be an overkill designers solutions. > > > >Hmm, I think depends on your perspective. I'm certainly not > a designer > >- I'm a hardcore developer - but Dreamweaver fits my workflow just > >fine. I don't use all of its features but I use enough to make it > >worthwhile (e.g., I live and die in "sites" even tho' I find the new > >site-less editing mode very useful). > > > >> and as for Contribute, it must have been the boses, daughter's > >> boyfriend cousin's idea. > > > >I'm a huge advocate of Contribute for quick updates to static sites > >(and there's a lot of those). I use Contribute all the time > to maintain > >project intranet sites as well as parts of my personal > website. My wife > >uses Contribute to manage her website (which I set up in > Dreamweaver) - > >my wife is fairly typical of the sort of users Contribute is > aimed at. > >You might also be interested to know that sections of macromedia.com > >are managed using Contribute - end-user content contribution > for HTML > >sites is its forte. > > > >Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ > > > >"If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." > >-- Margaret Atwood > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=t:4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com
