Am Donnerstag, 16. Oktober 2003 21:07 schrieb Rong Yu: > Hi, > > I have been using struts for our project, but our web design teem is > complaining about not being able to see struts tag in Deamveaver(MX) > design view. So they can not do such simple things as adding items to > a combobox using design tools. Instead they have to know how struts > tag work and hard code it. It has the same problem for all struts > tags.
Well, we also use DreamWeaver MX sometimes for checking if the overall layout is alright, and its major advantage is that it doesn't complain about JSP tags and leaves them more or less untouched. I don't know why designers like this tool, but that's their part. For me, it's much too cluttered and tends to break the code formatting. Still, it's nessary sometimes. Considering the display tags (and other tags): I doubt that tools can provide an exact preview of how the output will look like without running the page on the server, for it's rather undeterminable what HTML may be rendered in the end. So IMHO the best approach is to put your pages on a Tomcat server (or whatever), let it generate the HTML and finally have the web designer deal with the fancy stuff based on the results. IIRC DreamWeaver MX also has a 'live' mode that supports dynamic output, but as we don't use it, I don't have any experience with that. Or you can put it like this: a web application may live well without the web designers, but not without the Java developers that deliver the contents, and form follows function, as always. Then, as a developer, you only have to deal with HTML on a low-level basis, ensuring that the general layout is correct and the application pro- duces valid HTML code the target platform(s) understands. For complex layouts, I usually tell the designer to save a static snapshot of the Tomcat results and work on that. Then, I take this page and either add the fancy things to the JSP or add the actual tags to it, whichever is easier. Furthermore, we make an almost excessive use of the Tiles plugin, as it allows one to split up a complex design into several pieces and work on each one seperately until it looks as expected. You can learn Tiles in about two hours, and it's perfectly integrated into Struts. Finally, when it comes to HTML editing, nowadays I generally tend to steer clear from any products that are targeted at web designers in the first place. Actually, I code HTML the low-level way using my code editor and make use of things like DreamWeaver only for cross-checking if I missed something like ending tags or if nested tables will display right and the like. For this, DreamWeaver MX is clearly over- featured. From a developers view, something like the JSP editor that's integrated in Oracle's JDev 10g is a nearly perfect fit in this direction IMHO, though I personally don't do much HTML anymore (apart from my personal website) except in times of need. YMMV. HTH, -- Chris. > Is there any way to deal with this problem? > > Thanks. > > -Rong --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]