Amaya = Alternative to NVU or Dreamweaver?

[Knewguy]

Hello,

I'm starting to design websites and was wondering if anyone here has used Amaya (from the World Wide Web Consortium http://www.w3.org/Amaya/) in place of NVU or Dreamweaver? If so, did it create more compliant code verses the other two programs?

Thanks.

[jammodotnet]

most developers would not want to use a WYSIWYG editor, well, me anyways.

the biggest shortcoming of then is that i dont have full 100% control of what is being created. for years, and this seems to be consistent with many developers, i have used just a plan text editor.
on windows, i used: notepad, notepad++, editplus, and finally pspad.
on ubuntu: i stick to BlueFish.

everyone has their favorite editor, as well as their least favorite editor.
while there is nothing wrong with WYSIWYG editors, it is actually better to know, precisely, exactly, where every single variable, instance, and/or tag resides in a (X)HTML/PHP/CSS page.
if you code it by hand, it is easier to locate.
if the program does it for you (WYSIWYG), it is harder to correct.

you just mentioned that you just started in web design?
i'm sure you have a few select sites with tutorials on them to aid you along the way?
here are a few more for your bookmarks:
www.w3schools.com = tutorials in html, xhtml, css and more
www.htmldog.com = the web designer's resource for everything HTML and CSS

after youve covered the basics, and understand the tags and methodology, you can then venture into the WHY & HOW of web design. there are many many sites dedicated to this. im sure the posts that follow will contain plenty of advice and links to other sites for you to read.
a few of my true favorites are:
www.456bereastreet.com = web standards, accessibility, usability, and other things related to web development and web design.
www.thinkvitamin.com = resource for web developers, designers and entrepreneurs

while on the homepage of thinkvitamin, look on the right sidebar, their Advisory Board. take the time to visit and learn from them. it takes aLOT of TIME and EFFORT to put build a compliant, cross-browser & useful website.
Dan Cederholm, Molly Holzschlag, Shaun Inman, Eric Meyer, & Dave Shea are my personal favorites.

if you venture into the area of BOOKS, a few of keen interest (mine) are:
*- Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook by Dan Cederholm http://tinyurl.com/2gu4ry
*- Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS by Dan Cederholm http://tinyurl.com/2a5lse
*- The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web by Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag http://tinyurl.com/2z48pn


best of luck to you!
please let us know how your tutorials go!
:)

[Knewguy]

Jam,

Thanks for the links. I was recently referred to the www.w3schools.com site. I like its "streamlined" tutorials. Those other links sound really great, too. I'll definitely check them out.

A tech friend of mine gave me the same advice - learn to hand-code first, then maybe use the WYSIWYG editors, BUT in order for me to gain some ground quickly now he suggested the opposite (of an editor first, and learning the coding part, secondarily, as I work on a project).

I do have a "tome" on html, xtml, & css but I used it somewhat. I think the tutorials on w3schools.com might be more of my learning style.

Since you're a web developer I have a question for you (or any other web dev. that wants to help)...Is the field of Web Design still a solid field to get into? It seems as technology grows (and get easier for everybody) the salaries and job opportunities for Web Designers lessen?? Practically anyone can make a fairly eye-pleasing web site with pretty good content??

Thanks for all your help and advice.

[jammodotnet]

Since you're a web developer I have a question for you (or any other web dev. that wants to help)...Is the field of Web Design still a solid field to get into? It seems as technology grows (and get easier for everybody) the salaries and job opportunities for Web Designers lessen?? Practically anyone can make a fairly eye-pleasing web site with pretty good content??

Thanks for all your help and advice.

Is the field of Web Design still a solid field to get into?
YES.
But if you are asking, "can i make enough money to quit my full-time/part-time job?"
then the answer would be NO (at least for me).

I greatly enjoy doing that I do in this field. I've come along a great great way from my old methods and style of work. When I started, I never cared or knew about: doc types, frames, applets, marquee tags, etc.

I'll answer another one of your questions here aswell: It seems as technology grows (and get easier for everybody) the salaries and job opportunities for Web Designers lessen?

Number one, I don't think it is getting easier. For me, and others in this field who are established (experience & knowledge), it IS easy, because we saw the Web 2.0 craze, we saw the depreciation of tables, fonts tags and so many other "useless" tags.
But it is by no means easy. There is a common saying amongst coders and programmers: we spend 10% of our time writing the code and 90% of our time debugging it.

That's true.

Another thing that makes it a bit daunting is the explosion of new(er) technologies.
Many sites treat AJAX as a new thing?! It's not. The DOM has been around as long as there has been HTML & Javascript (BTW: careful not to confuse Java with Javascript - two entirely different languages).
XML, CMS, DHTML, HTML, XHTML, SOAP, CakePHP, Python, Perl, CGI, CSS, Javascript libraries, LAMP, XAMPP, MAMP, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PNG, SVG, JPG, GIF, RSS, Atom, TCP/IP, ASP, JSP, WAP, .NET, W3C ... etc ... the list goes on and on and on.
I'm by no way implyng that I know all that stuff, but I have had to learn something about it all.


Allow me to go back to your first question: Is the field of Web Design still a solid field to get into?
YES, however, there are a few reasons I do not pursue this as a full-time gig:
my full-time employer has an amazing 401k plan, health benefits, sick/vacation pay, etc.
in order to DO this full-time, I want/need to go through the legal aspects of copyright/trademarking my name, screen name, slogan, artwork, etc.
Register with my local Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau, etc.
Apply for an business card/loan and carefully separate my business expenses from home/personal for tax purposes. Hire an accountant, assistant, secretary, purchase new hardware/software, etc.

I know a few people who are one-person-machines, like myself, they/we do their/our own consultation, site mock-up, presentation, contract writing, graphic design, programming, debugging, etc. in essence, they do it all!
I also know a few people who work for firms in which there is someone who solely works with Photoshop, another dood who only does the CSS, some lady that takes their original photos, someone for their site maintenance/backups, etc.


For many professional freelancers, it is worth the effort and time and money they put into this, because they do something they LOVE to do. However, I don't love it THAT much, ya know?!
I enjoy it for what it is.
I'll help someone with a new site or a restructure. I'll make a few hundred for something simple, or a few geez for something complex and time-consuming.

But overall, this is a wonderful hobby/job, either way you look at it. It all depends on how MUCH you put into it.

[rolando2424]

Hum... I' m not a professional web developer, so I just use Nvu for my projects' page.

I have installed BlueFish though... But I like WYSIWYG type of programs :D

(Like I said, I'm not a professional web developer, perhaps there is another type of thing they should look when searching for a program.)

[Knewguy]

Jam,

Thanks for all the info. on web design/developing. I'm becoming a one person machine too with doing the graphic/web design, writing, etc. The clients I have all want websites so I needed a wysiwyg type of program to get a site up and running (with "decent" code) now. Then, later maybe I can tweak the sites when I gain more coding knowledge.

Also, I asked those questions because of people telling me that it's way cheaper for them to build a site through their web hosting company (vs. hiring a web designer to create it for them).

I know this isn't a career site so I'll get back to the main question of wysiwyg programs.

Thanks again.

[Garyu]

I'm starting to design websites and was wondering if anyone here has used Amaya (from the World Wide Web Consortium http://www.w3.org/Amaya/) in place of NVU or Dreamweaver? If so, did it create more compliant code verses the other two programs?

Nice. Amaya sure does show promise. However, it is very buggy. I tried to create a page just now and while the interface was rather nice with many different options, the program would suddenly copy-and-paste parts of the code to other places in the document creating lots of errors. Also, at some point or another it would just crash.

I would make Amaya my default editor if it was stable. But it is far from stable. A good candidate for future use though. Until then I am using Kompozer which is NVU with a few less bugs.
http://kompozer.net/

(To be fair, I installed Amaya with apt-get. There is a newer version on their site which might be more stable)

[Scunizi]

You can use the latest version of amaya on Ubuntu. Just download it from their site. Another alternative that looks good is Screem. It's available in Synaptic. You have to do the coding with it but it's a nice interface and has tons of features. I'm also just learning strict xhtml & css. I did design a site for a local organization with Nvu and it turned out fine... but... it was all done in tables. Nvu has a CSS editor but it's clunky and buggy.

I'm currently reading 2 books: Head First - HTML w/CSS & XHTML by Elizabeth & Eric Freeman (my preferance) & Hands on Training - CSS Web Site Design by Eric Meyer. The first has a website you download the lession files from so you can work along with the book. The second comes with a cd with all the files on it.

I find it's lots of fun & aggravation all at the same time. Good Luck!

[23meg]

Aptana (http://aptana.org) does it for me. If your work is CSS and Javascript heavy, chances are it will please you more than Dreamweaver.

[Knewguy]

Does Aptana have a wysiwyg function?

[Garyu]

You can use the latest version of amaya on Ubuntu. Just download it from their site. Another alternative that looks good is Screem. It's available in Synaptic.

Screem was the editor-of-choice for Ubuntu in the early versions, installed by default. Now I think more people are leaning towards Bluefish. But none of these have WYSIWYG support. Personally, I don't have the time to meddle with code, I just want a quick solution. Saphil on these forums taught me some things about Joomla! CMS, which is very nice and I have used this to setup my latest two sites. No need for an editor here, just add components and watch things work.

[linux_believer]

It depends what you want to do---

I can code HTML and I actually learned using notepad. At the time you have this attitude that you are better than those people who use a WYSIWYG editor because you're some type of hardcore programmer. Then I started using a program like coffecup which is very similar to bluefish; which keeps the code CLEAN. Sometimes I do use a WYSIWYG editor like dreamweaver or NVU because it is just faster. The downfall is if you need to do something the editor cannot do then you are forced to handcode it and that means read through the yes bloated code which sucks. If I am going to be the person to maintain the code then I would use bluefish, all else WYSIWYG editor. I just hate people who try to tell you what you should be coding a certain way.

IMO:
Amaya compares to Dreamweaver
NVU compares to Frontpage

You can do a little more in Amaya than in NVU and the code is much cleaner; still bloated though. I actually use all 3 bluefish, nvu, and amaya. Each program does certain things easier so I use what ever is easiest/fastest for that task. Amaya is a good app

[shane2peru]

You can do a little more in Amaya than in NVU and the code is much cleaner; still bloated though. I actually use all 3 bluefish, nvu, and amaya. Each program does certain things easier so I use what ever is easiest/fastest for that task. Amaya is a good app

Wow doesn't that really mess up your coding? Switching between the three? I started with Mozilla Composer. I started learning coding because there were somethings I wanted to do that a WYSIWYG type wouldn't do for me. I now use NVU. I still find there are somethings that I code by hand get messed up when opened in NVU, (I also found the same thing with Mozilla) and it is quite bothersome to me. I'm not quite efficient enough with coding to just write a web page without help, but I like to meddle with the coding, and find it easier sometimes. I will have to check out BlueFish. I really liked ACE Html (or something like that) editor for Windows but have yet to find a nice one for Linux. I have just been using Gedit to make coding more what I want. Nice thread, very helpful, and packed with info! Thanks.

Shane

[garybrlow]

Try using Quanta++. but its a kde app and is part of KDE. You have to install KDE libraries in your using GNOME. You can also run Dreamweaver via wine. :D

Cheers!!!

GaryBrlow :biggrin:

[lyceum]

Aptana (http://aptana.org) does it for me. If your work is CSS and Javascript heavy, chances are it will please you more than Dreamweaver.

+1

Aptana rocks! If you need more that CSS Javascript and HTML, go with Bluefish. You have more contrle and better code with both.

Also, bluefish has WYSIWYN (What You See Is What You Need) interface. You can use some buttons to write some code. Very handy. You can write HTML, PHP, C, Java, JavaScript, JSP , SQL , XML, Python, Perl, CSS, ColdFusion, Pascal, R, Octave/MATLAB.

[jammodotnet]

So far I've been using Bluefish.

Installed NVU, then uninstalled it. Not enough features (multi-page find/replace, line highlight, and a few small things).
Uninstalled Screem.
Installed Aptana, then uninstalled it. TOO feature rich.

While on Windows, I was hooked on PSPad. Before that, Editplus. Before that, Notepad++.
I suppose I am just used to a basic text editor with many functions/features, but I don't like nor need a dedicated HTML/CSS editor
For CSS is DO use CSSed. I really like it so far.
Bluefish has proven truly useful. I like it's custom menus, great for snippets.

[geovino]

I've tried using Bluefish, but everytime I tried to preview what I did in a browser, Bluefish would crash. How do you preview work so Bluefish doesn't crash?

I have also tried Quanta Plus and it seemed similar but had a better preview option.

[lyceum]

I've tried using Bluefish, but everytime I tried to preview what I did in a browser, Bluefish would crash. How do you preview work so Bluefish doesn't crash?

I have also tried Quanta Plus and it seemed similar but had a better preview option.

I am not sure how you are doin it, but I start creating the page, then save it. I open Firefox and drag the saved webpage icon onto Firefox, that opens it. As I work, I Ctrl+s in Bluefish to save my work, then Ctrl+r Firefox to refresh the page and see what it looks like. I have had no problems, and alt+tab switching just make everything really easy, no need for the mouse. Hope that helps

[geovino]

Thanks, I'll try that.

Also: I just installed Amaya since many people like that. I installed it but when I go to open it. it pops up and then disappears. Why does that happen? How do I fix it?

[DJ_Peng]

I learned HTML with books and Notepad, but I switched to Dreamweaver several years ago and haven't really looked back. I can use the graphical editor or the plain code version, depending on what I need to do at any given moment, and when I switched to Linux I looked at Nvu and quickly gave up on it. I looked at Amaya and quickly uninstalled it because when I'm working on one of my sites I want to be able to think in terms of he entire site, even if I'm just working on a single page. I'll check out Aptana. If I can work in it as easily as I do i DW I won't even worry about looking at the new Dreamweaver later this spring. It'll be nice to be able to ditch one more Windows program.

[DJ_Peng]

I learned HTML with books and Notepad, but I switched to Dreamweaver several years ago and haven't really looked back. I can use the graphical editor or the plain code version, depending on what I need to do at any given moment, and when I switched to Linux I looked at Nvu and quickly gave up on it. I looked at Amaya and quickly uninstalled it because when I'm working on one of my sites I want to be able to think in terms of he entire site, even if I'm just working on a single page. I'll check out Aptana. If I can work in it as easily as I do i DW I won't even worry about looking at the new Dreamweaver later this spring. It'll be nice to be able to ditch one more Windows program.

Actually I decided not to install Aptana after all. What killed it for me is the dependency on Mozilla. Shouldn't I already have that package with Firefox 2 installed from the repository? I don't understand why I need to install it separately, and I have enough stuff installed that I don't like installing things I'm not sure I need. I guess I'm sticking with Dreamweaver for a bit longer.

[Mongo5000]

Hate to revive old threads, but just thought I would point out that I just tried Amaya and its nice, but lacks the features and quick editing that DW and Kompozer has.

Sad, had high hopes for Amaya

[AJB2K3]

@Knewguy

Use the humble text editor as it produces clean un bloated code but pay a visit to
http://www.design.ersblock.com/forum/index.php
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f352/AJB2K3/sigbars/dblink.jpg
For friendly helpfull advice