[TriLUG] web authoring packages

[Brian McCullough]

On Mon, Aug 04, 2008 at 10:32:31AM -0700, Kevin Hunter wrote:
> At 10:16a -0700 on Mon, 04 Aug 2008, Neil Little wrote:
> > Amaya - This is the most recent and hottest project I have found so far. 
> > It is been sponsered by W3C.org but I havent seen a whole lot on this 
> > editor.
> > Can anyone comment on Amaya? Have they used it?
> 
> If you don't understand what's going on behind the scenes, you'll likely
> have a difficult time with Amaya.  At least that was my impression a
> year ago when I last tried it.  It claims it writes 100% strict *TML,
> and it did for the set of tests I put it through, but the interface was
> not as intuitive as I think it should have been, especially for noob
> users.  It still suffers from the fact that to use it, you need to
> understand what it's doing under the hood.

Very much my thoughts every time that I have looked at Amaya.  It is NOT
a new product in any way, but, being sponsored by the W3C, is under
current development.



> > I have been playing around with firebug and some of the web developer 
> > tools on firefox but its a little quirky and doesnt seem to be ready for 
> > prime time to me.
> 
> Hmm, I use Firefox and Firebug a lot.  I cannot claim the same reaction.
>  It works as I expect it, and is damned helpful.  If you suspect it's
> buggy, I suggest that you make sure you have the latest versions of
> each.  I also suggest you spend more time with them on certain projects.

I am _guessing_ that the OP is thinking of these as "authoring" tools,
where I see them as, certainly in the case of Firebug, and to some
extent for the Firefox Web Developer Tools, debugging and analysis tools
for your existing code.  They help by showing the structure, content,
and settings of the code that you have written in your text editor, but
don't necessarily "hold your hand" while you are writing that code.


> I'm afraid that for serious web-developers, there's no getting around
> understanding the core concepts of HTML, Javascript, AJAX, CSS,
> Browsers, compliance, links, user interfaces in general, and your users
> in particular.

VERY True!


Brian