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How do I stop DW formatting my nicely coded markup? Everytime I use a dw tool to insert markup/code/script etc it reduces the patiently placed whited spaces to jibber jabber - massive tabbed indents, wrapped links, bunched paragraph text, etc etc..... of course none of this affects the ouputted html in a browser, but for a pedant it gets quie tiresome + it adds to development time.
Is there something in preferences that'll stop it doing this? I am quite happy with the way I write code - and I think that the dreamwever equivalent is untidy and lackadaisical.
By far the best substitute for DW and similar 'site builder'
packages is Notepad (or Wordpad depending on file size.)
This goes double if you are already writing your own code.
Why involve some package that changes things and moves stuff around?
Who knows what other junk it might be doing?
I just type in my code in HTML or whatever, and FTP it up.
I have absolutely zero use for Dreamweaver and the horse it rode in on. -Larry
I actucally really like DW - I love the quick & dirty way I can design a site in 20 mins - recode it and develop it in static includes and templates, organise it, add css and ftp it. I have not found a tool that will let me do this to anything like the speed I can now.
Little foibles like this do make think twice though.
Still hunting for the light switch...
Sorry, I've always wanted to say that... ;)
You should use a real WYSIWYG like FrontPage 2003 that respects your code. ;)Sorry, I've always wanted to say that... ;)
I'd never have thought that I'd find myself agreeing to such a statement.
(Personally, I etch my code in stone tablets, Notepad-users, I find it lends even more bogus purity to it...)
Could you expand on that? I'm at a loss here. -Larry
As for me, I just started with hand-coding and never tried a WYSIWYG because people always said they were inefficient and difficult. I'm sure they've improved over the past 8 or so years, but I spend far more time working on the back end operations now so I don't know if they'd help speed things up for me.
I don't think hand coded pages are more "pure" or legitimate or
anything as silly and contentious as that.
For me its an issue of getting exactly what I want onto a page,
and nothing I don't, with reasonable time and effort.
'One size fits all' never seems to work for me.
Speaking of size, has anyone made file-size comparison between a
hand coded page and the same but auto-generated?
I would prefer the shorter files, but somebody turning out pages wholesale
for other purposes, may well see this differently. Then its a matter of time spent. -Larry
To return to the subject, most of the problems that occur with DW (and possibly even with newer versions of Front Page, according to other forum members) seem to occur because people are using it in a certain way.
As limbo demonstrated, one of the ways to stop it doing certain things is to try to learn more about how to use it.
One can chop a tree down with an axe or with a chainsaw. A chainsaw can be more or less efficient (as limbo indicated), depending on if one knows how to work the variable speeds, safe ways of working with it, what fuel it uses, etc. But the tree still gets chopped down...
Edit -> Preferences -> Code Format (or one of the others starting with "Code") might be a place to start?
Cheers Stever. I was wondfering if this thread was going to turn into a hand code vs wysiwyg debate.
I had looked in there before now but not close enough. The indent and line wrap options should sort it out :)
Ta, Limbo.
