This question (and related) has been up earlier but I have to get a little bit deeper answers from people with some praktical experinces working/testing different HTML/CSS editors in their use of EE. And here, especially, I talk about Freeway 4 Pro (not earlier versions) and RapidWeaver. But perhaps also GoLive (I have the CS 1 version, but not like it in a preconceived emotionell way -  perhaps I have to alter my view) and Dreamveiwer ( a good tool I think but expesive, I don´t have it). And there can be more I don´t have find yet. I don´t talk about clean HTML or CSS editors (no problem related to EE if you have the professional knowledge to hand coding). It is more to find out which WYSIWYW-alike tools are possible to make use of related to EE - and how to make them play together.
This question is on the right EE Forum topic because I have to make a rather fast decision if I shall buy one EE commersial version (as well as hosting pMachine hostiing account) or more - for all sites in my devoling pipe-line.
For your information. I have e-mailed 11 persons (member of the EE Forum and - as I can see from their earlier related respons to related questions - have knowledge about this).  To high light I want their piont of veiw to this my question. But there must be others too on the EE Forum with knowledge/experiences in my issue. And I think this is a interesting topic for more than my self.

I realy like EE in all aspects. The structure “thinks” as my brain do and follow all my needs for future (if not the commercial account rules prevent me to take another decision for some sites). I want to have EE as my basic - and most importent - platform for all of my web development.  I have made that decision as well as the decision to realy learn HTML/XHTML for CSS as well as CSS in the full potential for layout. Westciv is a good teacher here (learning in progress for me). But to be a good hand coder it takes a lot of time of practise. And I don´t have that time for some of my sites. And I am don´t realy quite sure I want to be a hand coder - independing of how much I learn about that. I am a business developer and must have to focus on that (and the sites content as well as the site structure and layout). The knowledge I get is mostly for the posibillity to “read” sorces (see how they do it, get ideas) as well as a posibillity to estimate the value of the profession of people I need for future web development. Shortly. Learn my self the businees logic “how to” make a good web site in a need of advanced dynamic solutions. But in the firts step I have to start from my existing knowledge and do everything by my self. And I (probably) need a WYSIWYG-alike tool for that (time is money).

I have bought Freeway 4 Pro because of that one is InDesign-alike (as I feel myself family with). But I also find Rapidweaver interesting as a potential design tool.
But following statments gives me hesitation to make use of it related to EE.

Softpress say in a note;
“Never rename or move your Web files outside Freeway, as this will break the links betweens pages in your site or mean that your images won´t load when the pages is viewed”.

An EE Forum member (Jesse BC) said;
” I used to use Freeway for all of my sites, but have recently converted over to hand-coding mainly because Freeway doesn´t play too nicely with EE. Because Freeway can´t import html files and is really a html generator” vs a html editor it makes it hard to mix the 2 appalications together.”

An other EE Forum member (Julianps)  said;
” (beside of EE as delivery platform) I use Freeway and Rapidweawer - and will always prefer Rapidweaver because despite it´s limitations it meets the needs of teh majority of my clients more quickly”.

Two good tools (XMHML/CSS validation), easy to use.
EE say I have to make a template as a HTML text file and export it to the external editor (and make use of Absolute URLs
in that tool). Not possible Jesse BC said about exporting as a HTML file. Julianps said nothing about that. What is right ? Are there any way to walk around (import an existing HTML site is possible Softpress say)  ? Are there any problem to use Absolut URLs in the two named tools ? What happends (if exporting/importing is possible) when I upload the designed site back to EE (to add the EE tags) and upload the file again to the tools (with EE tags in) to make design corrections ? Is it possible to make the site in any of these tools from the very beginning and make use of the Movable Type Import Utility (export in to MT-format) in EE ?

PS. 1
Don´t tell me it is easier (not more time) to learn hand-coding than manage external tools (but try to if you can prove it).
I want to find the possiblilities/edges for these tools first.
Then (if impossible), perhaps I can reflect anWY use of a good clean HTML-editor together with StyleMaster (as I have) already from the beginning.

PS. 2
I think we need a new head topic (separate subdevision) in the EE Forum for all kind of external tools related to EE.
A big question for all of us

Hi Leifen,

I’ve moved this over to General Discussion since its not really a question about ExpressionEngine. You’re asking about 3rd party tools. I don’t think anybody at pMachine uses RapidWeaver, Freeway Pro, or Adobe GoLive so we can’t really answer questions about those tools.

I used to use DreamWeaver before I converted to hand-coding with BBEdit. Personally, after 10 years of using Dreamweaver (I go all the way back to version 2) I find hand coding to be far surperior and much faster than anything Dreamweaver ever offered me. However, Dreamweaver was useful and I used it with EE all the time when I was building sites for people before I worked directly for pMachine. I stopped using Dreamweaver because it got big, bloated, and unstable. I have no regrets leaving it.

That being said, this was my development process for using Dreamweaver with ExpressionEngine and it worked quite well.

The only significant change I made in my work flow was learning to make the Template Groups and Templates in ExpressionEngine first and then import them into Dreamweaver using FTP. Here is the basic process….

1. Setup EE to save templates as text files.
2. Create a basic site map by hand… I usually did this in a sketch book or notepad… yes the old fashion way with pen and paper. This let me think out the site before committing to any actual development work. It also gave the client time to change their mind before I committed any significant time to the project. The client could review the plan and make decisions. At most I threw together some basic wireframes that showed how navigation would work.
3. Once the site map was done I created the Template Groups and Templates I needed in EE first. For example, I might create an “About” template group with several individual templates. Since I’ve setup EE to save templates as files EE automatically creates a folder with all the templates inside.
4. In Dreamweaver I setup the templates folder where I told EE to save the files as the “home” folder for the site. Now Dreamweaver and EE are synced up.
5. From this point out I just developed in Dreamweaver as normal. When you ftp a file into the template folder, EE will update the site with it.

At first I used absolute URLs for everything but I found using the {site_url} variable worked better for moving from production to live site environments.

The first several doing this process took a little getting used to but by the 3rd, 4th site I didn’t even think about it anymore and everything worked very smoothly.

Hopefully others will have experiences they can share in regards to Rapidweaver and Freeway Pro. But for my time and money nothing is as fast as hand coding in a good text editor like BBEdit, TextMate, or whatever the Windows and non-mac community uses. In the past I think WYSIWYG editors made sense because tables where a big drag to hand code. But with standards HTML/CSS hand coding is faster. I think the biggest advantage in hand-coding comes at trouble-shooting design issues. If something is breaking in a particular browser how do you fix that? If Dreamweaver generated my code I had no idea what was going on. I’d have to learn how Dreamweaver tried to code and then fix Dreamweaver’s mistakes.

When I hand code I know the entire site intimately which makes troubleshooting a lot faster. Anyway, just my two cents.

As far as I know, there is no way to fully integrate Freeway with EE.

You can see the first EE/Freeway site that I did here Great Lakes Christian College. If you check the meta tags you’ll see that freeway generated the code… but if you check the attached screenshot, you’ll see the hoops I had to jump through to get that code close to what I needed.

If you’re stuck on Freeway, I think your best bet would be to develop the framework of the site in freeway (home page and secondary page), and then use that code as a starting point, and finish off the development using Leslie’s example.

I personally use skedit for development, and it will probably really help you make the transition to coding up sites by hand. It has a nice code hinting feature, and a live preview window.

Jesse

Leslie,

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I’ll be trying that out next week when I start coding a new site.

Leslie, Thanks for sharing your process with EE and DW. Btw, I use TextMate for hand coding. It took a while to get used to but it’s pretty darn nice. skEdit is a good option too. I have a copy of that as well.

Anyway, your process made me think about how we work with EE (deveping pages) and I was trying to think of how that could be improved. I started a thread in the ‘Feature Requests’ forum and would like your thoughts on a kind of watch folder that the developer could enable/disable.

Here’s the thread:
Developer Watch Folder

Freeway and pM are quite workable once you get the hang of how it all comes together. Yet you would find it hard to customise the forum and calendar - I spent many hours without success and just gave up. There are some things you just can’t do in FW when it comes to meshing these kind of apps together.

As for EE and FW? I don’t think you should bother. If you want to use EE then do so without FW. I’ve just spent the last week testing various CMS and all the ones worth using would be hard to integrate with FW. As great as FW is it just doesn’t lend itself to apps such as EE which rely heavily on external CSS and HTML code which requires editing.

I think anyone who deals with EE over the medium term is going to find Dreamweaver, FreewayPro, Rapidweaver, Sandvox or even Goldfish a challenge and if they are not already proficient in Dreamweaver or FreewayPro development, or fully understand how to build their own templates in Rapidweaver, Sandvox or Goldfish they are better dedicating the time, effort and understanding they will need to commit to these tools, to understanding the basics of HTML/CSS coding instead.

Our view is that any kid (every kid..) with a PC can code a site, and one of the values of EE is that allows site owners complete control over the style of their site-style once their project is delivered too them, so we don’t get too hung-up on the initial style delivery because it might be overwritten in weeks anyway!

So we hack styles in FWPro (or RW) because it’s quick and dirty and gets the job done in a more visual way than styling a “site-map” in OmniGraffle. If the client goes for it (as has been said here already) WYSIWYG tools rapidly become cumbersome, especially around EE’s “rougher edges” (ie the Gallery..etc).

There are any number of interesting HTML/CSS rendering tools out there, from Aptana, BBEdit (not really for the beginner), Simple CSS, Smultron and Taco HTML Edit but for someone coming new to this my vote for best-of-breed (for newbie) would be Style Master; I saw it recommended this these forums, bought it with the CSS/HTML/Colour tutorials and it has revolutionised the way we deal with initial development outlines.

A bit like our first experience with EE; a bit of a challenge at the outset, but we’ve never looked back!

Thanks for all answers.
As an end of this my question thread I will make a summery - from my point of view.

I stll believe in Freeway 4 Pro as a good HTML/CSS generator (not a HTML Editor) producing clean cod.for web standard.  Easier to learn than GoLive and Dreamweaver (they have to much jingle and bells I don´t am in use of). But FW has a learning curve too and it will take time to be a Master to manage (probably more than I think). FW is made for layout people (family with InDesign and Quark, as I am) not interesting in HTML/XHTML and CCS codes. Good for use in pure static sites. Possible to use together with FileMaker and even EE - but with much work to get them play together. And I shudder with the situations when I have to go there and back (between FW and EE) to make changes all the time.- knowing nothing about HTML/XHTML/CSS. And how can it be possible for me to get inspired of other sites if I don´t can read the the sources ? So from now and a long time to come I will leave all kind of WYSIWYG tools behind me and focus on learning/working by hand with HTML/XHTML/CSS. But with help of my friends.

My first friend will be Westciv courses - HTML and XHTML for CSS, CSS Level 1, CSS Level 2 (positioning) and Color and Graphics for the WWW. I am more than half the way from finishing the cources and can strongly give my recomendation. But as newbie I also need a CSS editor (to help me to remember, giving me alternatives and protect me from mistake). My choice will be StyleMaster (from Westciv too). I need a HTML editor as well. BBEdit or TextMate are probably the best, but not for me as newbie. SkEdit is simple and good one too. But my choice will be Rage WebDesign (recomended from Westciv) which give me more help related to the knowledge level I have.

So thanks again to all of you for helping me coming through my decision.

Leif

Well done Leif and good luck.

If you need a little template help Firda, producer of so many great pmachine templates, has a little tool at FirdaMatic for creating multi-column tableless page-designs that expand and collapse on content.

May I say a public thank-you to her for the resource and recommend them to you as a great place for a beginner as they provide handy HTML/CSS you can drop right into StyleMaster, make a couple of changes and have a great design by lunchtime.

If you need a quick library of pre-built HTML/EE Tags simply hack them out of any of the EE templates here at pmachine.com

As I understand it, honest attribution is all that is required…;-)

Have fun,

Jules

Leslie said:

At first I used absolute URLs for everything but I found using the {site_url} variable worked better for moving from production to live site environments.

I’ve worked out how to use my EE template with Dreamweaver, a little differently than you’ve described.  The biggest hurdle was that the {site_url} links didn’t read in Dreamweaver.  I developed a work around, so that I can switch readily between EE and DW and can see in DW what the page looks like (fairly accurately).  I did a little trial and error and found out what relative path to use that both EE and DW could see.  It was a tad convoluted, (../../../domain.com/cms/template_files/images/filename.jpg) but once set up it allows me to go back and forth between them both.

I’m curious how you were able to get DW to read the {site_url}, if you can remember at this point.

Hi Iroggli,

I never got DW to recognize the {site_url} tag. I didn’t even bother to try since I didn’t use DW to preview the design. I always did the previews on my local EE install or on the live site.