Re: Stripy tables (Dreamweaver plugin or other tool wanted)

Geoff Berrow wrote:
Message-ID: <2c12i3psp5gtvj6npnkoh6o5ceqs2qqshd@xxxxxxx> from Andy
Dingley contained the following:

Afterthought - you do occasionally get die-hards here declaring that anyone who uses anything other than Notepad to create webpages is some sort of cissy.
No, good text editors, not Notepad.

Indeed and it wouldn't be much help to me since most of my tables are
generated from external data. Hence a one liner like

$style=($count%2==1)?" style='background-color:#CC99CC'":"";

is usually all that's needed to create stripes.


That's a very different task from the OP's problem - you're writing (neat!) server-side scripts which generate HTML; the OP has existing page(s) of HTML which he wants to edit with "help" from some utility. He's already using Dreamweaver - it has a lot of handy tools built-in, and Regular Expressions are one of them.

I wouldn't disagree that there are plenty of good and useful text editors out there (I tend to fall back on Vi for some tasks!) and I certainly wouldn't argue with anyone who preferred to use one of those instead of Dreamweaver. I happen to like Dreamweaver, which is essentially a text editor with a lot of "conveniences" built in - like templates, an FTP client, etc, etc - which I'm happy to take advantage of. They save me time, and Dreamweaver, unlike some tools, doesn't create a barrier to the underlying code, and it isn't confused when you hack it directly. Similarly some people will use a decent text editor to write program code, while others prefer an integrated environment like Visual Studio (I can't do without a debugger). Tools can save time and solve problems, but some do distance you from the end product. There are still people who pore over and grumble at the assembler code produced by their compilers - it's an extreme version of the same argument.

I guess what provoked my comment was posts I've seen here and elsewhere advising beginners to stick to Notepad. Fine if you're consciously setting out to learn HTML and CSS in a particularly austere way (I think you'd learn much faster from working in Dreamweaver's "split" view, and using the CSS tools provided) but most people asking at this level just want to get the Tennis Club dance details up on the web. They'd learn more of relevance to them from starting with a crude tool matched to the job, and for people who will never be interested in the code they produce, saving a document as HTML from Word or Publisher will meet their needs. We may shudder at the raw code, but why would you and I be looking at that code in the first place? I don't ride a tricycle anymore, but there was a time it suited me!

I've broken one of my own rules in this thread - while it's ok to disagree on issues and ideas, it's best not to criticise people, even a vague "them" (like the Notepad advocates). It usually polarises opinion rapidly and doesn't achieve anything. I shouldn't have brought it up.

Phil
.

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