Re: Dreamweaver translator extension for WebObjects
Re: Dreamweaver translator extension for WebObjects
- Subject: Re: Dreamweaver translator extension for WebObjects
- From: William Hatch <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 17:41:25 -0400
Woops, sent this to the other WO list by mistake. Please don't be
discouraged by my stupidity...
Scott Ahten7/28/04 3:54 email@hidden
> Before posting my question, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm a JSP and
> Servlet developer who is interested in using Webobjects on some of my
> larger, complex projects. I'm looking forward to learning more about
> WebObjects!
>
Smart move. As some one who is being forced in the other direction at this
point, I'm full of envy LOL
> Now on to my question...
>
> Does anyone use Dreamweaver MX 2004 with WebObjects?
Yes, I think quite a few of us do.
>
> I've found Webobjects builder, well, quite limited when it comes to
> developing complex HTML pages and displaying CSS styled content.
Yup, it sucks for that. I remember a time when I used to find WOBuilder
very annoying in terms of it's design short comings, but I've come to
appreciate that design is not what it's intended for; "it's the bindings
stupid..."
My workflow goes something like this:
Real live web designer does their thing and hands me some finished static
html pages, style sheets and images.
I place the style sheets and images in my local apache root, and then open
up the html files, cut copy and paste into a component, and make whatever
needs to be dynamic, well, dynamic by clicking the "Make Dynamic" button in
the inspector or on the tag or some other way that probably exists that I
don't know about. Then, it's time to bind. Some people prefer to do this
by hand in the .wod directly. My memory is much too weak for that... We've
tried other approaches, like trying to get the designer to do the wo tags,
but in the end found that it was way too slow and not as productive as what
we settled on.
Anyway, when you run the app, everything will look fine and you can edit the
stylesheet in place as the apps running and your changes get reflected
immediately and all that, so it's not too bad, but you're right, it would be
way cooler if WOBuilder previewed css better.
>
> I've been digging thorough the Dreamweaver extension APIs in an effort
> to add visual rendering support for WebObjects components in layout
> mode. The APi includes using Javascript "Translators" which replaces
> original markup with stand-in content displayed only in the visual
> pane.
Yeah, this would be great for those times when you may want to go back from
a component to a real design environment to do some tweaking or whatever.
The above workflow is kind of a one way ride.
>
> I've created an extremely simple proof-of-concept translator which
> provides textual representations of non-mixed content objects (empty
> elements such as images, etc., show up as [webobject]) and provides
> generic stand-ins for input elements and buttons if the WebObject's tag
> name matches a particular signature. There are still a few bugs with
> copy and paste operations, but it looks like it's a concept that can be
> refined to provide non-binding / visual support for WebObjects by
> parsing a components .wod file.
>
> Is anyone working on something similar? Would anyone be interested in
> becoming involved in this project?
I seem to remember somebody talking about this last year or so; check the
archives for "dreamweaver" and I'm sure you'll find a whole bunch of similar
posts.
>
> A curious mind would like to know...
I'd like to know how you make out with it; good luck. And welcome to WO;-)
>
--
William Hatch
Eng. Visual Media Collection
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Macaulay Library
Voice (607) 254-2116
Fax (607) 254-2439
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