Re: WOBuilder Replacement
Re: WOBuilder Replacement
- Subject: Re: WOBuilder Replacement
- From: Steven Mark McCraw <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 17:57:04 -0400
I'm kicking my own ass for keeping this thread going, but I couldn't
resist. Until about a year ago, I was pretty dependent on WO
Builder, just because I'd never put together templates any other way,
so I know how a lot of the people who are complaining that there is
no rendering previewish editor feel. But in truth, WO Builder forced
me into some pretty sloppy HTML and haphazard templating, and I never
would have realized that if I hadn't switched to editing the HTML by
hand. It was a little bumpy for a while, but honestly now that I'm
used to it, I wouldn't use a WO Builder like tool even if one were
available. I just feel like a better coder now, and things make more
sense in a lot of places, and I'm really expanding in terms of my
usage of HTML/CSS (Having a visual tool kept me stuck in the world of
always using tables for layout, etc).
When you have to look at the HTML, you suddenly discover a lot of
ways to make things better. So I encourage anyone writing in who
can't bear the thought of not having WO Builder to bite the bullet
and try using the WOLips component editor for a month and see what
happens. If you still hate it, go back to using WO Builder. There's
no reason you can't use WO Builder and Eclipse together, although the
integration isn't quite as good as it was with XCode (because when
you make a change, you have to go back to Eclipse and refresh the
component there before the change will show up in your running app).
Mark
On Jul 6, 2007, at 5:36 PM, Chuck Hill wrote:
On Jul 6, 2007, at 2:07 PM, Louis Demers wrote:
On 6-Jul-07, at 16:33 , Andrew Lindesay wrote:
Hello Janine;
The only feature of WOBuilder that I consider important is the one
that helps you to visualize what your component will look like when
it's rendered. WOBuilder always did a lousy job of this,
especially
It's interesting; we all have quite different ways of working
with components which probably illustrates different ways of
thinking. I really do like Mike's component editor, but to
augment it, I would also enjoy the visual modeller in WOB. I
really do not feel at all like I need a full render of the page
with data or anything -- what WOB does is perfect for my use.
It's really a logical view for making bindings. I'd love to have
the time for such an undertaking. :-/
You expressed exactly what I was trying to say. Indeed, I believe
that the graphical presentation must not aim at the aesthetics of
the page/component but rather it's structure along with a decent
inspector for the available bindings. The aesthetics of the
presentation should be done through CSS and could be handed off to
other tools like CSSEdit and the like.
In a sense, couldn't it be structured like the eomodeler in
eclipse ? A tree showing the structure and some inspector specific
to the webobject tags being edited ?
Two thoughts:
1. If you have clean, well formatted HTML the structure is usually
evident. Even with larger forms and tables, the ability to
collapse sections can still make it easy to see. Or, like Mike
posted, you can use the Outline view. Yes, Eclipse is amazing.
2. There is already an inspector (of sorts) for the WO tag being
edited. Click on the tag in the HTML and the WOD portion
automatically scrolls to the definition in the WOD. Ctrl-space in
the definition to see all bindings ( foo =). Adding an inspector
is probably not too much work, though perhaps of little benefit
once you have gotten used to auto-complete.
So it is not really too far off what you want with no real need for
a full blown WO Builder.
Chuck
--
Practical WebObjects - for developers who want to increase their
overall knowledge of WebObjects or who are trying to solve specific
problems.
http://www.global-village.net/products/practical_webobjects
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