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Rapidweaver skills and useage.
- Thread starter owazio
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"Advanced" is more about the person in front of the computer than the tool they're using.
"Advanced" is more about the person in front of the computer than the tool they're using.
i use iWeb and know iWeb pretty well but have discovered it is a bit limited and too basic for my needs. I also have an older version of Dreamweaver (version 8 when it was a Macromedia product). Dreamweaver is much too complicated. You might as well need a PHD in computer science to know your way around Dream Weaver. So.....I bought Rapid Weaver a few months ago. I was thinking Rapid Weaver might be somewhere between iWeb and Dream Weaver. Wrong. Rapid Weaver is also much too complicated. And damn Apple and iWeb. Apple made iWeb just useful enough for basics. A HUGE iWeb negative is iWeb website files can't be exported to be used in another program such as Rapid Weaver even if I was to learn it. But, Rapid Weaver is still too complicated so I'm stuck. Somebody needs to find a way to expand upon iWeb's abilities. As it stands now, I would have to completely relearn a new program (Rapid Weaver) and rebuild all four of my websites. I resent that I got started with iWeb but I just don't have that much free time to learn Rapid Weaver. To answer your question....Rapid Weaver is too advanced for most. It is for me and I'm good. I would not recommend either Rapid Weaver or iWeb.
So what do you recommend since iWeb and Rapid Weaver are no good as you mention?
I'd recommend either actually learning the web design trade or hire someone who has. Unless you're willing to put in the effort, why would you expect much out of it.
iWeb is certainly not a serious web design application. It's excellent for people who are creating a personal site and otherwise would never even consider something like that, but iWeb sites are bloated, slow-loading and not search engine-friendly at all.
Dreamweaver is used by many professionals, but the code that it generates can be bloated too. Its main appeal is its complex options and its CS-compatibility.
I use RapidWeaver and I like it a lot. I think a lot of people form a bad opinion about RapidWeaver seeing that it's a theme-based software. I actually like the idea that I have all sorts of design directions that I can choose from. Third party themes and plugins are plentyful and there is a small industry behind the software.
I haven't seen any large corporate site that was created with RW. The corporate market is where all the limitations of RapidWeaver kick in. Namely:
- until version 5 brings CSS file consolidation, there is a real risk that by using certain themes, a website reaches the limit of IE (thirty-something CSS files), in which case, parts of the page won't appear on Internet Explorer.
- due to the same issue, pages load slower. The browsers cache each pages separately.
- there are more consumers than themes. A large company cannot risk of having a site that looks just like another person's, who paid $10 for the same theme. With corporate clients, the hand-coding way is still the only one. That's where Photoshop and Dreamweaver can help. One can be used to create the graphical interface, the other for having the XHTML/CSS/jQuery/etc code generated to ease the workload. But as far as I am aware, the code is then being tidied. With RapidWeaver, it makes sense to let the software do the tidying, so you can re-publish all pages again without overwriting files that were modified after RapidWeaver.
- whoever works for a large company will know that at one point, a $79 application will be proved insufficient in comparison to a $1000 one.
- we cannot pass the issue without talking about CMS. RapidWeaver supports content management systems, but it's still not very advanced or user-friendly. For advanced CMS purposes, many developers choose Drupal or WordPress.
- finally, RapidWeaver is Mac-only, which limits its user basis. Contrary to the stereotype, a lot of web developers use Windows.
So that's it. RapidWeaver and corporate websites just don't mix. But for smaller businesses, RapidWeaver is ideal.
HOWEVER, I truly believe that RW is one of the most flexible ways of designing a site. You can be a dummy and still use it, you can add code to it if you want to modify the themes and you can create your own theme if you are adventureous. There is a WYSIWYG interface but themes and plugins such as BlocksBox, PlusKit, Stacks and Blocks make RW much easier to create websites that are ideal for private individuals and smaller enterprise.
Dreamweaver is used by many professionals, but the code that it generates can be bloated too. Its main appeal is its complex options and its CS-compatibility.
I use RapidWeaver and I like it a lot. I think a lot of people form a bad opinion about RapidWeaver seeing that it's a theme-based software. I actually like the idea that I have all sorts of design directions that I can choose from. Third party themes and plugins are plentyful and there is a small industry behind the software.
I haven't seen any large corporate site that was created with RW. The corporate market is where all the limitations of RapidWeaver kick in. Namely:
- until version 5 brings CSS file consolidation, there is a real risk that by using certain themes, a website reaches the limit of IE (thirty-something CSS files), in which case, parts of the page won't appear on Internet Explorer.
- due to the same issue, pages load slower. The browsers cache each pages separately.
- there are more consumers than themes. A large company cannot risk of having a site that looks just like another person's, who paid $10 for the same theme. With corporate clients, the hand-coding way is still the only one. That's where Photoshop and Dreamweaver can help. One can be used to create the graphical interface, the other for having the XHTML/CSS/jQuery/etc code generated to ease the workload. But as far as I am aware, the code is then being tidied. With RapidWeaver, it makes sense to let the software do the tidying, so you can re-publish all pages again without overwriting files that were modified after RapidWeaver.
- whoever works for a large company will know that at one point, a $79 application will be proved insufficient in comparison to a $1000 one.
- we cannot pass the issue without talking about CMS. RapidWeaver supports content management systems, but it's still not very advanced or user-friendly. For advanced CMS purposes, many developers choose Drupal or WordPress.
- finally, RapidWeaver is Mac-only, which limits its user basis. Contrary to the stereotype, a lot of web developers use Windows.
So that's it. RapidWeaver and corporate websites just don't mix. But for smaller businesses, RapidWeaver is ideal.
HOWEVER, I truly believe that RW is one of the most flexible ways of designing a site. You can be a dummy and still use it, you can add code to it if you want to modify the themes and you can create your own theme if you are adventureous. There is a WYSIWYG interface but themes and plugins such as BlocksBox, PlusKit, Stacks and Blocks make RW much easier to create websites that are ideal for private individuals and smaller enterprise.
Try Flux. It's still a WYSIWYG editor, but I think it offers more than iWeb, without being as difficult as RapidWeaver. Although I've never used it so can't vouch for it. There's a demo on their site so you might as well try it out.
I've heard there is a very steep learning curve with RapidWeaver, so maybe don't give up just yet. You might find you need to be a bit more persistent and put more time into it.
I've heard there is a very steep learning curve with RapidWeaver, so maybe don't give up just yet. You might find you need to be a bit more persistent and put more time into it.
I've used Rapidweaver to create 4 company web sites, and it seems to have worked very well for them.
In 12 month after implementing a RW4 site one of the companies increased sales by 70% compared to the previous year. With that said though, it still comes down to the best solution for the client. I would recommend Rapidweaver for clients who don't update their site much and have a mac because it allows them to change and update content overtime without my involvement (yes they can use WP as well but RW4 is a very good WYSIWYG editor).
Again RW4 is as advanced as you want it to be, and with plugins like stacks it's a very powerful piece of software.
In 12 month after implementing a RW4 site one of the companies increased sales by 70% compared to the previous year. With that said though, it still comes down to the best solution for the client. I would recommend Rapidweaver for clients who don't update their site much and have a mac because it allows them to change and update content overtime without my involvement (yes they can use WP as well but RW4 is a very good WYSIWYG editor).
Again RW4 is as advanced as you want it to be, and with plugins like stacks it's a very powerful piece of software.
Curious what you think is "bloated" about Dreamweaver code? It's renowned for being pretty clean.
I use Rapidweaver quite a bit.
Its pretty easy to use and there are a good range of 3rd party templates available. It's good for a quick simple small static sites.
But
it doesn't scale very well, anything over about 30 page i find it gets slow and crash-y. The file structure is a bit odd. meaning it can be quite difficult to manually tweak code and there always a chance that you might overwrite the changes you've made.
Also it doesn't offer any CMS and doesn't play well with 3rd party CMS systems.
Its pretty easy to use and there are a good range of 3rd party templates available. It's good for a quick simple small static sites.
But
it doesn't scale very well, anything over about 30 page i find it gets slow and crash-y. The file structure is a bit odd. meaning it can be quite difficult to manually tweak code and there always a chance that you might overwrite the changes you've made.
Also it doesn't offer any CMS and doesn't play well with 3rd party CMS systems.
Depends on which screen you work within. I work only in the "code" screen while some of my coworkers work in the "design" screen where we get a bunch of extra code thrown in.
Huh?
Design View and Code View show the same thing. Clicking the objects (such as the Insert Image button) writes the exact same code that you're spending time typing (but it does automatically add all the required attributes that a hand-coder may skip--is that what you're talking about?)
we get a lot of track changes sent to us in MS Word docs. sometimes some text -- most often a quote, apostrophe or dash -- turns into a bunch of XML code. we have old licenses so it was Dreamweaver MX from 2004.
Technically, if you create most of your layout in iWeb, you can export it to a folder, then open it up in an editor. I'm not saying that this is ideal or even a good choice to make, it's just that if you -really- had to, you could do it that way. Just wanted to put that out there, just in case that is a possibility. xD
Thus:
I totally agree. We might see a bit of a revamp in the Apple-big-fall-unveiling-software+hardware-extravanganza today
It would be GREAT if they updates iWeb significantly in iLife '11!
P.S. Sorry to get soooo sidetracked. I made my first site, as a total novice, in iWeb and it came out pretty well, the worst thing about iWeb is the fact that of course, you cannot edit code within the application, which means that you cannot tie in things like PHP or Flash easily. It all depends on what you are looking to create.
After that first iWeb site, I picked up basic HTML pretty quickly from a couple of sources:
1.) Just fooling around in DW.
2.) This site: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_dtd.asp which I highly recommend if you are just starting.
3.) Books like "HTML for Dummies", "Dreamweaver CS5 for Dummies" and "Beginning HTML and CSS Development" (published by Apress).
So I would highly recommend learning a bit of HTML, and using Dreamweaver, if iWeb is to limited for you!