Allaire HomeSite.2.5

An HTML editor that fits my needs

I've tried many HTML authoring and editing tools, but I've neverfound one that does everything for me. Until now, I used SoftQuad's HoTMetaL PRO3.0 to create Web pages. HoTMetaL PRO came close to meeting my needs, but Ialways fell back on Notepad to do my final tweaks. And if I had a Cold Fusionpage or an Active Server Page (ASP) with server-side scripting, I had to rely onNotepad exclusively. Now I've found a Web development tool, Allaire HomeSite2.5, that has everything I need in an HTML editor and then some. I looked at apre-release version of HomeSite 2.5, and by the time you read this column,Allaire will have released the final version.

So what about HomeSite won me over? Although the list of features is long,HomeSite has a few key features that make it a must-use product. For example,you can color-code text, globally search for and replace text, and easily locateand open files with the product's Explorer-like directory pane.

Key Features
The individual features that HomeSite brings together aren't unique to thispackage, but putting them all in one place is what makes this package sopowerful and easy to use. One of the first features to grab my attention was theuse of color-coded text in HomeSite's HTML edit workspace, as you see in Screen 1, page 166. The program lets you do everything in a Notepad text-like environment but with color annotations. (You might recall that color coding was one feature I really liked in my review, "Microsoft's Visual InterDev 1.0,Beta," March 1997.) HomeSite assigns each type of markup a color, whichmakes editing a file easy because you can quickly scroll through a page and findwhat you're looking for. To make a good thing better, you can customize thisfeature, as you can almost every other HomeSite feature. For example, I do a lotof server-side scripting, so I use red to make these types of edits stand out.In contrast, I use gray to mark the comments in my edits, because althoughplacing comments in pages is an important habit to have, I don't need themdistracting me while I'm editing or troubleshooting a page.

HomeSite's global search-and-replace capability blew me away. With thisfeature, I can search and replace within selected files or an entire directory.I don't have another tool with this capability. For example, imagine you arehard-coding all your tags in every file, rather than using cascading stylesheets or server-side includes to establish your background color or image, andyou want to change the look of the entire project. You can change each file, oryou can use HomeSite to select the whole group of files, search for a particulartag, and replace it.

HomeSite's directory pane feature is convenient because it lets you see thedirectories and files you're working on. This feature means you don't have toclick File, Open to open a file. In the directory pane, you simply find the fileyou want to open and double-click it. The directory pane has two parts to itsview: an upper pane that shows directories and a lower pane that shows the filesin the selected directory. You can customize the directory pane to show only thefile types you want to see, which keeps the interface clean.

The directory pane includes a thumbnail image viewer. You can go into anydirectory, right-click in the file portion of the pane, and select ViewThumbnails. HomeSite then builds a little window with thumbnail images of allthe graphics in that directory. This feature comes in handy either when youforget the filename of an image or when you need to delete early builds of aparticular image. Another nice feature of the directory pane is that when youmove the mouse over a file, the bottom status bar displays the title tag textfor that document. So, if you didn't make the name of the document obvious, youcan always browse through your files with this feature.

Although these features are not necessarily HomeSite's best features,they're the ones that really got my attention. HomeSite includes plenty of otherbells and whistles I can tell you about.

Bells and Whistles
Although I won't describe the rest of HomeSite's features, I'll address someof the most important ones. A handy feature is support for context-sensitivemenus that you access by right-clicking the mouse. With a Web document open, youcan right-click different places in HomeSite and have various options availableto you. For example, if you right-click within a document, you can check thedocument's weight. This feature lets you see how long your page takes to displayon the Web at different connect speeds. But what makes the right-click featurereally nice is that you can right-click within a tag and see all the optionsavailable to that particular tag. For example, if you right-click a Font tag,you can select the font size, color, and face. This technique works with allmarkup tags that have options. You can even close a document from a right-clickmenu.

HomeSite also has a tabbed document interface that makes moving among opendocuments easy. The tabs of unsaved files display a red square to let you knowwhich files you have not saved.

HomeSite's markup tag list is just a CTRL+E away. This pop-up window showsyou just about every tag available. To select one, put the cursor at adestination in your document and double-click the tag from the tag list. Inaddition to HTML tags, you'll find a list of Cold Fusion tags and ASP tags.

What if you frequently reuse a combination of tags? With HomeSite, you cancreate your tags just once and place them on a custom toolbar. You can even havesix different themes for your custom tags--HomeSite provides six buttons thatyou can customize.

Another handy feature is the ability to organize an entire Web project. Youcan click the Projects tab at the bottom of the directory pane, as you see inScreen 1, and right-click within the Projects window to create a new project.You can then place files in the project. You're not changing the location of thefiles you add to the project, you're just creating a shortcut to the files. Thisability to group files lets you locate all the files in one place instead ofspreading them over several different directories, or in some cases, ondifferent machines.

HomeSite is not a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editor, but to me,that's a point in its favor because I prefer to see all the HTML tags when I'mcreating a Web page. If you're working with an HTML document, you can click theBrowse tab, which fires up an internal Web browser (Internet Explorer 3.01 isthe default browser, but you can configure your internal and external browsers)and displays the document. However, don't rely on this method if you have a filewith server-side scripting because you'll need to view the file live from a Webserver to see the scripting in action.

Changes to the Final Release
Since the HomeSite 2.5 pre-release, Allaire has made a few changes thatdeserve mentioning. One change is that the final release is a lot fasterthan its predecessor--it loads files at least twice as fast, thanks to a fastereditor. But this increase in speed comes at what I think is an unfortunateprice: a loss of some basic functionality. For example, the final release haslost its drag-and-drop feature. I don't rely on or exclusively use thedrag-and-drop feature for text replacement, but it is handy at times.

Another lost feature is proportional fonts. Although the die-hard,old-timer, green-screen programmers might love or tolerate fixed-width fonts, Ithink they're the pits. In all honesty, the fonts don't really affect me whenI'm staring at my 21" monitor at work. But when I'm at home using the 800 *600 screen on my laptop, the text of my document and part of HomeSite'sworkspace just seem to fall off the side of the screen. Anyone who's worked withWeb documents knows that wordwrap just isn't a solution.

The feature removed from the final release that I'll miss the most is themultiword select feature (double-clicking a word and dragging your mouse overother words to select them). You can take away the drag-and-drop andproportional font features, but don't take away my ability to place the cursorexactly where I need it and drag it over the text I want!

If you're just beginning in the HTML arena, HomeSite might not be yourfirst choice because it lacks the ability to view WYSIWYG formatting, which canhelp you understand what your page will do. But, if you're familiar with HTML oryou love to dive into it and want a package that will give you functionality andthe full capacity available in HTML, I strongly recommend HomeSite.