For a developer like me, there are two things that are disappointing about MM's treatment of the CF developer community so far:

1. I gave up Studio and now use HS+ in its place, as suggested. For those of us *just* using HS+, I have trouble paying $129 for an upgrade (for DW, which I don't use) that was really a few bug fixes and macro recording (anyone using it?).

2. There's still a debugging menu item that is useless for anyone using CFMX. I don't buy MM's response that people didn't really use debugging, anyway-- people often didn't use it because it was so buggy (how's that for irony;). This is the number one feature I'd like re-instated in the IDE. Any I should't have to pay another $129.

I respect your opinion that there has been an excess of whining about MM, but there's an important message that MM just doesn't seem to get: treat your developer community like it's the most important part of your business and you'll be rewarded in boundless loyalty and enthusiasm for ColdFusion, and maybe even other MM products.

1) Isn't that still less than what the prices were in the past? I never had to pay to upgrade from CFS 4 to 5, so I don't quite rmeember, but I doubt it's far off.

2) Debugging.... yea.... well, that is a sore point. Now, please note I'm not saying HS+ is perfect. This is a good example of something broken, and I can think of a few features I've been waiting on for some time (the same applies to CF as well), but my entry was more towards people seeming to say MACR has given up on HS+, which is obviously not true.

Now, your third point is _much_ wider than my original post. Why do you feel MACR isn't treating the development community well? I'm pretty tight with the current community leader, Christian Cantrell, and I think he is doing a good job, but as a former employee, maybe I'm also a bit biased.

I swear on my life, I have not whined about CF Studio going away. What I HAVE whined about is this...

Despite continued development of Homesite+, it would be hard to find anyone who disagrees that MM has been pushing VERY hard for the past several years to get CF developers to switch to Dreamweaver. I can't count the number of conference sessions, CFUG meetings, DevNet articles, and the like telling me that DWMX had finally become the better editor for CF folks and that I would reap ridiculously huge benefits in editor/server integration and increased productivity by switching.

So, here's what I'm whining about... After a full year of daily use, I'm still less productive/comfortable/knowledgable/happy with DW than I am with Studio/homesite (which I completely uninstalled a year ago). I attribute this to 3 things...
1. I just haven't done enough to really learn DW
2. MM hasn't done enough to help old-school CF folks (like me) to really take advantage of DW in ways that specifically apply to us.
3. Dreamweaver's features designed to really benefit CF folks are not all they're cracked up to be.

I feel that ALL of these are real factors contributing to my feelings about DW. I'm not sure how much of each.

So, what's my point?... It's not that I forgot about Homesite+. It's that MM told me I SHOULD switch to DW and (after a year) I'm really wondering why I listened.

What's in the future for me?...
I don't really know. I'm basically at the point where I need to decide whether to...
A. Stick with DW (and try to learn what I'm missing)
B. Go back to Studio/Homesite
C. Go to some other editor (like Eclipse)

Ray, I'd be interested to hear what you (and other well known CF folks like BF) use these days and if others have had an experience similar to mine.

I should clarify that it's on the IDE side of things that I think MM could be a bit better with the CF community.

1. Point upgrades, to my recollection, were either free or a small amount; not $129 and forced to purchase a program you don't use just to get it.

2. Debugging: I'm sure if enough people ask for it. Maybe I'm getting spoiled by my Java IDE;)

3. From my perspective, MM gives the impression that they'd like developers to use DW as their primary IDE for CF development. It's simple dollars and cents that they'd give more press and development effort to DW than HomeSite+. I understand that. But I'm still left with the feeling that the HomeSite(+) product is gathering a bit of dust compared to their other ones. I'll keep using it because there's no alternative IDE (yet) that offers the text editing features of HS+ and is geared towards CF developers. If DW offered the speed and utility that is currently in HS+ I'd happily cross over.

For the record, I've volunteered several times to help beta test DW and HS+ from a CF developer's perspective to help MM make it a serious contender as a CF IDE but have had no reply so far.

I hope this gets taken in the spirit intended. I want MM to offer the best tools for CF developers.

I'd like to see a poll on your blog asking developers what they think of the current state of MM's IDEs for CF. Maybe it's just me;)

Best,

Oliver Merk

President - Merk Consulting

Certified Advanced Macromedia ColdFusion MX Developer

Dreamweaver for coldfusion? absolutely not. I think the community at large has established that fact.

HS+/CFS, yeah, because it's the only thing, really. We would love, to death, a new interface with better auto-completion, built-in css support and everything imaginable in a completely new IDE, something to really say "coldfusion is better than ASP because we have this" sort of (not that they can't use it too, that's neither here nor there).

I for one would love to see a full blown eclipse IDE for coldfusion development. I like the way that program works and runs. I think that part of it, however, is just because it's "new and improved." It looks different, and we programmers, as people typically with high IQs, tend to like to try to change, especially positive change.

How many CF guys tried out dwmx, for a while at least? I did. So we all tried it because we like new and better. We're getting sick of staring at the CFS/HS interface. I've been using it since 97. The codebase stretches far before that. I need a change. I need new code. I want eclipse for CF. I need a CFMX studio. I need a different, better, cooler tool to do my work, and I would pay >$500 for it.

Michael: In sum, I agree with you that DWMX gets more attention, but to be honest, not every product is going to get the same amount of attention. And you can't blame MACR since DW sells many more installs than CFS/HS+ ever did. That being said, I still feel like HS+ gets enough attention. What do I use? I use HS+, but I'm seriously considering changing to DWMX2004. It's a very nice edition.

Oliver: I agree with you that MACR gives more attention to DW, but you know why I think so (see my paragraph above). DW has always been the best 'designer' IDE, so it's not surprising that they try to make it the best coder IDE as well. Also, you mention a poll - I had one on the blog for IDEs, and HS+ won I believe. :)

Nathan: Well, while a fresh UI is nice, to be honest, when it comes to my IDE, I just don't care. I like the fact that I know the IDE so darn well that it just lets me get the job done - and fast.

Homesite+ 5.5 isn't worth an upgrade price of $29, much less $129.

I can see no compelling reason to upgrade beyond CFS 5 if that is your chosen IDE.

IMHO, HomeSite+ is a dead horse that gets kicked around each time a new version of DW is released. Someone get a shovel already, it's pathetic. :P

Raymond,

As the person on CF-Talk who posed the question of what Macromedia would do with two products with such large functionality overlap (subsequently reprimanded by you for another comment - how dare I speak!) I think I should make it clear I don't really care!
I use DWMX, DWMX2004, CF Studio 5 and Homesite+ depending on where I'm working. They all do the job for me!

I certainly was not predicting the death of Homesite because well....I really don't care. But I do care when people put words into my mouth ;)

If you read the entire thread you'd realise I was just answering some questions from my colleague - who as it happens was only sitting 2 metres away. I've learnt my lesson thats for sure.

Ive been using HS+ ever since DWMX and gotta say since the 5.2 patch all has been well. I dont think MM will let it die. Theres alot of hand coder that love the HS name (not just CFers) and will stick to it. But another interesting blog is over at Sean A Cornfield site http://www.corfield.org/ind...
titled "unbundling HS+" well worth a read as it goes on about what would you pay for HS+ if unbundled. I think that slowly MM might be realising that us Hand coders love the HS/CFS IDE hence the updates, and the fact its still around prooves this. We just gotta keep getting heard!

Calvin: While I obviously disagree with you, there are some significant fixes post CFS5. The recent release had some nice new features including macro support and dynamic snippets.

Andre: First off, let me say this is not a personal attack. I never reprimanded you. I may have corrected you, but that is an entirely different matter. I've made mistakes on cf-talk before and have been corrected. It's just something that happens. I did not call you out by name on the posting because you had been corrected already, and the point was not to attack one person, but to respond to a host of emails I've seen on cf-talk recently. There is no "lesson" to learn here. I obviously disagree with you, but there is no reason to keep quiet about it. Please, speak up and tell me how wrong I am. It's much more interesting to talk with people who disagre. :)

Andy: Right on. MACR does listen, but what I worry about our posts that are simply unfair and unrealistic. I do think selling HS+ by itself would be a good idea, but we must remember that the current price is still less than CFS was by itself. Just rambling now, sorry.

Raymond: I think the fact that this topic is such a hornet's nest demostrates, at the very least, that there are some CF deveopers out there that are, for whatever reason, dissatisfied with the current state of affairs regarding their IDE choices for CF development. I hope that this kind of discussion will untimately make its way to MM ears, and result in a world-class, modern, make-em-all-happy IDE: dare I say the IntelliJ of the CF world;)

Cheers,
Oliver

I don't know Oliver - I've found that other IDEs seem to be waaaay complex. For example: I loaded up Eclipse and had almost no idea what was going on. HS+ is _very_ simple, very file oriented. DWMX used to suffer a simular problem when it forced you to make sites (no longer an issue with DWMX2004).

I guess my point is - when I run an IDE, I don't want to think. While it's cool that IDE can have projects, and I think it SHOULD have projects, at the same time, it should support RAD by not getting in your way and forcing to configure 5 things just to edit one file.

Still rambling. What a great thread. :)

I agree about Eclipse. What I love about IntelliJ is not projects, but the fact that I can customize the text editing to just the way I like. For example, you can not only select the font to use for text editing, but even the line spacing! May sound trite, but I can adjust the IDE so I can see more code on screen at a time which has a direct effect on efficiency. I can also set up the KB shortcuts to mimic what I have in HS+ so I don't have to think to much, either.

I'd move to DW in a minute if I could customize it like that. As is is, I still can't even create a KB shortcut to upper/lower case selected text. (Try it and you'll see what I mean;)

Maybe the best course for MM would to be to look at some of the other IDEs out there are determine the features that us hand-coders want. Maybe they've done this already, but there's still a ways to go;)

Oliver - I _was_ able to map a shortcut to making text uppercase. Have you tried recently? All I did was go to Customize, and then Keyboard Shortcuts. One of the items is convert to uppercase, as well as convert to lowercase.

Ray:
I must disagree with your comment that DW merely gets more press than Homesite. I still hold that MM has been pushing *ALL* developers to switch to DW since the release of MX.

I have NEVER heard a MM rep say...
"CF folks, you'll want to stick with CFS/Homesite for now. It's still going to meet your needs better than DW." In fact, just the opposite.

The message I heard (over and over and over) was...
"CF folks, NOW is the time to switch to DW. You'll LOVE it! Oh yeah, and Homesite is still there if you're a stick in the mud."

I don't regret buying StudioMX. I even like using DW for lots of HTML/DHTML/CSS stuff. I don't think that MM is dropping the ball on Homesite. I simply feel I've given DW a fair shot and in the role of CF IDE it hasn't helped me the way I was led to believe it would. My real problem is deciding what to do from here DW2004, Homesite, or something else. It's very interesting and helpful to hear what your preference is Ray. I'll have to check out DW2004 before I make any decision.

On a related note...
My $0.02 about Homesite: I think MM should sell it back to Nick Bradbury. (That assumes it would be worth their while and that Nick would want it back). That guy has the magic touch and really has his finger on the pulse of coders. Again, just my opinion.

Raymond: Re KB shortcut for uppercase/lowercase: Would you mind sending me exact instructions on how to do this in DW code view? I still don't see it. Sorry to go off topic;)

DOH! just pressed cancel and not Post DOH!

You cant blame MM for pusing DWMX 2004 when they have spent that much on R&D. But remember that they are still giving HS+ away with it (whether its in the price or not you still get it) and its still cheaper than buying CFS 5 outright.

I gotta admit that the DWMX coding side is nice with the new CSS stuff. But if we want it in HS(+) submit a wish list(http://www.macromedia.com/s... and let MM know its being used and we want new features. Get everyone to submit one and let MM know we still use and love the product. They havent forgotten us thats why its there. Then, hopfully if they know its used by us then logic should prevail and R&D with it will carry on.

Just my 0.02 in keeping HS(+) alive.

I must respectfully disagree with the statement that HS+ is CFS. CFS has support for ftp and rds. HS+ does not support rds, or if it does please tell me. So if you're going to upgrade and you need to rds, you're going to have to go with Dreamweaver. OK, So you do just that, and BAM! you find that Dreamweaver doesn't support Source Offsite integration the way that CFS did. Ugh! I'm trying to understand how source control is meant to work in Dreamweaver as this is my biggest hurdle. I'm really trying to get on board by using one solution or the other, but I easily see why so many coders like me feel a bit chapped. There still does not seem to be a clear upgrade path for CFS users who; 1. use ftp and rds, and 2. use certain flavors of source control (mine being Visual SourceSafe via Source Offsite). When you upgrade to HS+, you got everything except RDS, and when you upgrade to Dreamweaver you need to worry about source control integration. If you tell me there is a way to get RDS back in HS+, I'll be very grateful...

John, HS+ does support RDS. HS+ is the same source code (plus new features, fixes) as CFS. I'm not sure why you don't see it. Are you _really_ sure you have HS+ and not HS?

Oliver, this is how I mapped convert to lowercase to a keyboard shortcut:

Options/Customize

Keyboard Shortcuts

Scroll down to you see Convert to Lowercase (or Uppercase) and then just enter your keyboard combination.

Raymond,

I downloaded the evaluation version of HS last week. The versionn number is 5.5 and that is what I'm basing my rds observation on.

Rgds,

-john

Both HS and HS+ are at version 5.5. You cannot download an eval of HS+, so you must have HS. That's why you don't see RDS. Unfortunately, MACR does not offer an eval of HS+, you can only use it if you buy DWMX2004.

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I trust my opinion of HS will change when I see it.

Raymond: Re keyboard shortcut for upper/lower case, sounds like you're describibng how to do this in HS+. I'm wondering how to do it in *DreamWeaver*. There's a right-click menu option when you select text, but no option under keyboard shortcuts to accomplish the same thing.

Oh geeze, I'm sorry. I just using DWMX2004, so I'm not sure.

I'd strongly suggest taking a look at PrimalScript from Sapien (http://www.sapien.com). It's a great, fast IDE that has most CFStudio features and has a very active support team with frequent updates that include both enhancements and fixes. There's a 30-day trial.

Also if you program in AS2, you can't beat PrimalCode--full code hints for built-in and custom classes like you'd expect from a real IDE. We need to get this for CFC's in CF.