Section 6.1. Macromedia Editor Changes and Java IDEs

   

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6.1 Macromedia Editor Changes and Java IDEs

In this section we will take a look at some of the many changes in Macromedia editors of late and what the Java development scene is like with these tools. The remainder of the chapter will examine some of the benefits and disadvantages of the various Java IDEs out there.

There are some Macromedia editors that have been rolled into other products, some that are bundled with others, and some that no longer exist. It is a bit confusing if you haven't paid careful attention; they've made a lot of changes.

6.1.1 ColdFusion Studio

We used to use ColdFusion Studio to do all of our ColdFusion work. Cold-Fusion Studio is at "end-of-life" ”it will no longer be updated. Because of the shared code base between Studio and HomeSite, the products have been rolled into one, now called HomeSite+. This product now only ships as an added bonus when you purchase Dreamweaver MX. The clear signal from Macro-media is for ColdFusion developers to switch from Studio to Dreamweaver MX. While you can still (as of this writing) purchase ColdFusion Studio 5, you won't be able to for long.

6.1.2 Studio Functionality Included in Dreamweaver MX

A short time before the merger between Allaire and Macromedia, Macromedia began scouting for the level of interest ColdFusion developers had in Dreamweaver and other visual editors. When the merger was announced, everything suddenly became clear: It was the company's intention to roll Studio into Dreamweaver. The initial developer reaction was, in general, not favorable. Studio was a terrific product because you could write code by hand, but you could still have your work simplified by features such as RDS and tag insight. So Macromedia has now taken strides to make sure that the key functionality Allaire ColdFusion developers enjoyed in Studio is still available. Here are the features maintained in Dreamweaver MX from Studio:

• ColdFusion Studio-like source code editor view

• Web services browser

• RDS datasource browser

• Tag Dialog support, including new CF MX tags

• Code Insight support

• Tag Inspector

• Preview from Browser view

• Code Snippets

• CFC (ColdFusion Component) browser with available methods

• CFC creation wizard

• Integrated page debugging and CF debug output

6.1.3 HomeSite+

HomeSite+ combines the functionality of HomeSite and ColdFusion Studio. It is not available as a separate product, so you must buy the Windows version of Dreamweaver MX to get HomeSite+. Allaire's award-winning HomeSite has been the industry's most popular editor for HTML Web sites for years . This product will continue to be sold as a standalone HTML editor. HomeSite has actually shipped for free along with Dreamweaver since Dreamweaver 1.0, including the Dreamweaver 4/UltraDev 1 release. Of course, HomeSite doesn't contain any extensions for working with ColdFusion, let alone Java. The basic division is between FrontPage types who want to create Web sites visually and hand coders who don't want a program generating their code. HomeSite is for the latter group , and Macromedia has incorporated many of the features that hand coders want into Dreamweaver.

6.1.4 Where's the Java Support?

One reason to discourse at such length on non-Java- related issues such as the features in the current versions of HomeSite, CF Studio, and Dreamweaver is to highlight something important: There is no explicit support for Java in these editors. You need another IDE for that, which is the focus of the remainder of this chapter.

You are a ColdFusion developer who is now facing an expansion of your role. It is important now more than ever to work with Java in your Web applications. Web apps are expanding onto the desktop in a more mature and serious way than they did in 1995 with the introduction of applets. The Web, as I see it evolving, is becoming a primary distribution channel for full-blown programs instead of a final destination for HTML-based hybrid Web apps. In the last 10 years, it has grown from a massive encyclopedia to what's becoming a unified interactive platform.

The IDEs for Java are very different from what you may be used to. Now, your team may be small or large. You may be doing the design, the programming, the content, or all of it. You may have a very specific, isolated function within a group of 20 developers.

Macromedia makes JRun, the fastest Java Web application container on the market. But JRun Studio has been discontinued as of May 2002. JRun Studio was just the obvious choice for ColdFusion Studio users wishing to create JRun-based Web applications because, like HomeSite, it shares the same code base and acts very much the same. The basic difference is which tags are supported and the fact that JRun Studio included a compiler. JRun Studio 3 is shown in Figure 6.1.

Figure 6.1. The discontinued JRun Studio 3.

But the Java IDE market is very competitive, and established players have a very solid market share. Developers weren't buying JRun Studio. So if you want to do JRun/JavaServer Pages development with Macromedia tools, you will have to use Dreamweaver MX, which supports JSP development. JRun Studio 3 will not integrate to much advantage with JRun 4.

Macromedia also recently discontinued another Java IDE product, and you may be wondering what happened to it. Allaire purchased the Kawa Java IDE a couple of years ago, and it has seen little acceptance in the market. This product is in end-of-life and the only upgrade path is to choose another IDE, such as JBuilder or VisualCaf .

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