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Web Standards, Accessibility, and Usability Group of the Delaware Valley

A Dreamweaver Rival: Aptana (open-source!)

I have been a Dreamweaver fan since the 4.0 days but actually stopped using it about a year ago. It’s my opinion that it has been getting too bulky to use to build projects with (opening files here and there for small modifications is out of the question). I was always kinda irritated with Dreamweaver’s method of handling projects as well, so I unloaded it and began my search for something new… something better! Ok, well… I haven’t really been on a search, but I was hopeful that I would one day stumble onto something worthwhile… and I did.

Aptana is a terrific alternative, and it’s open-source (GNU/GPL). It’s an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that can handle a multitude of files including PHP, Javascript, (X)HTML, CSS, plus more. The application is still in it’s infancy but shows promise and has a growing community. Has some validation features as well. Check out Aptana’s website for the full feature set and other details.

So, if you want to cut down on software costs or your just getting annoyed with Dreamweaver, Aptana is definitely worth checking out.

Posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 2:10 AM , filed under Web Standards, Accessibility, Web Development . RSS 2.0 Subscribe. Comments and pings are closed.

3 Responses to “A Dreamweaver Rival: Aptana (open-source!)”

  1. bj says:
    January 24th, 2007 at 1:16 PM

    I’ve been noticing that DW takes forever to load some of the more massive files I need to open, especially php files. It might be time to take a look at something else, especially since I don’t use all those dang bells and whistles (that all produce bloated and nasty code) in DW anyway, and always use it in codeview.

    But damn, it will be tough learning new shortcut keys, like ctr/shift/p for paragraph, and ctr/1 for an h1 heading . . . which are second nature since I’ve been using DW since version 2. Yeah, that long.

  2. Sean says:
    January 24th, 2007 at 3:06 PM

    It won’t be that tough ;) I’ll betcha that if you install Aptana, take a gander at the help file for the shortcut keys and then just use it, you can make the transition in a few days.

  3. bj says:
    March 21st, 2007 at 10:14 AM

    Sorry, Sean, but Aptana is more of a resource hog than Dreamweaver.

    I actually ended up using Topstyle, which is featherlight on system resources. I don’t like everything about it, but the biggest plus was that I could configure all the keyboard shortcuts in it to what I’m used to. I could also configure the top toolbar to include things I’m used to having there.