Comparison: Adobe Dreamweaver VS. Aptana
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If you fall into the category of the standard web designer, which likely explains why you’re here, you’ve used some of today’s high-powered web IDEs: powerful tools for creating powerful websites and web applications, complete with built-in browser testing, some sort of crummy design view, version control, the works. It’s especially likely that you’ve used Macromedia (now known as Adobe) Dreamweaver.
Within the past two years, the eclipse project, a Java-based open source IDE, has been forked into two separate projects: Aptana, which is targeted primarily at AJAX-centric developers, and RadRails, which is a Ruby-on-Rails-targeted IDE, complete with version control, debugging, local testing and debugging, and remote deployment capabilities. The Aptana project has been growing fast with additions of full PHP and iPhone support and has recently incorporated the entire RadRails project, providing developers with the simultaneous advantages of a supported Ruby on Rails IDE with native AJAX development support. The Aptana Project has also found user-funded opportunities thanks to the development of Aptana Studio Pro, the beefier brother to Aptana, complete with JSON support, SVN & SSL control, Internet Explorer JavaScript debugging, and enhanced support features.
I’ve compiled some research done on both IDEs, and present to you a feature comparison chart that goes over the advantages and disadvantages of each choice. Since Aptana is free, I highly recommend you download it and try it out on something less-than pressing, such as a new theme for your new Wordpress install. While I’m hesitant to suggest that you try to convert your workplace to loyal Aptana followers, I think it’s a great way to get started learning Ruby on Rails or AJAX.
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XHTML
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YES
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YES
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Browser Compatibility Testing
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IE7, Firefox
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YES - IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari
Integration with Adobe CSS Advisor |
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CSS
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YES
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YES
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XML
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YES
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YES
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JavaScript
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YES
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YES
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AJAX
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YES - Spry
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YES - All major libraries
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PHP
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YES
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YES
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ColdFusion
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NO
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YES
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ASP
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NO
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YES
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ASP.NET
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NO
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YES
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Ruby on Rails
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YES. Use the RadRails plugin
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YES. Spotty support on plugin
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JSP
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Not currently. Future possibility
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YES
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Version Control
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SVN
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File Check-in/Check-out. A bit buggy
Third-party SVN plugin available for $53 Support for MS SharePoint Servers |
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JSON Support
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Studio Pro Only
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YES
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Secure FTP
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Studio Pro Only
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YES
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JavaScript Debugging
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Community: Firefox
Studio Pro: Firefox, IE |
YES. See Browser Compatibility Checking
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Support Plan
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Typical open-source support scheme for community version. Beefier and more comprehensive plan with Studio Pro
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Decent corporate support plan. Call center full of monkeys, web-knowledge-base
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Price
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Community: Free Studio Pro: $99/$199 Initially. $79 Annually Thereafter |
$399 initially. $199 for the upgrade
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PROs
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Great Open Source IDE with boundless potential for growth. It’s the best Ajax/RoR solution you will find anywhere. |
Dreamweaver is clearly a mature, proven, and enterprise-ready product that has been in use by developers and designers alike for years. Dreamweaver is the best choice for mission-critical work.
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CONs
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It’s JAVA-based, and JAVA is notoriously bad at managing system resources. Expect to upgrade your memory. Support is what you pay for. Bug fixes and feature adds come only as fast as the development team can afford to make them. |
Support for Ruby on Rails is sketchy, and the price is prohibitive to entry-level developers and designers.
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Thanks for the summary.
A few additional points: (and btw I work for Aptana)…
* Aptana also includes PHP editing
* Browser previews also include Safari, and are configurable to others as well.
* Aptana’s JavaScript editing and code assist features IMHO are unparalleled (consistent with Aptana’s focus on the programmatic web developer who uses scripting languages)
-Kevin Hakman
Thanks for your input, Kevin! It’s really great to see developers of excellent software packages representing their work.
External browser-launch style previewing is available in Aptane in IE and Firefox only. A file save has to be made in order to test with Opera, Firefox, or Safari. While I do understand the necessity to keep it down to two browsers, it would be nice to pick and choose which two.
Support for PHP was listed in the middle of paragraph 2 and also in the comparison table.
Code-assist has been around for years in Dreamweaver. I don’t dispute Aptana’s advantage in working with JavaScript, but perhaps you could enlighten us on the benefits of Aptana’s code-assist over Dreamweaver or even Visual Studio’s features.
I love everything in dreamweaver, except code validaion and code autocomplete for Javascript and php.
Edit: Link removed.
I believe you got the AJAX portion of the chart mixed up. Aptana supports all major AJAX / JS libraries and Dreamweaver uses Spry.
Please make the revision to the chart so people who are new to either IDE don’t get confused.
Otherwise, this page was useful.
Thanks,
Danonymous
” believe you got the AJAX portion of the chart mixed up. Aptana supports all major AJAX / JS libraries and Dreamweaver uses Spry”
Amen! Another advantage o Aptana is you aren’t stuck with it for every project like you are with Dreamweaver. One reason I didn’t upgrade to CS3 is because Spry auto complete stuff is automatically there in for every project and it cost me time. With Aptana you select for the project. Another is the integration with Photoshop was not useful because you cannot optimize it for the web when you save it to the image directory on your site. It does not allow the trip through ImageReady. The CSS checking was very rarely useful because it flagged stuff that needed to be there and would be ignored by browsers that didn’t understand, which is what you often need.. The browser compat testing suffers from the same problem. They also said it rendered standards based now rather than IE based. It was very rare to find any difference in rendering. You needed a browser to see what your page looks like. Don’t think for a moment it will render like Firefox. II you can SFTP to a site using Dreamweaver’s SFTP, then the site has a security hole you can drive a truck through. It encrypts the transfer of information but it sends the user name and password in the clear which is why it doesn’t work a lot of places and universities disallow it for their CS programs. The cost didn’t bother me. What bothered me was CS3 was a step backwards. The Aptana editor, debuggers, brace matching, formatting, and auto-complete are far superior to anything I’ve ever seen in the web development world, and what I’m used to in the application development world.
What I like about Dreamweaver is cross-line search and replace ignoring whitespace, automated code updating when switching for document types, very easy to understand site maintenance, and more options for site management.
I’m not into Aptana because of price. I already own Dreamweaver CS2 and phpED anyway. I’m into it because of what is missing in my current tools that is of huge importance to the developer. To find it for free or $100 makes me think somebody messed up from a business perspective and Macromedia sold to Adobe at the right time.
PS: Huge, I cannot believe I left out the most incredible reason of all. Dreamweaver has NO debuggers of any kind where you can step through the code, set breakpoints, see variables, etc. None. That is massive.