-
Aptana Studio…better than Dreamweaver, and FREE!
9
October 18th, 2008Miscellaneous
To kick off my blog I’d like to share with you my IDE (Integrated Development Environment) of choice for writing and editing all of my website code.
Now I have used Dreamweaver in the past and it is a fantastic product, but comes with a very hefty price tag that most beginners simply cant afford. A little over a year ago, I was scanning the internet for a alternative to the industry-standard Dreamweaver, and after a few days of relentless searching and trying out many different programs, I came across Aptana Studio which ticked all the boxes of the features I needed in an IDE and appeared to be a suitable alternative to Dreamweaver, and best of all, it was (and still is) FREE.
I have used Aptana Studio ever since finding it, and very soon weened myself off Dreamweaver altogether. For writing and editing code and uploading it to your server it is an awesome program, and comes complete with syntax-highlighting (colorization of your code, so that you can more easily read it), FTP, plenty of pre-written code snippets for you to play with and learn from, code-assist (this is where the program actually helps you write your code by displaying tooltips as you type), as well as a browser preview view of your web page. All of that is built into the one program, and the whole thing is extremely customizable so you can tweak it to your own way of working.
Aptana Studio Preview
Aptana Studio will happily work with all of your website files and will provide all the suitable code-coloring and code-assist for your HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript files, all in one program.
Now Aptana Studio doesn’t have the fancy WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors of Dreamweaver, but this is a feature I never used anyway as I always like to write my own code, so if that is a feature you rely on then Aptana Studio may not be for you, although you can still use if for editing your code and use something like Dreamweaver of NVU (free WYWSIWIG website editor program) when you really need to drag and drop things.
More recently I have totally uninstalled Dreamweaver, as I no longer have any need for it and Aptana Studio regularly release better and better updates and are constantly adding some excellent features (like the brand new Aptana Cloud and the Aptana Jaxer javascript server). I’d wholeheartedly recommend using Aptana Studio as a Dreamweaver alternative if you are serious about either learning to write websites, or building better websites.
I would give Aptana Studio 5 stars out of 5 for being the best IDE currently available…and its free (I know I’ve already told you it’s free, but it’s such an amazing program for free that it just needed repeating again).
Tags: aptana, css, dreamweaver, editor, free, HTML, ide
9 responses to “Aptana Studio…better than Dreamweaver, and FREE!” 
-
Yeah, right… “better than Dreamweaver”…
…only in your dreams, or only if you prefer to see reality via colored glasses!
Reality check:
There is NO software for website development using HTML / CSS, commercial or not, that can even be compared to Dreamweaver, period. You have to try it to see for yourself and believe it. Did I mentioned there is none that comes even close? Dreamweaver is among the (very) few software applications that are industry standards AND have NO competition. And I’m sure it has been made by perfectionists.As for the cost, I’m poor myself too (relatively speaking) so I just bought a month-to-month subscription from Adobe (~$30/month) based on some Dreamweaver video review by an expert and I’m already a very happy user!
This is the unfortunate truth. Open source developers should try Dreamweaver and learn from it one big lesson: Perfection!
Then they should try to make something of similar quality to do the world a great favor! -
I totally love Aptana, It is a bit of a revelation to me that there is GOOD free software available. I just wish they would implement something like templates. Then I would be very happy.
-
I must admit Aptana’s version 2 really let me down as well. The old version 1.5 worked perfect for me, but everything just fell apart in version 2.
-
Since writing your review Aptana has come out with an all new and redesigned version 2.0. It does not deliver. All I truly needed out of the box was a code editor in which I could see well ordered html code with an accurate preview.
I downloaded and installed it on my Win7HP box. Starting with the installer it was quite pretty. I had high hopes.
I wanted to import some basic HTML code to get it formed properly before pasting back into my site’s CMS. The editor failed to parse the code AT ALL. Nor did the preview do anything except parrot the exact malformatted code, no interpreting whatsoever.
So I went to the help file. Surely I must be missing something. I could find little to explain this behavior. I did discover that the help article on setting up previews listed three possible previews, IE, FireFox & IPhone. Only IE is actually available. No FireFox preview is disappointing.
I must say I’m very disappointed. All the other 200MB of bells and whistle are useless without this very basic functionality working properly.
Of course, I could be missing something or doing something wrong. Hmm. No.
–Allen
-
Good review.
I’m newer to the whole area of creating my own sites.
Up to now have been using weebly, blogger and that sort but am into this business for good.I want to build my own sites and have total control of everything.
You mentioned that there is no wizzy wig deal here with Aptana.
Hmmmm do I need it?
Some people say to do without a wysiwyg editor is to waste time, though they usually send me to an affiliate link, (bad marketers), so here I am a guy who will pick a niche, topic, what-ever and test with free and inexpensive methods, building and tweeking many small landing pages etc.Then once I find a winner I will become a zealot and build a dense website, blog etc. for max. SEO etc. you get the picture.
At this point I am either scared of DreamWeaver or so tired of hearing about it…..
The way you describe Aptana it sounds like what I will need soon so I want it now to save time and braincells,… or would you suggest,…like the rest of the internet these days, embrace all things wordpress.
Anyway I’ve read a lot of reviews today yours is good.
thanks.Brad
-
Michel, I’m agreed with you. Templates support will be added to Aptana (sooner or later, as it was stated at Aptana forums). Now this is the only thing that keep s me from switching.
-
michel November 3rd, 2008 at 18:45
Okay, so how do I move a site from Dreamweaver into Aptana? How do you handle Dreamweaver templates in a different app? And how do you impliment template features (i.e. editable regions)in Aptana?
this keeps me from switching.
-
Just downloaded Aptana Studio and I love it, If only all free software was to this high quality level.
-
Thank you so much for letting me know about Aptana Studio. I was looking for something free as I couldnt afford Dreamweaver, and you were right…Aptana Studio ticks all the boxes. That’ll be another 5 out of 5 from me.
RealityCheck August 27th, 2011 at 00:39