I completely, totally, absoluetely 100% disagree with what you said. VS (or
VWD) are FAR better than DW for making web apps (not even mentionning the
"programming" part as the difference on that is beyond obvious). If there is
one app I can't stand it's DW. I really wonder what you don't like about MS'
tools, it generates all the markup I need - although I tend to mostly create
my master pages in "code view". None of us (in the teams I've worked on)
have ever had issues with "not making good looking web pages" (not to
mention, that would hardly be ASP.Net's fault like you seem to say - which
is just a server side technology - not a design app). The pages generate all
the xhtml (markup) it's expected to (the master pages add the "non-webapp"
markup), and the CSS styles it accordingly. I don't see any limitations,
lacks, or shortcomings of any kind anywhere whatsoever.
The real issue seems to be that you want some easy-to-use (beginner
click-n-point/drag stuff from toolbars) web page DESIGN app, and you're
using an advanced app made to generate code/applications (programming - and
not exactly a beginner's tool; and again, ASP.Net isn't some IDE to edit
pages but a server-side technology). Apples and oranges. Once you know XHTML
and CSS (not just for styling text and such but also for site layout and
everything), you will find something like DW *EXTREMELY* lacking (borderline
useless) anyways. None of these DW-like "design" apps come even close to
knowing simple markup and CSS (and there are TONS of very good CSS templates
and resources such as csszengarden on the web to get you started). It's not
that hard nor time consuming to learn (you can't realistically not know this
stuff if you're willing to do web design for a living nowadays).
And about frames, I hope I'm misunderstanding you... You don't really want
to make a site that uses frames for real, do you? With the exception of
MSDN, I don't recall seeing a single site that still uses them, last I
recall seeing them being used commonly was around 1995, in static HTML sites
that used no server-side technologies, hence no possibilities of server-side
includes for menus or such, so a frame was used for the site menu... There
are tons of issues associated to using frames as well (pages don't ahve
unique URLs anymore and are hard to bookmark (and other associated isues),
they go against accessibility guidelines, they can be a major obstacle (or
prevent altogether) your site from being indexed/spidered, often won't save
or print right, etc etc). I can't think of a single reason why one would
want to use that (and deal with all the associated
issues/troubles/problems/headaches) instead of using today's
modern/simple/elegant CSS layout techniques or worst case scenario even a
table layout...
As for the "competition" thing, it's not like it's competing against DW or
the like - they're completely different apps, aimed at completely different
groups of people (designers don't seem to like coding tools overly, and
saying DW is crippled as a development tool is quite an understatement
IMHO). And VS (or VWD) is by FAR the best tool for for both tasks IMHO. But
it comes down to personnal preferences and such. Make your site design in DW
if you prefer, then make a master page from it, and finally code the web app
itself in VS, or something along those lines if that's what you prefer...
Just my 2 cents... And Happy New Year to everyone
