Dreamweaver. I’ve been using you since you were in closed beta. I’ve watched you grow and expand. It’s been a long, wonderful trip these last 8 or 10 years, but it’s finally time to bid farewell to you and move on to a more modern, capable editor—Aptana Studio.

What moved me to make the switch from Dreamweaver to Aptana? Well, a number of things really.

Note: This is based on Dreamweaver CS3. I don’t have CS4 yet, and I probably won’t.

Price

The first reason is price. I’ve certainly gotten my money out of CS3. However, with Adobe’s release of Dreamweaver CS4, I’m not looking forward to shelling out $200 for the upgrade ($400 for those who don’t already have CS3).

While there is a paid version of Aptana which adds some extra functionality, Aptana Studio is a great piece of software, and it’s free and open source.

Works on Windows, Macs and Linux

Another big plus is that Aptana plays well on whatever operating system you use: Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

While Dreamweaver works on Windows and Macs, there’s really no support for Linux. Since I work on Windows and Linux (Ubuntu 8.04 currently), Aptana’s support for both of these OS’s makes it easy to switch over from one computer to the other and still code without a hassle.

Features and Productivity

The biggest reason for giving Dreamweaver the boot was that it just wasn’t relevant for me and the way I code anymore.

In the days when I built table-based designs, it was great. However, as I switched to XHTML and CSS, it was suddenly much less helpful. The previews it showed where never accurate enough to use for anything but a very rough estimate.

Now I know Dreamweaver CS3 has a lot of features—probably more that the average code-jockey uses, but there are still some important things missing. I also know CS4 has added some features.

Aptana has many of the same basic features that I used with Dreamweaver, plus a few additional ones:

• Better code completion/code assist for HTML, CSS and javascript
• View accurate previews in FireFox and IE without leaving Aptana
• View your HTML as an outline for easy organization
• Customizable code snippets for HTML, CSS, javascript, XML, jQuery and others
• Support for AJAX libraries—jQuery, Prototype, script.aculo.us, Dojo, Ext, YUI, mochikit, MooTools, Spry, Aflax and more—letting you add code easily
• Adobe Air support
• iPhone support with tabbed preview
• Ruby on Rails (RoR) app engine / code assist
• Toolset for working with PHP and database (local and live)
• PHP/MySQL app engine / code assist
• Python toolset / code assist

Code Assist

Some of the biggest time-savers are the code assist options. Since you’re mostly working with code in Aptana, having code assist is a great help. This works for pretty much any web language out there. Dreamweaver has code completion, but it wasn’t nearly as robust as Aptana. Plus, Aptana allows you to adjust how much help it gives you.

I really love that when I add classes and IDs in an external CSS file, the classes are available to the code assist in my HTML. Same thing with images in CSS. I just start typing and it brings a nice little dropdown of the images in the folder I’ve started to type—no more trying to remember exact filenames.

jQuery Made Easy

Adding jQuery to a document is a breeze. I can add the jQuery framework to a project and it inserts and links to jQuery from my webpages. I can also use jQuery code assist to relieve the amount of typing needed.

Instant Tabbed Previews

Not having to have several browsers open while testing is handy. I can test in Firefox and IE right from Aptana by simply clicking the tabs at the bottom of the code window.

I don’t own an iPhone (where I live I can’t even get service for one), so testing wasn’t really an option. But with Aptana, now I can view a preview of what my pages will look like on the iPhone. It even lets me toggle between portrait and landscape view.

Outline Your Code

Keep track of what’s nested where is easy in Aptana. Aptana allows you to view your HTML code as an outline by element. You can expand and collapse the outline tree without in the Outline panel, while keeping all your code visible.

Custom Code Snippets and Scripts

Customizable code snippets let you add commonly used bits of code to your projects, and scripts allow you to perform common activities with a click.

Stay NSync

You can browse individual files or stay organized by project in the file view panel. This also doubles as an FTP/SFTP browser; letting you upload and synchronize your local and remote files.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible in Aptana.

Expand With Plugins

If all the features that come with Aptana aren’t enough, you can add capabilities with a nice collection of free plugins.

Since Aptana is built off Eclipse IDE, most of the plugins that work in Eclipse will work in Aptana. You have a huge arsenal of plugins (over 1,000) to help you work even better.

Conclusion

Aptana has come a long way from when I first tried it out over a year ago when it was touted as the Dreamweaver-killer. At the time it wasn’t quite there, but now I feel it’s matured into an excellent alternative for those who need powerful features and are building modern websites.

Learn More

Read more about Aptana and download it to try yourself at: http://www.aptana.com/studio

To learn more about the powerful features of Aptana Studio, you can watch feature video screencasts at www.aptana.tv.

You can also read Aptana tutorials that show you how to do things like create a new AJAX project and work with various frameworks like jQuery and Prototype.

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