Macromedia HomeSite

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Macromedia HomeSite

Developer(s)	Nick Bradbury, Allaire, Macromedia
Initial release	September 1996; 28 years ago (1996-09)
Final release	5.5 / September 2003; 21 years ago (2003-09)
Trialware[1]
Website	www.adobe.com/products/homesite/

HomeSite was an HTML editor originally developed by Nick Bradbury. Unlike WYSIWYG HTML editors such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver, HomeSite was designed for direct editing, or "hand coding", of HTML and other website languages.

After a successful partnership with the company to distribute it alongside its own competing Dreamweaver software, HomeSite was acquired by

History

It was originally developed in

RSS

reader FeedDemon. Macromedia acquired Allaire in 2001 and was in turn acquired by Adobe in 2005.

At Allaire, a version of HomeSite was created as an

ColdFusion

, selling as ColdFusion Studio. This version was later merged into Coldfusion MX under Macromedia, and was then called HomeSite+. Development of HomeSite continued in parallel, though the standalone HomeSite was still sold separately.

In the days that HomeSite was under Nick Bradbury, and then part of Allaire, it had an enthusiastic following from its user community. While many software companies at the time had

for tag insight and tag editors.

Macromedia licensed a copy of HomeSite to include in Windows versions of Dreamweaver 1.0 (Mac versions bundled BBEdit). This OEM deal started the relationship between the companies and eventually led to the acquisition of Allaire by Macromedia in 2001. Although Macromedia improved the hand coding features in Dreamweaver 6.0 (MX) to be more on par with HomeSite, the company continued to produce both products separately, stating that "both products are excellent for their specific purposes."^[4] Macromedia was then acquired by Adobe in 2005. In May 2009, Adobe elected to cease development of HomeSite, and no longer supports the product, though they still maintain a forum for active users . Instead, existing HomeSite users are asked to consider switching to the newest version of Dreamweaver.^[2]

• Homesite 1.x (September 1996)
• Allaire Homesite 2.0
• Allaire Homesite 2.5a (1997)
• Allaire HomeSite 3.0 (November 1997)
• Allaire HomeSite 4.0 (November 1998)
• Allaire HomeSite 4.5 (1999)
• Macromedia HomeSite 5.0 (2001)
• Macromedia HomeSite 5.2 (January 2003)
• Macromedia HomeSite 5.5 (September 2003)

There was also another version called HomeSite+ which was included in

application development, and was generally comparable to the version of HomeSite formerly called ColdFusion Studio. HomeSite+/CF Studio versions parallel standalone HomeSite versions.

• Customizable interface that includes dockable toolbars with custom buttons, a
  snippet manager with "tag snippets," and custom dialogs and wizards written in the VTML
  language.
• Extensively script-able to automate tasks or to perform advanced tasks using JavaScript or VBScript
• Macro recorder can record a series of actions to create scripts for later playback
• Enhanced code snippets save time by creating and saving reusable blocks of code, and can prompt for variable replacement when used.
• Customizable
  JSP, Perl, PHP, SQL, VBScript, VTML and XHTML
  . Syntax-coloring parser syntax and examples are available to help users to extend or write their own.
• Search and replace utility
• CSS
  editing via the included TopStyle Lite, or via integration with the full version of TopStyle, if available
• Check your code with the built-in Code Validator, or use CSE HTML Validator with UI integration
• Customizable code formatting formats your code to standards with Code Sweeper or HTML Tidy.
• Integrated help browser shows installed help docs or HTML-format document sets added by the user. Useful for local, searchable copies of standards, tutorials, language references, etc.
• Project management and built-in FTP help manage and upload websites
• Built-in tools for page link-checking, document weight and spell-checking
• Works with
  source and version control
  software that supports SCCI, and with other packages via custom toolbars
• Assign
  keyboard shortcuts
  to almost any function, or to your own scripts or code snippets
• The integrated browser view and the external browser list let you view your edited document quickly in your choice of browsers.
• Available in French and German (older versions only, 5.5 is English-only)
• XHTML 1.0 Support
• Extensive right-click menu library including the ability to select an entire tag.^[5]

• List of HTML editors
• Nick Bradbury

External links

• ASP4HS ASP, PHP, .Net, XML, XSL, SQL development extensions for HomeSite, user community add-on repository
• Homesite Custom Dialogs
• About.com Resources
• Marjolein's Help for HomeSite Users
• Bradbury Software
• Nick Bradbury's Blog