Am I getting the idea correctly?
I'm so new to Zope that I can barely even spell it. But I'm about to spend some time and effort getting proficient with something that enables dynamic, database-connected (and database-updateable) content on web sites so I can sell it to clients, and the appeal of Zope is overwhelming in this arena. I am a very proficient PowerBuilder programmer, but Sybase's offerings are cumbersome and somewhat expensive. I am well versed in many of Microsoft's products, particularly VBA for its Office products, but I worry greatly about using anything from Microsoft because it's hard to know when I'll run into a "gotcha" that I'll curse myself for later on. Cold Fusion and other products seem a happy medium but the CF server piece is about $5k, and some others are more expensive. But here's what worries me about Zope: it looks I will do a whole lot of typing and get caught up in the syntax and repetitive nature of things like <dtml-var ------> and <dtml-this -----> and <dtml-that ----- >. OK, so it's not made for the faint-of-heart at this point - I can handle that. But I also am not an HTML maven, and it looks like I need to have full HTML expertise to make this work also. GUI tools take the drudge out of <a href="something">something and <h2>this is a heading</h2> pretty well, but I don't see how to get out of this stuff with Zope, especially since it looks like everything is stored internally in a data file that I can't access from the outside. Am I correct? Or is there help on the horizon for those of us who have no graphic design skills and <shudder> actually believe there's a place for GUI-based tools? Thanks for any light you might shed on this subject for me - -Frank
You still have to write dtml by hand, but you could say Dreamweaver to connect via FTP to Zope. You can then edit the documents in html. Or use you favorite WSYIWYG and ftp / cut and paste them in. For a tool that includes all the dtml check out the one day it might be ready - Zope Studio. ----- Original Message ----- From: Frank Isaacs To: zope@zope.org Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2000 2:37 PM Subject: [Zope] Am I getting the idea correctly? I'm so new to Zope that I can barely even spell it. But I'm about to spend some time and effort getting proficient with something that enables dynamic, database-connected (and database-updateable) content on web sites so I can sell it to clients, and the appeal of Zope is overwhelming in this arena. I am a very proficient PowerBuilder programmer, but Sybase's offerings are cumbersome and somewhat expensive. I am well versed in many of Microsoft's products, particularly VBA for its Office products, but I worry greatly about using anything from Microsoft because it's hard to know when I'll run into a "gotcha" that I'll curse myself for later on. Cold Fusion and other products seem a happy medium but the CF server piece is about $5k, and some others are more expensive. But here's what worries me about Zope: it looks I will do a whole lot of typing and get caught up in the syntax and repetitive nature of things like <dtml-var ------> and <dtml-this -----> and <dtml-that ----- >. OK, so it's not made for the faint-of-heart at this point - I can handle that. But I also am not an HTML maven, and it looks like I need to have full HTML expertise to make this work also. GUI tools take the drudge out of <a href="something">something and <h2>this is a heading</h2> pretty well, but I don't see how to get out of this stuff with Zope, especially since it looks like everything is stored internally in a data file that I can't access from the outside. Am I correct? Or is there help on the horizon for those of us who have no graphic design skills and <shudder> actually believe there's a place for GUI-based tools? Thanks for any light you might shed on this subject for me - -Frank
You can use whatever GUI type tools you currently use to create your web pages to use with Zope. This will not make the best use of Zope, but it will work. Zope makes available an FTP interface to its internal database structure, so it is possible to use it more or less exactly as you would with a standard Unix based web serving system. My girlfriend is a fledging webbie, and her experience is interesting. She started off being completely gung-ho about GUI-based tools, but now prefers to use tools that let her work directly with the HTML. If you try to use Zope in the same way as a conventional simple web server then you will probably be underwhelmed - it will work, but no better/worse than the more usual ways of doing this. It definitely pays to play with it a bit, and to try out a number of products. I had been studiously ignoring ZCatalog until recently when I needed to change the behaviour of a supplied product (something to provide threaded discussions). What would have been significant work with other systems turned out to be trivial in Zope (once I had worked out how to do it :-). Richard ------------------------- But here's what worries me about Zope: it looks I will do a whole lot of typing and get caught up in the syntax and repetitive nature of things like <dtml-var ------> and <dtml-this -----> and <dtml-that ----- >. OK, so it's not made for the faint-of-heart at this point - I can handle that. But I also am not an HTML maven, and it looks like I need to have full HTML expertise to make this work also. GUI tools take the drudge out of <a href="something">something and <h2>this is a heading</h2> pretty well, but I don't see how to get out of this stuff with Zope, especially since it looks like everything is stored internally in a data file that I can't access from the outside. Am I correct? Or is there help on the horizon for those of us who have no graphic design skills and <shudder> actually believe there's a place for GUI-based tools? Thanks for any light you might shed on this subject for me - -Frank
Hi,
But here's what worries me about Zope: it looks I will do a whole lot of typing and get caught up in the syntax and repetitive nature of >things like <dtml-var ------> and <dtml-this -----> and <dtml-that ----- >. OK, so it's not made for the faint-of-heart at this point - I can >handle that. But I also am not an HTML maven, and it looks like I need to have full HTML expertise to make this work also. GUI tools >take the drudge out of <a href="something">something and <h2>this is a heading</h2> pretty well, but I don't see how to get out of >this stuff with Zope, especially since it looks like everything is stored internally in a data file that I can't access from the outside.
I've been there. Before I came across Zope I builded websites with Frontpage and later on with Dreamweaver (I still do in certain cases). Dropping these kind of pure document oriented sites in Zope is possible but then you are missing the point of Zope. Zope requires another way of thinking about websites. A real GUI working with Zope isn't there yet. I don't think that's a real problem. Zope forces you often to go to nitty gritty details of HTML programming. I think that's a good thing (for me). GUI tools tend to make you very lazy and often produce horrible HTML (for example Frontpage). In my opinion you can't be a serious website builder without extensive knowledge about HTML. With Zope or another platform. That said. You can use Dreamweaver's FTP fascilities to edit documents/methods in Zope. However I don't think that that is very useful (I have never tried this) because Dreamweaver is document oriented and is not aware of your object design/dependecies in the ZODB (the Zope Object Database). I still use Dreamweaver and Fireworks in combination with Zope however. My aproach is: designing the thing in Fireworks (with slices), exporting from Fireworks to Dreamweaver. Then using the HTML result in Dreamweaver for designing/programming my DTML methods (copy/paste) Henny van der Linde Leiden University.
participants (4)
-
Andy McKay -
Frank Isaacs -
Henny van der Linde -
Richard Folwell