I guess Jolon is still using MSIE, right? .. The developer tools that are built into Google Chrome browser for example are quite good for debugging HTML/CSS(and even JavaScript). Just right click on the elements whose markup you want to see and say "inspect" and it will show you all the code and css applied to the element with a nice little editor that allows you to play with and modify each property on the fly. Also, developer tools such as MS Visual Studio (I am doing mostly ASP.NET MVC stuff lately) aren't too bad either with features such as autocomplete/autolookups/warnings for non-closed html-tags and invalid markup/attributes, etc .... that makes writing valid HTML/CSS pretty easy.
As for other opinions on this whole website development talk: I definitely would stay away from writing websites in Delphi. It might be ok to use if all you need is a small quick and dirty inhouse webapp or prototype .. but what you gain in familiarity by using Delphi is quickly offset by disadvantages. PHP/.NET/RoR have huge communities of developers - if you have a problem or need some example code/library then just google for it and you will most likely find something - whereas for Delphi it's mostly up to you to figure it out .... and then there is the thing about maintenance if you leave the company, will they still be able to find a Delphi developer to maintain and lock after the website?). I think it's better to go with more popular web development languages. Personally I am really happy developing with the ASP.NET MVC framework. Never really liked traditional ASP.NET WebForms (viewstate is just such a bloat and if you try to AJAX'ify the website things can quickly become very complicated and badly performing) - The new ASP.NET MVC on the other hand is absolutly fantastic in this regard and a joy to work with - the seperation of Data/GUI/Logic (MVC development pattern) is much better and more modular then the intermingled mess ASP.NET WebForms was. I also heard a lot of good about Ruby on Rails. As far as development goes it sounds easy and fast - but seems to have a bit of scaling problems (if your projects require that, most don't). PHP is probably the most popular web-language, but never really got to like it. I don't like "weakly typed" script languages that just break during execution ... I like my code to be compiled and raise errors during compilation time if I made some mistake - makes developing/changing existing code/database tables so much easier and less error prone if you have everything "strong typed". ASP.NET also has a couple of goodies that I probably would miss a lot in PHP - like, automatic XSS injection prevention, URL-Rewriting, Localisation, Authorization (user login, roles, etc), HttpModules that allow you to plug directly into the web execution pipeline of the IIS webserver, etc. ... I think the ASP.NET framework makes writing secure and high performing websites a lot easier then PHP does. Regards, Stefan -----Original Message----- From: delphi-boun...@delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-boun...@delphi.org.nz] On Behalf Of Berend de Boer Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 6:44 PM To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: Re: [DUG] Web development >>>>> "Jolyon" == Jolyon Smith <jsm...@deltics.co.nz> writes: Jolyon> but in the end got fed up with wrestling with HTML and CSS Jolyon> - working with those technologies is like stepping back in Jolyon> time in terms to tools and "debugging" etc, Really???? I would say that the available tools and capabilities are light years beyond what's offered. And we're not even talking about the ease with which you create very nice interfaces, which would be impossible to create any other way. -- All the best, Berend de Boer ------------------------------------------------------ Awesome Drupal hosting: https://www.xplainhosting.com/ _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe
