PHP only? that's WRONG!!

Web Assist's decision to go ahead with only PHP support is really a disgrace. Their choice to abandon all other server models and leave us developers in the dark is really messed up.

What am I supposed to have all my clients reprogram their entire sites in PHP just so I can use the latest version of extensions? How am I supposed to support those clients and make changes to their sites that use iRite and other extensions once WA no longer fixes the bugs in them?

What a mess. I feel ripped off.

I feel like we had this discussion already :)... like 8 months ago right after WA announced they were only going to be building PHP products in the future.

But, while I feel your pain - I also see WebAssist's decision to actually be very wise. I, too, used to code in a non-PHP language, exclusively (ColdFusion). But, I found that learning PHP not only was easy after getting my feet wet, I became a better programmer all the way around. As far as it concerns WebAssist, by focusing on the most broadly used server side language, they are able to generate far more products and extensions than if they were researching, developing, and testing on three separate platforms. They are also able to get through the development stage much quicker and have new releases, as well as, fixes deployed much quicker.

But, WA's decision is also somewhat indicative of how some of these languages are faring. We have seen the debacle at Microsoft... who knows which version of ASP they will continue to enhance or support. Adobe has even dropped ASP.net support beginning in DWCS4. While DW stiill has an ASP tab, Microsoft stopped developing plain ASP and is only developing ".net". I am not sure how WebAssist - a company that makes products for Dreamweaver use - could even consider developing ASP apps anymore, anyway.

As far as ColdFusion goes, while it is probably the cleanest and strongest of the 3 server side languages, it is very expensive to license and most people outside of huge corporate web infrastructures use it far less than a choice like PHP.

Well L'Chaim, if you want, you can pop round to my clients and tell them to rip out their Microsoft Servers and shut down their ASP intranets, on-line banking and share trading software to redevelop their entire systems using PHP.

It'll be a short conversation as they laugh in your face and show you the door.

Why so sour?

I didn't tell you to do anything! I only offered a perspective on the decision and about who the majority of WebAssist users are. I never said to go and tell your clients to rip anything out. I simply gave an explanation for WebAssist's direction to PHP only - albeit my opinion of their situation - as I am not a WebAssist employee.

I am sorry for your predicament and your banks and their proprietary Microsoft servers and languages. Remember it is Microsoft that wanted to create their own web editor in Expression Web to compete with Adobe and then try to leverage more money for the licensing of ASP.net. So screaming that Adobe or the extension makers for Adobe products are somehow responsible for all this is really reaching by any estimate.

By the way, L'Chaim is not my name - it is a saying in my signature. It is an English transliteration of Hebrew meaning "To Life."

Regards,

Brian

If you want to continue using ASP, then you shouldn't update to new versions of our extensions. Unfortunataly it is as simple as that.

We will continue to fix bugs associated with those extensions by releasing dot releases to the old versions when necessary. The new functionality we add for the new versions is PHP specific, so if you aren't changing platforms there is no reason to update.

We made the announcement 8 months ago, but our products are just starting to show the results... versions that don't support ASP and Coldfusion. Unfortunately, I imagine we will have to revisit it with each new version of any product we release moving forward.

If we could have our cake and eat it too, we would continue to support ASP and Coldfusion, but we are releasing with features that simply aren't available in those languages and part of the point of making the change is to stop tripling our QA effort. To continue to support those languages would defeat the purpose. I know you want to move forward with new technology as we release it, but unfortunatly moving forward with new technology and sticking with Classic ASP is an oxy-moron that we simply can't accomodate. (no matter how much we want to).

I've had a chance to cool myself and I understand where you are coming from. I realize that technology changes and we do have to move forward to keep up. While it is not practical for my existing clients to upgrade their current sites, moving forward with new development I will embrace the change.

Having not done much new development in the past 4 years, almost everything has taken a new approach and having to learn all of that at once is a big undertaking. My last site was created with some CSS, but mostly tables for layout with SQL Server 2000 & ASP for data. I am now moving forward with all CSS, MySQL and PHP for my new site.

I appreciate the tools that your company offers as they do help make development easier (although not entirely without some frustration).

For any one else in my situation, I have found this site to be extremely helpful in learning PHP and other development skills. Check it out: PHPintro.php

Great site.

Also if you anyone is looking for books that use great real-world examples, I strongly suggest PHP Solutions by David Powers or the Dreamweaver specific version - Dreamweaver CS4 with CSS. Ajax, and PHP. Both are easy reads and will really open your eye to possible functionality and design.

Regards,

Brian