> Could someone relate their experiences with Fusion (or Fusion Teams)
> as it releates to PHP3, Apache, and Unix hosted sites?
Fusion is not server dependent, and I develop on Windows and server on
Unix. For a total offline solution you can get PHP3 for Win32 MySQL for
Win32 and Apache for Win32 (although I use PWS) and this works fine for
testing locally.Below are my thoughts on Fusion and some responses to
other questions in this thread.
I have been using Fusion for about a year starting with v2 and I now
use v3. I admit that 2.0 lacked some the needed interaction with the
source. But I think that NetObjects have recognized that shortcoming
and have made viable solutions in v3. I use PHP on all of our sites and
use Fusion to build them all.
There are a couple of different ways to touch the source when you
need to. First you can insert code into the individual tags and what
you put in there is what you get output from Fusion. I have't had
problems with this. Or, you can create a text box in the layout of your
page and just insert your PHP code into that are that is created via
right clicking in the text box and choosing Object Html... Finally, you
can reference HTML from an external source. Basically creating a big
area that will be reserved for the HTML that is located in another app
such as Homesite, FP, or Notepad. Fusion will not touch this. I rarely
have to go this route. Usually the Object Html... route is very
sufficient.
Although you can never get as precise as a text editor like Homesite
(bundled with Fusion) Fusion gives you sufficient work arounds if
require and ones that don't require a change in PHP (i.e. <script language=
\"PHP\">). And I think that Fusion pays off in the site
managment aspect that is valuable for the novice that you can have
contributing to the site (that work run from a text editor). Also, I
admit that I have only used dreamweaver briefly, the WYSIWYG there
doesn't compare to Fusion's. WYSIWYG and site mgmnt is important to me
in shared projects.
As for Fusions generated code, it has been lightened in v3. You can
choose the method used in generating the HTML, you can choose CSS and
Layers, small file size, but only for the 4.0 browsers, or Nested Tables
that have a tendency to render slowly, or finally Regular tables, using
this method, the page renders quickly and code is kept lite. I have
compared filesize in an intricate Fusion page compared to the same page
generated in FP and the file size is pretty equal.