Best editor to use for Flare html files?

[samjones6]

I am a long time Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, Robohelp user.

I find the Flare editor to be fantastically SLOW.... (I have a smoking hot PC, fwiw)

- Slow to load / save / close pages
- Slow to navigate (to move down five lines, I need to down arrow TEN times!)

I have noticed that I just am a lot slower in Flare than in any other tool.

I now to about half my editing in Dreamweaver wysiwig, just cause the navigation around the page is faster.

What do y'all use as an editor?

Thanks!

[NorthEast]

I tend to use Notepad++ for heavier bits editing in text mode. I'm not sure what would be a viable alternative to using the Flare editor, since you couldn't really add any Flare-specific features (xrefs, conditions, drop-downs, glossary/index/concept terms, etc.) or edit any of the project files.

The editor definitely takes getting used to, but I can't say I've noticed that editing is slow, just a few areas like find-and-replace.

[lacastle]

Flare is noticeably faster if you are working off of a local drive (vs. a network). I keep my projects local to my computer and backup to the network.

[samjones6]

Flare is noticeably faster if you are working off of a local drive (vs. a network). I keep my projects local to my computer and backup to the network.

Flare is fast.... using Flare is slow...

[samjones6]

I'm not sure what would be a viable alternative to using the Flare editor,

I am having good luck using dreamweaver as a wysiwig editor for flare topics. It is much faster for text editing (faster nav, faster open/save, etc).

[RamonS]

I'm not sure what would be a viable alternative to using the Flare editor,

I am having good luck using dreamweaver as a wysiwig editor for flare topics. It is much faster for text editing (faster nav, faster open/save, etc).

And you can enter the Flare specific pieces that way? I think that is what Dave pointed out.
The Flare editor does not scale too well. Very long topics make the editor slower. For any shorter or typical size topics the speed is fine.

[KJohnsonDBTK]

Displaying condition colors also slows down the editor, if you have a lot of conditions applied. Turning off the condition colors in this case brings the editor back to a more normal speed.
Kathleen

[samjones6]

Displaying condition colors also slows down the editor, if you have a lot of conditions applied. Turning off the condition colors in this case brings the editor back to a more normal speed.
Kathleen

Sorry, I was not very clear.

Raw Editor performance is one issue.

The main problem is editing speed. IOW the time it takes me open a topic, navigate to line 25, add/modify two sentences of text, and close the topic.

For this, (editing speed), the Flare editor is painfully slow (compared to dream weaver, robohelp, etc).

This is what I do in dreamweaver a lot. Just faster this way.

[RamonS]

What exactly is slow?
- opening the file
- locating the row
- entering the change

Or all three tasks slow to do?

[samjones6]

What exactly is slow?

You missed the most important step!

- Navigating to the line to edit

If I open a topic that has 200 lines of text, and I am making an edit on line 50, I have two choices:

- Down arrow: In Flare, I have to hit down arrow 100 times to get to line 50.
--- In Dreamweaver & Robohelp, I hit down arrow 50 times. (Making Flare %100 more "expensive" than other editors)

- Find option (if it applies) -- The Flare Find feature is a kludge.
--- In Dreamweaver, robohelp, etc: Alt E - F - <text> Enter // search happens // esc (I am now at the spot)
--- In Flare.... good luck!

Bottom line: It is slow to edit text in Flare!

[LTinker68]

Just out of curiosity, what version of Flare are you using?

[SteveS]

I'm with Dave on this one, Notepad++ is my editor of choice...

If you are just editing the content, as opposed to markup, any editor will work provided it doesn't add its own code to the html file. I like Notepad++ because it is a simple text editor excecept it has some remarkable plugins. The html plugin that colour codes html markup is great, particularly if you are looking at a complex page (I must add at this stage I learnt to create webpages with Notepad before tools like Dreamweaver were readily available).

[samjones6]

Just out of curiosity, what version of Flare are you using?

v7

[LTinker68]

Oh, well, so much for that thought. Flare was slower in earlier versions, and I think it might still be slow if you have a looong table in a topic, but I haven't noticed the speed issue that you see in a "standard" topic.

[samjones6]

Oh, well, so much for that thought. Flare was slower in earlier versions, and I think it might still be slow if you have a looong table in a topic, but I haven't noticed the speed issue that you see in a "standard" topic.

You can get to line 20 in a topic by pressing the down arrow 20 times?

How?

[NorthEast]

You can get to line 20 in a topic by pressing the down arrow 20 times?

How?

Well use Dreamweaver if it's better for you; but you're still going to have to use Flare to insert things like xrefs, conditions or drop-downs.
I just can't help thinking that whatever time that you perceive you're saving in Dreamweaver, you'd lose more by having to switch between two editors.

If it's something that you see as a real problem, put in an enhancement request.

[RamonS]

What exactly is slow?

You missed the most important step!
- Navigating to the line to edit

No, I did not:

- locating the row

I agree that the editor dropping between lines is a pain, but there is a reason for that. Otherwise you'd not be able to insert between tags. Still, would be nice to enable that by Shift+Cursor and have it work like a text editor otherwise. Then again, give me any piece of software and I will find something to bitterly complain about it and claim it is utterly unusable.

As proposed, put in an enhancement request. I've done that a long time ago.

[lacastle]

Oh, well, so much for that thought. Flare was slower in earlier versions, and I think it might still be slow if you have a looong table in a topic, but I haven't noticed the speed issue that you see in a "standard" topic.

You can get to line 20 in a topic by pressing the down arrow 20 times?

How?

How do you know you need to go to line 20? With word wrap turned on, the number of lines i have changes depending on how big the screen is, and it's always different from print or web output. Also, Flare is better now that the cursor stops on each line when you arrow down, but in previous versions, it stopped at the beginning and end of tags, not lines.

[Andrew]

The main problem is editing speed. IOW the time it takes me open a topic, navigate to line 25, add/modify two sentences of text, and close the topic.

For this, (editing speed), the Flare editor is painfully slow (compared to dream weaver, robohelp, etc).

This is what I do in dreamweaver a lot. Just faster this way.

I use the scroll wheel, or drag the scroll bar if I need to go down a considerable number of lines. I never used the arrowkeys for that in RoboHelp, Dreamweaver, Word, Notepad++, or any other text editor I've used. Anytime I want to use the keyboard to go up and down large jumps in the document, I use Page Up and Page Down.

[samjones6]

I use the scroll wheel, or drag the scroll bar

Of course that works....

But I don't use the mouse when editing... ever.