Introduction
Kicking off the series of RedDot gripes, here's number 1. Please note: the series is not in any kind of 'preference order', merely a big list of things as and when I find them.
The RedDot Text Editor
By default, RedDot creates invalid markup. This is purely down to the terrible 'WYSIWYG' text editor, that is neither WYSIWYG, nor standards-compliant, begging the question "why the heck have it in the first place?" Of course, to novices, it looks quite impressive ("Wow, I can write web pages without needing to know HTML! WOO-HOO!") but, as is often the case with attempts to dumb things down, this only hurts the expert editors who now cannot take advantage of their actual knowledge and experience.
This editor also annoys the novices, much in the same way Word, Outlook, and other poorly-implemented WYSIWYG editors do, in that it can make it extremely difficult to do things like cancel a list, unindent an indent, etc. I've seen real HTML editors that actually do a good job of this, so it's not like it's impossible.
It's almost comical the extent to which the editor screws things up. Inserting span tags everywhere, the proliferation of ' ' (note to RedDot programmers: the character represented by ' ' is NOT the same as a space!), and unquoting attribute values.
And RedDot's solution to this problem? "Use tidy". While I'm all for the use of separate, small, specific tools to get the job done, this is just not an option because tidy can only be used at the point of publication, so any problems caused by RedDot spewing out invalid markup will still be evident in preview / smartedit modes.
There are so many clean, reliable, open-source HTML text editors out there that do a really good job. There are also powerful, full-featured text-editors for those of us who like to do things by hand. By rolling their own tool - and doing a really bad job of it in the process - RedDot have managed to satisfy none of their audience.
8 comments:
Huge amounts of money are you kidding hahaha... RedDot is in the mid to low range when it comes to $$$ for a CMS. Call up Interwoven and ask them how much they want than put all your content in and try to get it back out. Or try building a fully functional CMS yourself.
You should also list things that it does do right and compare the list. Of course this is all subjective, because it really depends on what features you are using.
You know the number one problem with most developers they think every ones code sucks except their own but they fail to realize that it was done a certain way for a reason. Believe me I've experienced my share of RedDot errks..
How about the fact that it's written mostly in ASP and doesn't take advantage of multiple processors get with the times right?
Brian,
On cost: I am not responsible for our budget, although I am aware that RedDot pricing is in the order of tens of thousands of pounds. Maybe even 100K+. To me, that is a HUGE amount of money, especially given some of the smallish customers who use RedDot.
On function: this links with my previous point, and IMO RedDot is simply overkill - for our purposes, at least. True, there may be some customer out there for whom this software is appropriate, but certainly from our point of view, it's very much a "what everyone could possibly want, all in one big bag of complexity" deal.
On tone: I'll certainly make some positive points where due, but the main aim of this blog is to balance things out. The RedDot sales team do a very good job of being 'persuasive', and I feel that a counterpoint is required. See this article for why I feel this is necessary.
Thanks for the feedback.
Hi and thanks for starting this blog -- We are about to start a migration to RedDot and I hope to be able to benefit from some of you observations of the 'gotchas'
"On tone: I'll certainly make some positive points where due, but the main aim of this blog is to balance things out. The RedDot sales team do a very good job of being 'persuasive', and I feel that a counterpoint is required. See this article for why I feel this is necessary."
They're sales reps and their job is to sell. I'm sure they promised you it can do everything under the sun and more. It's quite possible that RedDot is overkill for your situation and one of the free open source products will do you just fine. Just like Microsoft Word is overkill for college kids writing term papers.
Have to agree with you.
We made the mistake of letting a non tech person select the cms, as it has red-dots so easy for everyone to use was the exact words used by the salesman i beleive.
What a nightmare it has been, from installation to performance issues, to the worst editors ever, to there stupid licensing model, to the fact that when they store data in your database, its a java object that they then encrypt. Just to make sure that you cant get access to your data unless you go thru reddot. Its a sham of a system and a sham of a company. All you fanboys have you ever tried to build anything serious with reddot?
Please see the following post for a open discussion about this "gripe"
http://groups.google.com/group/RedDot-CMS-Users/browse_thread/thread/fd212ee9ce3077f2?hl=en
I recommend taking any and all further discussion to this forum. Though mainly technical in nature there is a good balance of reddot advocates and reddot pessimists to keep things reasonably objective.
I've been told by RedDot that problems encountered with redDot text Editor should be fixed by version 8...a new text editor would be great!
Post a Comment