HomeSite 5.5 running on Windows XP |
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| Developer(s) | Adobe Systems |
| Stable release | 5.5 / 9/2003 |
| Operating system | Windows |
| Type | HTML editor |
| License | Proprietary |
HomeSite was an HTML editor owned by Adobe Systems (formerly owned by Allaire and Macromedia). Unlike WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver, HomeSite was designed for direct editing, or "hand coding," of HTML and other website languages. It was available for the Microsoft Windows platform.
HomeSite development ended effective May 26, 2009.[1]
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It was originally developed in Borland Delphi in 1995 by Bradbury Software (founded by Nick Bradbury). Bradbury wrote HomeSite after using HotDog and being frustrated with it. In March 1997 Allaire Corporation from Cambridge, Massachusetts (founded by brothers Jeremy and J.J. Allaire) acquired HomeSite and Nick Bradbury joined Allaire. After leaving Allaire in 1998, Nick went on to work on the CSS/xHTML editor TopStyle and the RSS reader FeedDemon. Macromedia acquired Allaire in 2001 and was in turn acquired by Adobe in 2005.
At Allaire, a version of HomeSite was created as an IDE for ColdFusion, selling as ColdFusion Studio. This version was later merged into Coldfusion MX under Macromedia, and was then called HomeSite+. Development of HomeSite continued in parallel, though the standalone HomeSite was still sold separately.
In the days that HomeSite was under Nick Bradbury, and then part of Allaire, it had an enthusiastic following from its user community. While many software companies at the time had WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) website creation tools where the user never saw the code, Nick Bradbury created a product that was code centric and popular with those that preferred to work directly in the code, a concept that was dubbed "What You See Is What You Need." Further he built in a variety of ways that users could customize the user interface and extend the functionality. Allaire kept this concept going as its target market of ColdFusion users were code-centric as well. Allaire developers expanded upon Nick's original HomeSite capabilities by adding features like built-in scripting, improved syntax coloring, and VTML for tag insight and tag editors.
Nick Bradbury and then Allaire had a policy of having an open support forum for those interested in its products, both current customers and prospects. The fans of HomeSite would contribute to the development of the product by making suggestions on-line and refining those suggestions amongst themselves. The Allaire developers would join in the discussion, participating and often incorporating user suggestions. Allaire used the open forum idea for beta programs as well. Allaire used HomeSite as a relative mass-market product, keeping the price at $99 and using widespread distribution. The idea was to get as many web developers using it as possible and then introduce them to ColdFusion. Allaire drove the HomeSite user community from 25,000 in 1997 to over 400,000 in 2001. The focus was on building the community, not revenue. Users responded to that respect and love for the tool by supporting each other and by creating and sharing a wide variety of HomeSite extensions.
Macromedia licensed a copy of HomeSite to include in Dreamweaver 1.0 when it first shipped. This OEM deal started the relationship between the companies and eventually led to the acquisition of Allaire by Macromedia in 2001. Macromedia was acquired by Adobe in 2005. In May 2009, Adobe elected to cease development of HomeSite, and no longer supports the product, though they still maintain a forum for active users (see below).
There was also another version called HomeSite+ which was included in Dreamweaver MX 2004 and greater. HomeSite+ had additional functionality for ColdFusion application development, and was generally comparable to the version of HomeSite formerly called ColdFusion Studio. HomeSite+/CF Studio versions parallel standalone HomeSite versions.
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