# How do you desing forms in RoR **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [August 9, 2006, 2:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-desing-forms-in-ror/102039 "2006-08-09T14:03:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jsn1)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2006, 2:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-desing-forms-in-ror/102039/1 "2006-08-09T14:03:31Z")
Hi all, what is the best way tod esing a form in RoR? Do you use Dreamweaver or something similar? thanks ---
**Author:** ![jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jsn1)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2006, 3:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-desing-forms-in-ror/102039/2 "2006-08-09T15:25:43Z")
Jose P. wrote: > Hi all, > > what is the best way tod esing a form in RoR? > > Do you use Dreamweaver or something similar? > > thanks Well, RoR is a language/framework. Dreamweaver doesn’t “know” Ruby/Rails. You’re much better off learning to handcode. There is no visual editor to the best of my knowledge. Radrails ([http://www.radrails.org](http://www.radrails.org)) is a good place to start, but there is no visual editor there, either. Regards, Henning K. ---
**Author:** ![jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jsn1)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 4:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-desing-forms-in-ror/102039/3 "2006-08-10T04:31:30Z")
It looks like RubyWeaver allows to create RoR pages with dreamweaver [http://www.ridingtheclutch.com/entry.cfm?id=58](http://www.ridingtheclutch.com/entry.cfm?id=58) Richard C. wrote: > I think RadRails is rhtml-aware. Don’t know how much, > I have mostly stuck to FreeRIDE’s syntax friendliness. > > I am wondering though if there are visual designers or > good editors at least that support CSS-layout. Was a bit > annoyed that Rails view generators spat out tables (i.e. > stuff I am going to have to strip out later). > > I don’t know if DreamWeaver has Rails view editing. ---
**Author:** ![jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jsn1)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-desing-forms-in-ror/102039/4 "2006-08-15T14:18:10Z")
Use whatever tool works for you to generate a plain-html version of the page. Yes, even Dreamweaver, if that floats your boat. Copy the html code into your view folder and add Rails markup. I also agree with Henning that you pretty much have to learn how to hand-code HTML at some point to be effective as a web developer. There are - to my knowledge - no “Visual Editors” to WYSIWYG-edit rhtml. And I don’t think there should be - properly written rhtml with helper methods is easy to read and edit. Reliance on tools ends up somewhere we don’t want to go. Look at the mess that is JSP in Java or ASPX in .NET. Max ---
**Author:** ![jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jsn1)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2006, 7:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-desing-forms-in-ror/102039/5 "2006-08-09T19:17:11Z")
I think RadRails is rhtml-aware. Don’t know how much, I have mostly stuck to FreeRIDE’s syntax friendliness. I am wondering though if there are visual designers or good editors at least that support CSS-layout. Was a bit annoyed that Rails view generators spat out tables (i.e. stuff I am going to have to strip out later). I don’t know if DreamWeaver has Rails view editing. ---
**Author:** ![jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jsn1)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-desing-forms-in-ror/102039/6 "2006-08-15T14:18:33Z")
I’m thinking if you can code in ROR you can learn to hand code CSS and XHTML. My skills in all 3 are still beginner level but prior to my work in PHP I was using Dreamweaver. Anyway, I started to open that up a few times, load the rhtml which has to be renamed first, etc , then back to Rails Anyway, best thing is handcode, it’s neater and faster anyway and you’ll wind up knowing it inside out instead of relying on tools to do the work. You can just keep your browswer opened to your pages and edit .rhtml and reload pages to see changes. Works fine. Stuart ---
**Author:** ![jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jsn1](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jsn1)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 2:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-do-you-desing-forms-in-ror/102039/7 "2006-08-15T14:18:51Z")
Taking this a slightly different direction. If you want to be able to utilize WYSIWYG html to design your pages and even be able to re-edit them (with a WYSIWYG editor) at any point, then you could look into using the MasterView plugin. MasterView allows you to work with html and adds the rails functionality by adding attributes (directives) to your html. These directives don’t affect WYSIWYG editing, but at runtime get transformed into live rhtml under the covers. The directives have very similar syntax to the rails helpers to make it easy to learn. The result is that you can continue to edit your html even late in the project and your live pages will pick all the design changes up when running. MasterView allows you to use any standard rhtml functionality including partials, helpers, layouts, and we are working on even more powerful directives that will encapulate other exciting functionality like ajax’d sortable table grids. MasterView also has a generator that can be used to create your starting html with the directives already in there. It is designed to be more production ready in that it has CSS styles defined so that you can easily customize from there, but you can use MasterView with or without the generator. MasterView is a Rubyforge project and the home page [http://masterview.org/](http://masterview.org/) I’d be glad to answer any questions that you have about the project. Jeff