Dendrite

Development environment for managing hand-coded sites

Dendrite is not a WYSIWYG or drag-and-drop website designer or traditional server-side content management system.

Dendrite is closer to a development environment than a content management system. It's for you if you want to hand-code or already have your code and want to manage the site as code rather than visually. It contains a number of features and tools which will help you to do this.

They key feature, which gives the app its name, is that it can store text or code as 'objects'. Anything that appears in more than one place can be stored as an object and edited in one place. A placeholder indicates an object's position in the main file. Objects can contain other objects.

The server simply has to serve a pre-compiled page. There is no content management system on the server to be hacked. Your pages are not constructed when they are served. This makes your website faster and more secure than if you use a traditional content management system (CMS).

If you would like to read more, an early draft of the user guide is available here.

• a development environment that allows you easy access to your code for editing
• syntax highlighting for some file types*
• lightweight
• the ability to edit common code or text once. Changes are cascaded at compile time
• a publish button that allows you to upload the entire site or selected files by ftp or sftp

*Forthcoming improvements include syntax highlighting in other file types, eg php, python etc. Browser preview that allows you to see changes as you make them.

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System Requirements

Mac OSX 10.13 or higher

 

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What should I do with the downloaded file?

Open the .dmg file and find the application inside. If you want to keep using Dendrite, drag and drop it into your Applications folder. To keep it in your dock, right-click or click-and-hold on its dock icon and choose 'Keep in dock'. To have it available all the time, do the same and choose 'Open at login'

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Version History

version 1.5.0 November 2020

• Adds syntax highlighting to .css and .js files
• Fixes a bug which cause sftp transfers to hang randomly

version 1.4.1 October 2020

• Min supported system raised to 10.13
• Irons out a few bugs in the new image resize / upload feature
• Will now transfer any images added via Dendrite since the last upload. Previously the feature (as documented) uploaded images added since the website was last opened.

version 1.4.0 September 2020

• Incorporates SharpResize app for dragging and dropping or pasting images. Multiple versions (2x, 3x) are saved in the images folder and the name inserted in the Card dialog if showing
• images that are imported or created using the SharpResize tool will be uploaded when a page or the site is published
• Fixes occasional hang at end of ftp/sftp transfer

version 1.3.0 September 2020

• Adds list of images (drawing from /images/ directory in the project folder). Images can be dragged from this list into the main view, an <img > tag will be inserted
• Fixes beachball hang when new page is created and angled brackets are typed.

version 1.2.3 August 2020

• Main editor window uses integrated bar rather than separate panel for Find/Replace
• Adds menu item, Edit > Find and Replace...
• Handles accented characters and more special characters by converting them to their html entities when a file or object is saved using the main editor or an object is saved using the card dialog

version 1.2.2 August 2020

• After card is added, cursor postition is maintained
• Adds preferences window, adds checkbox to switch on/off the image filename autocomplete feature

version 1.2.1 August 2020

• Corrects problem with editing existing objects.

version 1.2 August 2020

• Adds a warning if the id for a card exists already for that website
• Forces file extension for new pages/files. defaults to .html if no extension given
• After creating a page/file, it's selected and opened in the interface
• The files and objects tables now only need a single-click to open page or object in the main editor (previously double-click)
• On saving a file in the main editor, certain non-ascii characters (eg smart quotes which would appear as garbage when viewed in a browser) are replaced with their web-friendly equivalents, or where appropriate, entities. This was already the case with the card editor sheet.
• Insert h1, h2, h3 added to Insert menu, which operates on the main editor window. If text is selected, it's placed within h1, h2 or h3 tags.

version 1.1 July 2020

• First public release, not even beta.