For Some Value of "Magic"

Frameworks and Toolsets

I've been doing a lot of work with DreamWeaver - UltraDev mostly, though I have now dipped a toe into the MX waters - and have been impressed with its capabilities. Like most such tools, however, you sometimes end up having to stomp all over it to do what you want. It's good for some thing, but not others. This can be frustrating because after such changes the DW functionality doesn't work, or doesn't work as well. Typically DW will put a red exclamation mark next to something it no longer feels is correct, but usually this simply means "you're on your own from here on in, I can't parse this".

What I'd like is a framework that lets me do all the clever programmed things I want to do, but helps me rather than getting in my way. This might be a pipe dream (after all, it's expecting a bit much for a tool to parse arbitrary code it didn't write), but I'd like to investigate it. I suspect it will take a lot longer than I thought.