PSD to coding

TallPaul

Member
After getting fed up with Dreamweaver doing things I tell it not to or not showing something in the program but in the browser yes etc I took the advice from here to just use coding and leave Dreamweaver alone, the better choice I might add.


Anyway to the question, my ex teacher said not many people code a website design from Photoshop anymore yet I have a friend who uses this approach to make web designs who also hates Dreamweaver, is this a good way to make designs? For me it seems a better choice because you get the design how you want it.
 
Do you think your teacher was insinuating that people don't code at all, or was he referring to designing in the browser?

Either way I still think you, as a web designer, need to know how to code properly; there was a huge debate about this some months ago because of something Elliot Jay Stocks said. Let's say you design something for a client, what now? Are you gonna tell the client to find a developer? Will you find a developer? Are you planning on selling your designs to a theme-site?
 
Not sure but I also had CSS HTML classes with a different teacher, this was the Dreamweaver teacher who had to check back just to find some of the easiest of HTML codes lol

Would it be good practice if i used the method of designing in photoshop then slicing and coding in a code editor?
 
Onartis said:
Yes, it would be. And Dreamweaver is a code editor...

It's a lot more than a code editor imo...and yes it has its ups and downs like any piece of software however it is major powerful, why would it be developed and cost so much if it wasnt, it just needs to be used properly and you will get results. The new CS5 has a few niggles here and there I feel, i've moved to Expresso as its a lot more light weight..
 
glenwheeler said:
It's a lot more than a code editor imo...and yes it has its ups and downs like any piece of software however it is major powerful, why would it be developed and cost so much if it wasnt, it just needs to be used properly and you will get results. The new CS5 has a few niggles here and there I feel, i've moved to Expresso as its a lot more light weight..

I agree :) (up til cs5 etc. as I've not tried it)

Use it "properly" and it's amazing... many people don't use it properly, and it still misses a lot of features in cs3 (not checked others)
 
Never have liked dreamweaver, even went on a basics course to try and get to grips with it, but I prefer working with golive even if it is out of date. I normally get the design sorted and then go and tweak the code etc (I'm still wysiwyg as web isn't my main area) to make it more efficient and to utilise things like css3 (manual entry only). It probably is a longer route but if I did it all day long then I'm sure I could get down to coding by hand.

My initial design has always been done on paper, then photoshop (it's used for slicing up anyways) and then into code
 
naturally, I'm a developer with a keen eye for design.

I never understood dreamweaver to be honest.
I always preferred to use a basic text editor such as notepad or (my personal favourite) SciTE to code the webpage, and then have firefox and ie etc up to keep an eye on things as I go along.

Anyone well versed in dreamweaver like to tell me what I am missing out on? I never got the point of dreamweaver.

EDIT: other than auto finishing my tags, but I kind of don't like that. I find it quite annoying.
 
Like you I preferred (and will almost certainly use - for my own sites) more slimlined, purpose built text editors such as Notepad++

However my current job is at my University, and hence the site is rather large. The functionality that dreamweaver adds makes it akin to a CMS for us.

We use templates (site wide, department specific, page type specific etc.)
the FTP (check in, check out, synchronising, allows to get to specific remote folders etc.)
obviously there are some code functionalities such as the auto finishing of tags (I didn't like it at first but I'm used to it now - oh and it's quite useful for debugging other peoples work), ability to select a div from the opening to the closing tag within code view
The design view can be quite useful when you are given formatted text in Word. As long as time is spent going through the code afterwards :)
Library items ... able to re-use and keep up to date... like php includes without the php

So while I probably wouldn't use it on small sites... it's definitely changed me to respect what it can do (granted if a text editor that wasn't DW did all this (for windows)) I'd probably use it ^_^
 
Renniks said:
ability to select a div from the opening to the closing tag within code view

That's pretty cool. It sounds quite good for what you're doing Mark. I'm the same though, I hate DW because of the auto completion. I just can't get used to it, so I always end up going back to my good old combination of Notepad ++/Textwrangler and Firebug. :)
 
I think it's received such a bad reputation as a program, when realistically it's a good program and people use it for the wrong things (granted I think people use it how it was meant to be used)
 
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