On May 30, 11:37 pm, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
> On 30 May 2007 04:45:48 -0700, p...@paulwatt.info wrote:
>
> >DW writes bad web pages? I disagree.
>
> So who wrote the 2 errors on your homepage? Did (as I suspect) DW slip
> them in when you weren't looking, and _because_ you're using DW this
> sort of thing is so isolated from you that you simply don't realise.

You are far more likely to make a mistake when hand coding.
DreamWeaver is a fantastic tool, if you know how to use it properly.
DreamWeaver CS3 is even better, as you can copy and paste layers,
images and selections directly from PhotoShop or Illustrator and it
works out the rest for you.

One thing we rarely use in DW is WYSIWYkindaG layout; we work in code
view.

On 31 May, 11:23, SpaceGirl <nothespacegirls...@subhuman.net> wrote:

> > Sounds awful. Even having Potatoshop in the office is one of the worst
> > things you can do to a web design shop. You're only one click away
> > from static .psd design briefs and that whole world of 2000-era
> > chopped-up-bitmap sites.
>
> Not if you're a good designer.

It's not a question of how good the designer is, it's about how smart
the producer is and whether they understand the need for fluid design
on the web.

psd-based design is "anti-prototyping". It fixes the things that don't
matter, it doesn't serve to illustrate the things that do need to be
expanded on. It shows the customer how it will look certainly, but so
do many other real prototyping-based approaches.

If the client sees a psd where one box is 47pixels above another box,
then their natural tendency is to want to see a web site where it's
also 47 pixels away, not 46 or 48, and no matter what browser, desktop
or device it's viewed on -- simply because this sort of pointless
trivia is easily quantifiable, not because it's relevant. In the still-
typical commercial case (which is admittedly better than 2000) a bad
producer will all too often force a good designer (who does know
better) into doing just this. Often at the cost of rigid sized
windows, pixel fonts or even explicitly setting window sizes.


> I work up a layout for a client, and the client signs off the PhotoShop documents.

So you design website layouts by showing the customer a static picture
of a dead website. That's like choosing a pet from the taxidermist's
window display.

> Because most text editors wont let me build quick DB queries, layout
> tables,

So use one that does. Or else switch to another window and do it
there. I do sometimes happen to edit SVGs as raw XML in my coding
editor, but I'm hardly going to stop using Inkscape!

> or build my CSS for me.

There are no current editors that build good CSS designs, meaning a
useful underlying meta-structure of cl***es etc. at the HTML level
before applying the decorations to it. WYSIWYG certainly doesn't do
this, text editors at least don't get in your way as much. Really good
CSS design (which is incredibly rare) has no good tools to support it
as yet and it relies on a rare level of user skill.

(I posted a long rant on this a while ago, on the need for applying
Structuralist thought to achieving good WYSIWYG / CSS editing tools)


> Design is more important.

Paper design is about pushing pixels around, web design shouldn't be.
psd-based design encourages this error.

> It's a real shame to think of all that time you are wasting then
> Think of the money you could save in the long term.

That's pretty much what I do all day. One of the useful purges I can
make is to kill table-based design and especially WYSIWYG in favour of
semantic HTML. WYSIWYG encourages the design problem to be seen as a
lot of repeated page-design problems, rather than a one-off generic
design problem for all related pages. If I can kill this "It's only 5
minutes per page" attitude and replace it with "doing it right, once"
then there's a huge saving to be had. 100 pages is a whole working
day, even if they are just 5 minutes each.

On May 31, 11:02 pm, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
> On 31 May, 11:23, SpaceGirl <nothespacegirls...@subhuman.net> wrote:
>
> > > Sounds awful. Even having Potatoshop in the office is one of the worst
> > > things you can do to a web design shop. You're only one click away
> > > from static .psd design briefs and that whole world of 2000-era
> > > chopped-up-bitmap sites.
>
> > Not if you're a good designer.
>
> It's not a question of how good the designer is, it's about how smart
> the producer is and whether they understand the need for fluid design
> on the web.
>
> psd-based design is "anti-prototyping". It fixes the things that don't
> matter, it doesn't serve to illustrate the things that do need to be
> expanded on. It shows the customer how it will look certainly, but so
> do many other real prototyping-based approaches.
>
> If the client sees a psd where one box is 47pixels above another box,
> then their natural tendency is to want to see a web site where it's
> also 47 pixels away, not 46 or 48, and no matter what browser, desktop
> or device it's viewed on -- simply because this sort of pointless
> trivia is easily quantifiable, not because it's relevant. In the still-
> typical commercial case (which is admittedly better than 2000) a bad
> producer will all too often force a good designer (who does know
> better) into doing just this. Often at the cost of rigid sized
> windows, pixel fonts or even explicitly setting window sizes.
>
> > I work up a layout for a client, and the client signs off the PhotoShop documents.
>
> So you design website layouts by showing the customer a static picture
> of a dead website. That's like choosing a pet from the taxidermist's
> window display.
>
> > Because most text editors wont let me build quick DB queries, layout
> > tables,
>
> So use one that does. Or else switch to another window and do it
> there. I do sometimes happen to edit SVGs as raw XML in my coding
> editor, but I'm hardly going to stop using Inkscape!
>
> > or build my CSS for me.
>
> There are no current editors that build good CSS designs, meaning a
> useful underlying meta-structure of cl***es etc. at the HTML level
> before applying the decorations to it. WYSIWYG certainly doesn't do
> this, text editors at least don't get in your way as much. Really good
> CSS design (which is incredibly rare) has no good tools to support it
> as yet and it relies on a rare level of user skill.
>
> (I posted a long rant on this a while ago, on the need for applying
> Structuralist thought to achieving good WYSIWYG / CSS editing tools)
>
> > Design is more important.
>
> Paper design is about pushing pixels around, web design shouldn't be.
> psd-based design encourages this error.
>
> > It's a real shame to think of all that time you are wasting then
> > Think of the money you could save in the long term.
>
> That's pretty much what I do all day. One of the useful purges I can
> make is to kill table-based design and especially WYSIWYG in favour of
> semantic HTML. WYSIWYG encourages the design problem to be seen as a
> lot of repeated page-design problems, rather than a one-off generic
> design problem for all related pages. If I can kill this "It's only 5
> minutes per page" attitude and replace it with "doing it right, once"
> then there's a huge saving to be had. 100 pages is a whole working
> day, even if they are just 5 minutes each.
I must admit I do like KompoZer a lot for creating websites, however I
think their are only so many things you can use a WYSIWYG editor for.
As an example I still use a plain text editor for writing PHP as I can
have control over what I write, which I think is vital, especially
when working with server side code, as there is NO ROOM for error, due
to the simple fact that if the editor does one thing wrong you could
end up having your server hacked. I also like that in KomPoZer you
still need to know what you want too type when makeing CSS rules, as
it avoids a lot of bad situations where you have stuff like
"style1"... WTF if Style1 anyway, it has no meaning what so ever. I
also like how in KompoZer it has the option where you can remove all
text styles, it's bloody handy when copying text in from other
programs, such as MS Word.
That means that you end up with the program useing your external
stylesheet, as it should.
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesign.awaredspace.biz

And lo, Andy Dingley didst speak in alt.www.webmaster:

> On 31 May, 09:39, SpaceGirl <nothespacegirls...@subhuman.net> wrote:
>
>> DreamWeaver CS3 is even better, as you can copy and paste layers,
>> images and selections directly from PhotoShop or Illustrator and it
>> works out the rest for you.
>
> Sounds awful. Even having Potatoshop in the office is one of the worst
> things you can do to a web design shop. You're only one click away
> from static .psd design briefs and that whole world of 2000-era
> chopped-up-bitmap sites.

Do you have images on your website? What did you edit them in? Why is
Photoshop any worse than any other image editing program for creating web
design graphics?

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#search - Orca Search: Full-featured
spider and site-search engine

On 31 May, 18:55, GreyWyvern <s...@greywyvern.com> wrote:

> Do you have images on your website?

Interesting question. Right this minute I'm working on a wiki with
Mediawiki, not HTML directly. It's for technical design and project
management, so it has a vast number of "technical diagrams" on it, UML
etc. I'm deliberately purging bitmap images from it in favour of SVG.
With Mediawiki this is easy - you upload the SVG as a scalable vector
image, then the wiki can convert it to any size of bitmap for display
on-the-fly (actually .png). It's working pretty well -- the new UK no-
smoking banner goes from beingg used for printable signs at a couple
of thousand wide to icons for today at 50px. ImageMagick gives much
better scaling than client-side browsers ever did!

The SVGs themselves are hand-edited with Inkscape or some are auto-
generated wih XSLT and auto-uploaded onto new pages by a Python
script.

In the rare cases where the bitmaps _ought_ to be bitmaps (team
members' pets, cargo-cult pictures of Jukka and Prince Phillip etc.)
then they're just bitmaps.

> What did you edit them in? Why is
> Photoshop any worse than any other image editing program for creating web
> design graphics?

Potatoshop is fine as a bitmap editor (although expensive for many
users). Where bitmaps are appropriate, then use them, and maybe use PS
to edit them.

What I'm strongly against is the concept of using bitmaps to _design_
websites.